Ask The Right Questions To Better Your BJJ!

Recently I wrote a blog in which I stated, ‘it is your job to get the answers you need.” The statement is obviously meant to encourage you as a student of jiu-jitsu to ask questions. I remember in the earliest years of my BJJ journey I trained under teachers who were so full of themselves that students asking questions was unheard of for fear of ridicule or insult. That was 15 years ago, yet still, even today there are instructors who detest answering questions; they’ll be flippant with an answer, ridicule your inquiry, or flat out ignore you.

This type of attitude is oppressive to learning and it is because of my experience that today I approach student inquiry with an attitude of open-minded respect and honest words. I feel that as long as a question is asked at the right time and in the right context a great instructor should be willing to help you with your query. However there is another side of the coin to consider and that is being shown too much in regard to a question. This is a fairly common practice by instructors eager to impress their students with how much they know. Of course, training with someone who shows too much is way better than training with someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your question. This however can impede progress just as much as not answering questions.

As an example, a white belt recently asked “how do you sweep someone from guard?” Well, there are hundreds of ways in which I sweep someone from guard. I could have played to my ego and shown the student every fancy, intricate, complex sweep I know BUT instead I realized what the student really needed was to be shown how he can sweep someone from guard. Therefore I provided the student with the information he needed to know and not everything I know.

There are those of you reading this now who are suffering from this exact dilemma. You are training with an instructor who either gives you zero answers to your questions or avalanches you with over kill information, if you are with the former leave immediately. Find another, better academy and never look back. If you are with the latter however stay! You are in good hands you just need to filter the information to better optimize your training. If you train with an instructor that is always giving you too much information techniques so advanced that you can’t pull them off here are three tips to help you reign them in. When asking a question frame the question in the following fashion:

What is the EASIEST technique from this position?
What can I expect the opponent to do in order to counter the above?

When walking away from a question and answer session it is best to walk away with a single high percentage technique you can implement right away than with 10 ‘cool’ variations that you will use 1% of the time!

 

About The Author:

meJeff Reese, Gracie Jiu-jitsu black belt, has had the honor of learning from two generations of Gracie family members including Royce, Royler, Rodrigo, Rolker, Ralek, Rener, and Ryron; he teaches at Gracie NEPA in Scranton, PA.

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