The art of showing up to BJJ class

MASTER THE ART OF SHOWING UP…

Recently a student asked how they can improve their skills. Without hesitation, I go into my long-winded answer covering all these specific situations; then, I see the eyes glaze over (which is a conversation for another day) so I just end up saying, you need to master the art of showing up. It always comes back to consistency. Of course, skill development will depend on where you are on your journey. But, first you should be striving to master the art of showing up regardless of how you “feel.†This way you will be able to scale your skill acquisition as your journey continues. In other words, stop worrying about the moves you forget, can’t do, or the people that give you a hard time. NONE OF IT MATTERS unless your consistency is rock-solid.

Understand this: You can’t consistently improve jiu-jitsu skills with inconsistent training, period. Lay down your foundation first. This foundation should be unrelenting non-negotiable consistency. Once your base is set, now start organizing your training and focus on the areas you’d like to improve.

Personally, there is nothing special that separates me from other people when it comes to anything that I choose to pursue. However, the one thing I have going for me is that I don’t miss workouts or training sessions, ever. You can control your consistency and I treat it like a superpower. Once mastered, you can then leverage it and reach new levels of improvement. If I choose to learn something new, establishing strong consistency is always my first step. Until then, I keep my mouth shut. There is no complaining, no rationalizing situations to make myself feel better, and no comparing myself to others. I accept that there is a process and I DO NOT get emotional about the time it takes to get good.

Don’t overthink when it comes to establishing your consistency base. Some easy steps are:

1. Have your gear ready to go, the day before.

2. Master the warm-ups.

3. Pick one day that is non-negotiable.

4. Keep feelings/frustrations out of it.

5. Actually absorb what instructor is saying by using eye contact and good body language.

6. Keep your expectations in check and accept that is takes time and you’re not special.

After this, scale. Until you have mastered the art of showing up, no answer I give you related to getting better at Jiu-Jitsu will work or help, period. It’s easy to feel out of place or frustrated in our social media driven culture that depicts the highest level our art of grinding day in and day out, 3 a day training sessions and other BS (steroids) Don’t forget, journeys don’t begin this way and if they started to show the early stages of all these, now, superstars it wouldn’t get any eyeballs because there is nothing special and it’s “not impressive.†This can be great for entertainment and fuel for motivation, but is not the norm. Just show up and when you see your lifestyle shift to one of consistently showing up every week, regardless of circumstance, you can then improve linearly and monitor/measure your progress much easier. Then, when you do ask questions you can actually apply the answers. See you on the mats.
Written by Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) blackbelt Professor Chris Laciura (www.training4life.com)