I'm angry with myself.
I've been doing BJJ for about 6 months and I don't feel like I'm making any progress. I always end up at bottom, with them having control over me. Even the newer guys are better. I get so mad that I'm like this.
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have you asked the people you roll with what you need to improve at?
I was like this and I actually ended up quitting somewhere around the 4 or 5 month mark. Not my proudest moment.
Maybe you are too weak, non physically strong to grapple? I only started winning in grappling after 2+ years of consistent training, and I could deadlift 440 (not a huge number but big for me) grappling is hard dude, and it can really break your heart if you don't have a good head about it. It humbles you. That's who you really are.
You're going to want to focus on literally one thing. Pick something you like. Pick something effective. Focus on only that. Come every day and every roll you only try for the move you want. For me, it was heel hooks. I was getting RNC'd for 6 months straight too. So I learned heel hooks. Another white belt in my gym learned Kimura and now that's his move. Another white belt in my gym learned a single leg and guillotine, and now he can take people down. Pick a guard, probably half guard, go for your move. If you want to play top and can't wrestle, pull guard and wrestle up. Etc etc etc.
Regardless you only get better by practicing and learning technique. So Pick one and just roll til you get what you want. Then just keep going.
>t. Purple belt training for 6 years
You had me until you said pull guard... if you're competing and acknowledge your wrestling isn't on par with other competitors, that's one thing. Acceptable strategy. But in training? You'll never learn to wrestle until you fail over and over and over trying your hardest to make it work. Eventually, it will.
Rest is solid advice. Bjj is super complex game. Easy for newcomers to get overwhelmed and try to do too much without realizing it.
On another note, don't compare yourself to others. Focus on your progression. Upper belts will always feel oppressive and any belt above you will manhandled you. There's always someone better than you. And it isn't a race, it's a marathon. A lifelong one. Some people are genetic freaks, crazy athletic, or wrestled in highschool/college. They will beat you. Eventually if you keep training and they get bored, you'll beat them. Or maybe they stay consistent and always speed past you. So what? You're better than the man you were yesterday. That's all that counts.
The hardest part of wrestling is the shot. Wrestling up (from say, a guard pull... sit > arm drag > double leg. Or sit > scoop grip behind the knee > single leg..) takes the shot out of the equation.
Wrestling is way harder and more fast paced than bjj. If you wrestle up you change the pace to in your favor, their stance doesn't matter as much, the hand fighting is easier...
Agreed. I never said wrestling from the ground is bad. It's important whatever the position. I'm just saying never give up just because something is hard or will take a long time to master it. Just don't give up if it feels like it's taking forever, because it will take forever. Yes, focus on stuff you can work on in the interim. But still do your 5-10 takedowns a day no matter how shitty they feel.
Thank you and I'll try to focus on something like that.
Last time coach spoke to me was when he took my credit card 6 months ago. I feel improvement as in at least I don't tap out and give a fight. But always end at the bottom. Struggling.
Ok then focus on defending and not getting submitted. Work on your knee elbow escape. Look up octopus guard. Look up coyote guard. Focus on actually just getting your guard back. Jiujitsu is a place off your back game. If you want to be on top you have to learn how to wrestle, sweep and pin people.
Sounds like you’re the town broken buck. If you are the only honkey/Black person/Hispanic they are fricking with you on purpose.
I wouldn't worry about it. People progress at different rates and one of the main points of martial arts is self betterment. As long as you're improving (also mentally) and working hard then results will come.
I do kendo primarily and have lost matches to people who were lower ranked than me and have beaten people higher ranked. The physical strength bits are easy to fix, but a weak mental attitude and wanting to give up is much harder to fix.
How's the feedback from the sensei/seniors? Do they think you're improving?
I went to my local bjj club and was partnered with 2 other guys during a drill where we were working on hip escapes and some other stuff, I am 99% they were gay and also perverts who were getting off on this shit
I never went back
I've been going for a year and I'd smash you hee hee hee
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You're a natural bottom. Better start doing hip thrusts and practice gaping for bbc.
Wrestling sports can be like that though.
Fill up the gas tank rajesh
Probably your confidence bro. You feel like you can't do it so you just don't
>broke a guy's knee grappling last week and now no one wants to roll with me
Feels bad man
Dude are you me? I haven't seen him since. I'm sorry Dan.
>intentionally hurting your training partner
Oh so you're a homosexual?
Nope, he didn't disclose that he was just getting over a knee injury. I put him in the electrical chair and *POP*
How do you guys train at home?
Lol at 6 months. Keep going. One of my training partners is a brown belt who was getting beaten by white belts regularly until he was purple. He had zero confidence and is physically frail, but he kept showing up and now he dominates. You only fail when you give up
Dude I feel the same way. I have been training for 3 months now. I'm a zoomer, not much of an athlete and in pretty meh shape (but I'm getting better) and it's rough. I literally only win against the newer white belts. My problem is this: by the time I walk out to my car, there's a 90% chance that I have completely forgotten whatever move(s) we were drilling that day. So I go back to mostly just wiggling around and getting fricked up whenever I roll. Blame it on autism or zoomer ADHD brain or whatever. It's even difficult for me to repeat what the instructor demonstrates because my memory or attention span is so fricked.
I actually asked the instructor about this, and he said that it's pretty normal: usually you have to drill a move on 3/4 different occasions to really remember it. But it still feels shitty. The only people I can reliably beat are the people newer than me, and one of them's a woman and the other is like, 14.
take vitamin c before you roll
Why?
better focus, mood, lesson retention
you most likely do have ADHD btw, and unless you want to learn things the slow way by effectively writing them into your unconcious mind by repetition, you need the focus to consciously try stuff, consciously observe the results and consciously learn from them
Thank you anons
And one more small tip:
Pack on size, get some mass.
I'm serious, it WILL help you get better.
There are many techniques that you just need some extra power.
There is an air of elegance and respect for experienced grapplers that are skinny but highly technical, but it's a very, very, very long and demanding road to take. You're putting yourself in a disadvantageous situation right off the bat if you always roll with people bigger than you, and being bigger really helps in setting the pace for sparring - you have more options to choose from and can focus on positions with ease when you don't have to worry about the guy manhandling you if you make one mistake, so it even helps in getting better.
Some people will be all
>No you don't get it duu00d you need to focus on the technique and not just muscle through everything
But you won't even get to the technique in the first place if you can't establish good positions.
Writing something down after learning it increases retention by over 20%. So write down what you learned in training.
Don't worry about it, people have different paces for learning for many reasons.
If you've got an athletic background then when you see a move being performed, you "feel" it pretty well and can replicate it in your mind and understand the fundamentals behind it.
On the opposite side, when you've got little to no experience even just the positions can be mindboggling as you're putting your body through motions that you've never done before and tend to overthink absolutely everything because not only does your mind not know, your body also doesn't.
So you've got people with vastly different backgrounds both being in beginner classes, so you might feel disheartened if you're on the more inexperienced side, but don't worry man, it happens and the only way to improve is to keep at it.
Also - this might not be the case in your class - but at least where I am training, we rarely have completely untrained average people sign up, which skews the whole field. I think grappling sports tend to be scarier than striking for the absolute beginners (I think striking is actually scarier, but that's just my experience speaking).
Develop a killer instinct.
Its likley fighting doesnt come naturally to you. So you need to learn to commit to the goal of dominating your opponent.
Download Gordon Ryan instructionals and do what he teaches, not what your coaches teach, lol
>am purple belt
My school practices from the knees. What about you guys
Self doubt hinders your progress
Ask the more experienced guys what you can improve on
Always make a concious effort to improve , analyse your sessions afterwards and take notes
When training combat sports everyone has a period where they think their progress is stagnating
Also 6 months here 2 stripe white belt. I go to a Gracie Barra near home and an MMA gym with incredibly competitive nogi classes.
It should motivate you to see the small increments of progress you make when you know where you fricked up and don't need it explained to you. Or you make people work for longer to advance position or submit you.
This is just how real combat sports go. You don't get to walk in and feel good and get your belt promoted at the first chance, because it's real and the meritocracy is inescapable. Good news is that youtube is full of resources and iujitsu is so well labeled and categorized that for any one aspect of the game, say, "Escape from side control" or "Best sweeps for heavy opponents" or whatever, there's a dozen good videos on youtube from real coaches with competitive records.
Get to work and keep showing up to class. It'd help to lift.
Watch some videos of instructors on tiktok and pay attention diligently. Be mindful. Maybe be less competitive and go with the flow.
it takes time dumbass. I'm on two years and still go through periods of just being garbage. jiu jitsu is about consistency.
focus on the absolute basics. master the basic passing the guard, triangles, arm bars, etc. don't focus on learning new moves. depending on what your goals are, you may need to get private classes with your professor.