There really should be some basic things taught to beginner students, basic positions, fundamentals of movement on the ground, how and when to tap, good manners and sportsmanship while rolling and practicing moves with other students, do you need a cup, mouth guard, ear protectors, how to prevent infections from bjj, how to tie your belt, how to clean your gi, etc. Picking up some of the stuff just from observation doesn't necessarily work. You may usually ask a question and receive an answer, but what if you don't even know what question to pose, or that you should be asking that question. A lot of important little things i've picked up, have been pointed out to me by rolling partners in a format roughly like "did you know all you have to do is to keep me from doing what i just did to you?" I also get prompted by rolling partners to "remember my fundamentals" when they're easily mauling me, and I'm thinking to myself, "what fundamentals?" I've had to do some researching online to get a better idea of what jiu jitsu fundamentals really are. Just simple stupid stuff like being up on your toes when you are on your knees, rather than top of your feet touching the mat when kneeling. I have more than once heard of people taking private lessons after they've been doing jiu jitsu for months, or maybe even years, and the instructor who is doing the private lessons asks them what they want to work on, and they start asking about crazy submissions, and the instructor looks at their low belt rank, and then has them put him in guard and they dont' know how to control his posture at all, they can't prevent their guard being broken or passed at all, and the private lesson ends up being a lesson in fundamentals and how to improve those fundamentals. Stuff that should've been learned already. I took a private lesson after a seminar a long time ago, and all i ended up learning was basic guard passing defense, mount escape, and learning movement drills. To get women to even come to bjj classes, a lot of schools now offer ladies only bjj classes, and those women almost never come to the men's classes, and I think it goes without saying how that will prevent them from progressing, and isn't much help to them in a self defense situation where they might need to fend off a bigger stronger opponent. I personally think that every school should have at least 1 total beginner class per week. Not just a class called a beginner class, where all the higher belts warm up before the advanced class. An actual curriculum oriented teaching of bjj basics and the philosophy behind how and why bjj works, and of what use it is to a person for personal safety, fitness, etc. I think it would accelerate learning, and improve retention of new students. From what i can see, the way most people end up learning jiu jitsu is the hard way, which is roughly like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the original photo, or starting from the edges. Compared to a structured progression of learning. They get a piece or two of the 5000 piece puzzle, in each class. Eventually a few of those pieces start to fit together. After they get enough pieces and fit enough together, they start to see the overall picture, and keep poking pieces into the empty hole until they've finally got it all. That takes some patience and a lot of time though, and I think is slower than having some structure to the learning. In some instances it could cause you to back track and un-learn if say you've been doing something instinctively the wrong way for some time, and it worked on lesser opponents, but then you try it on someone more experienced and realize it's all wrong. It's very common in the realm of teaching music, for an instructor to say they prefer to teach a student from scratch, than attempt to take a student who has already started learning, but learned the wrong way, and break their bad habits in order to help them improve.
Man, this is so spot on!! I had a couple classes only, and I'm lost. The instructor will be like "okay we start from side control and then.. " And I'm like "what the hell is side control? " It's unfortunate in Romania we don't have (at least not in any school I know of) fundamentals classes like the USA seems to have.
A good BJJ gym should address most of the concerns raised in this comment. The place I train at has a set number of intro classes covering one fundamental topic per class, and those classes can be repeated. Then you move onto the white belt class. There is a mixed belt class, and an advanced class for the higher belts. It sounds like you had the misfortune of joining a poorly structured gym.
Good on you, Stephan! Keep them coming, there's some subscribers who really and deeply appreciate ALL aspects of your unvaluable Knowledge & Experience - as this nice conversation you both are sharing here. Cheers!
28:00 "Everyone helping to clean the mats..." That's all well and good, but consider that all of those people are paying to learn Jiu-Jitsu, not to clean your gym and may have other obligations that they have to get to. It isn't the same thing as helping do dishes at a dinner party because that is a social event which is totally different. If you have work, a wife, kids, etc and you managed to find some time to learn Jiu Jitsu and pay a pretty good amount to do so, part of that being cleaning the gym after your class may be asking a bit too much. There is something about martial arts where people running the places like to act like the people going there need to provide free services for the instructor which goes into what you were talking about earlier. Those guys running that school are just regular guys doing a job, not your "master." I've seen people get pulled into teaching classes for free, running errands, etc. Imagine going to a restaurant, you pay, eat your food and they ask you to come back to the kitchen to help do the dishes and clean the stoves.
+Matticus Barticus This is probably a bit late, but I do BJJ in a place where you can go for free, but you have to help and clean up the place every now and then. In this case, I think the cleaning up is an amazing idea!
+Matticus Barticus Just to touch on the topic of helping to clean the gym...That is actually a custom that comes from Japan's more traditional academy's....when you study martial arts in Japan it is customary for the pupils to keep the dojo clean....The thing is it shows respect for the dojo and the sensei...They will even offer to take over if they see a senior pupil sweep the floor...when you are on the mats your personal life is outside the door somewhere...if you dont have time to study that is no ones problem aside of your own....Im with you on the money thing....many of these gyms are way too expensive because they offer other programs that you may not have any interest in and it costs a lot for them to run the big ass space and keep the lights on....its even harder to find a gym that is exclusive to BJJ...
***** I'm not a religious person, so I don't see any art or spirituality in it. I see it as a practical skill being taught like learning a foreign language or playing soccer or baseball. I wouldn't pay to learn soccer and then stay late to help landscape.
+Richard Gredwulf It's relative. Like music, it is an art and can be subject to interpretation. However some people could care less about the lyrics, they just like the sound or beat which is not the same for everyone. Look at Eddie Bravo.
I really think principles are important, but teaching basic technique is the best way to give a practical example of those principles. I found it tough, just getting taught advanced techniques in a mixed class, then getting beaten up in sparring. I think that is how you get bad habits. A pyramid can only be as tall as its base, and I think that is the purpose of a beginner class, is to get those fundamental techniques and the higher level thinking comes from that.
As a very recent white belt, I have to say one of the things that attracted me to bjj is the fact that they let you roll from the first class and that you have access to people of all levels. This is very refreshing, especially comparing with other sports where only occasionally they allow you to play with the best and get a feel of what the sport could be. Plus, I am the most scared when I roll with other white belts, as I feel that they could easily injure me (none of us really knows what we are doing). That said, beginners classes are necessary and super useful.
Hello everyone ! Thank you for this video Stephan and Ritchie! There are though a profile of new student you didn't really consider here: being a small woman. That makes a lot of things said in the video not apply. First one, no one is ever smaller than you and weaker than you when you are 50kilos woman. And you don't usually come with a big ego either (and it turns out to be even the opposite after a couple of extermely hard session with colored belt). The second one is that, I feel from my experience and talking also with women around me practising, it is harder to deal with BJJ sparing than boxing or striking conditions. Because in striking you can always run and escape naturally, because of the slight scary back feeling experience it gives (in nighmares a rape starts often by being pinned helpless on the floor) and for some women because of previous experiences (abusive boyfriends, brothers...) So when small white belt women jumps into classes packed on purple belts and brown belts that are larger to be sparing from butterfly over and over again without even knowing how you defend from there, it gets tough and frustrating pretty quickly. I don't think gender segreagation is the solution but maybe level segregation is an answer. What do you think ? Thank you,
I think this is kind of like learning to play a musical instrument. Not physically but mentally. I think I might give bjj a go with a good attitude and respectfulness.
7:00 The great flaw of how many practitioners approach JJ. I guarantee the man who is stronger and equally skilled in grappling will find MORE advantages. This is why when wrestlers (catch/freestyle) who are very good at coming out on top are giving jits guys fits. Honestly I don't understand the obsession with staying weak... What's wrong with improving your physical capability? obviously nothing. Beginners shouldn't focus on speed and viciousness, but once you've got your basics down (takes a long time in jits) I think you should condition almost as much as you roll. Not everyone is trying to compete, but if you are GRIP STRENGTH IS KING
I think you got it wrong. While obviously you want to be a stronger athlete, what he tries to say is that in the beginning, as they are talking about beginners, most of the time we don't have enough knowledge to know when the guy is just stronger than you and when he's just using leverages to "look stronger" than you. Hence why he says to try befriending a smaller, but higher belt guy. Because then you won't be able to think he's just has more raw strength when he's a 120 pounder who has more knowledge than you. It's not the obsession of staying weak, it's the obsession of getting the technique to better use your strength. As a 300lbs of pure muscle white belt you may wrestle your way out of some situations against other white belts, and it may create a false sense of security when you think you're doing fine but you're just not learning anything. You just confirm everything he says on your last lines. xP The conversation is about beginners.
First lesson: At my uni club about 30 guys there 20 brand new "Everybody partner up.... heres a single leg" 5 minutes later "Ok were going to spar for ten minutes, its fight club so if its your first time you gotta fight," 5 minutes later "STOP !!!! WOAHH STOP!!!" "Ok new guys BJJ is a grappling sport so youre not allowed to punch each other" "If your being choked youre supposed to tap your partner to get him to stop like this" "You arnt allowed to slam each other, this isnt MMA" "Maybe I should have said before sorry, NOW LETS GET BACK TO SPARING!!!!! "
Hey Stephen. I've been a subscriber for a few years now and find your videos helpful. I train in BJJ and I have a question for you. It's not a right or wrong or technique based question but it's more of an "As an instructor, what would you do?". I have been training at a large gym/mma gym. It's one of those "We've got over a bazillion square feet of MMA awesomeness!!" kind of gyms and it's packed with people every time I go in. I actually like that because they cover a lot of what I'm looking for. Anyway, the big hurdle for me is that I have social anxiety. I've had it all my life and the challenge I find is that even though I'm used to the gym I go to, every time I go I get that same feeling most of us get when it's our first day of high school and it makes it hard to leave the house and go there. Anyway, long story short is that because I keep missing classes, I'm still obviously a white belt. I've been working on strategies to push through my anxiety and I'm hoping that I can go to class regularly, but because I've been a white belt for 6 years now, my concern is that the time that I start putting in from a full time point of view from this point on, is only going to be seen as that, with none of my training prior to it within that 6 year period like I mentioned. As an instructor, if you had a student in my position, would you take into consideration the 6 years of on and off training that they've done as a white belt and take some time off of X years it takes to get through to X belts as long as the techniques are learned and done proper, or would you discard that and gauge roughly when they've started full time training and consider that to be year zero and have them spend a year or what not to attain blue belt? Thanks man.
i went to the fundamentals class for the first two months before i started going to the other classes where we roll and higher belts are there. i felt it was smart to get a little bit of a base and understand basic positions before i started rolling with higher belts. i still get my ass kicked every day rolling with the more experienced guys but I think learning techniques and movements first was best for me.
Its crazy to have all in classes. The idea of not having a basic curriculum for beginners to start with is nuts. Having separate beginner and advanced classes makes much more sense. You're always going to get a wide variety of experience in any class, whether they're all white or all black. You still get the experience of training with people far better than you. There is no way you can keep everyone interested in a class that includes first-timers with purple and brown belts; Ritchie is deluding himself.
+mang kanor That's the fundamental problem in the rather unstructured and casual training methods (aka "learning through osmosis") of many BJJ schools that is broken and needs to be fixed. It's what leads to the large turnover of BJJ students and many BJJ schools just don't get it. You have to teach someone to do a front crawl in the 3 ft pool before making them do a reverse dive off a spring board in the deep end. To Ritchie Yip it may have been an exciting and challenging thing to be constantly tapped out. He's the 10% who continue on. The 90% of the others get frustrated and quit. That's a lot of lost revenue and membership for that BJJ school. As Stephan Kesting said, how do you resolve the problem of a beginner becoming overwhelmed by moves that are way too advanced? Imagine going to college and taking the fourth year studies classes in linear algebra and calculus before you have even learned the basics. But that's how many BJJ schools still continue to teach. It's rather Darwinian. The Gracie Academy is changing this in their curriculum by making every beginner go through a "boot camp" with a structured curriculum where they learn the necessary basics. Although they are getting burned by many BJJ traditionalists for trying to reinvent the wheel, they are in essence fixing a very bent wheel! The basics and having a foundation is important to accelerate your learning in anything - be it BJJ, golf, math, - and it's good that many progressive BJJ schools are finally recognizing that the old method of throwing beginners into the fray is just an inefficient way of teaching and leads to the high turnover, and injuries.
It's now 2019. Not a lot has changed since hzuiel's lengthy, but poignant comment. Beginner's classes are still a random hodgepodge of techniques that act as puzzle pieces that you're supposed to put together in the long run. That's so fucking backwards from how it should be done. I'm returning to BJJ after quitting 16 years ago. That's a long time. BUT I still remember a LOT from what I learned back then because I had an incredible instructor. We focused on the very basics in our beginner's classes. We learned mount defense, mount escapes, side mount defense, back defense, closed guard basics and how to pass the closed guard. We learned some submissions as well, but we mostly focused on basic positions and defense. We also started every class with 10-15 minutes of self-defense (how to defend a head lock, bear hug, someone punching you, etc.) When I trained back then, I did mostly fundamentals for 6 months before I was allowed to start attending some of the intermediate classes. Guess what?? Because those fundamental concepts were drilled into my head for almost a year, even though I've taken time off I can still mostly survive on the mats. I've even been able to tap some people even though I've only been back to training for a month. It's incredible what a solid foundation can do. I was hoping to get a refresher of all that stuff when I signed up again. My new school is owned by a multiple time world champion. But he doesn't actually teach very much. He has his brown belts and one of his black belts teach. I have only been going to beginner and "fundamentals" classes, but in the 4 weeks I've been back to school, we haven't done any basic hip/elbow escapes, we haven't worked on any side mount defense, we haven't learned to protect ourselves from the back and we haven't learned the basics of the closed guard. We've been doing random sequences like collar drag to take the back, open guard sweep to side mount, etc. That's all fine and everything, but when it comes to sparring I can still smash people because of the fundamentals I've somehow had in my brain all these years. One girl who is new to class struggles even with warmups! When we roll forwards and backwards, she's falling over sideways. When we're shrimping during warmups, she is struggling to get across the mat. Then when we're doing our insane 20 minute conditioning/warmup session, we start working on drills like sweeping from open guard and transitioning to single leg X when the opponent resists. WTF? How is that useful in a beginner's class?
Good content, but it's a bit hard to watch with the stammering, hopefully it's just an inexperience in front of a camera and will improve. I'm not perfect either...
Enjoyed the talk, but I feel like you're boiling down the nuances of striking too much. Can you be proficient in 6 months of boxing? Sure, with hard training you bet. But to get to a high level of striking takes many hours of training footwork, positioning, distance control, generating power, accuracy. And that's not even adding kicking into the mix.
"Nobody says 'he is a good business man, I should listen to what he has to say about... whatever, my marriage', it's apples and oranges!". Obviously this video was done before Trump...
How in any way is he trying to be like the Gracie brothers Please mate when the only thing that comes out of your mouth is garbage , just don't say anything
There really should be some basic things taught to beginner students, basic positions, fundamentals of movement on the ground, how and when to tap, good manners and sportsmanship while rolling and practicing moves with other students, do you need a cup, mouth guard, ear protectors, how to prevent infections from bjj, how to tie your belt, how to clean your gi, etc. Picking up some of the stuff just from observation doesn't necessarily work. You may usually ask a question and receive an answer, but what if you don't even know what question to pose, or that you should be asking that question. A lot of important little things i've picked up, have been pointed out to me by rolling partners in a format roughly like "did you know all you have to do is to keep me from doing what i just did to you?" I also get prompted by rolling partners to "remember my fundamentals" when they're easily mauling me, and I'm thinking to myself, "what fundamentals?" I've had to do some researching online to get a better idea of what jiu jitsu fundamentals really are. Just simple stupid stuff like being up on your toes when you are on your knees, rather than top of your feet touching the mat when kneeling.
I have more than once heard of people taking private lessons after they've been doing jiu jitsu for months, or maybe even years, and the instructor who is doing the private lessons asks them what they want to work on, and they start asking about crazy submissions, and the instructor looks at their low belt rank, and then has them put him in guard and they dont' know how to control his posture at all, they can't prevent their guard being broken or passed at all, and the private lesson ends up being a lesson in fundamentals and how to improve those fundamentals. Stuff that should've been learned already. I took a private lesson after a seminar a long time ago, and all i ended up learning was basic guard passing defense, mount escape, and learning movement drills.
To get women to even come to bjj classes, a lot of schools now offer ladies only bjj classes, and those women almost never come to the men's classes, and I think it goes without saying how that will prevent them from progressing, and isn't much help to them in a self defense situation where they might need to fend off a bigger stronger opponent.
I personally think that every school should have at least 1 total beginner class per week. Not just a class called a beginner class, where all the higher belts warm up before the advanced class. An actual curriculum oriented teaching of bjj basics and the philosophy behind how and why bjj works, and of what use it is to a person for personal safety, fitness, etc. I think it would accelerate learning, and improve retention of new students.
From what i can see, the way most people end up learning jiu jitsu is the hard way, which is roughly like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the original photo, or starting from the edges. Compared to a structured progression of learning. They get a piece or two of the 5000 piece puzzle, in each class. Eventually a few of those pieces start to fit together. After they get enough pieces and fit enough together, they start to see the overall picture, and keep poking pieces into the empty hole until they've finally got it all. That takes some patience and a lot of time though, and I think is slower than having some structure to the learning. In some instances it could cause you to back track and un-learn if say you've been doing something instinctively the wrong way for some time, and it worked on lesser opponents, but then you try it on someone more experienced and realize it's all wrong. It's very common in the realm of teaching music, for an instructor to say they prefer to teach a student from scratch, than attempt to take a student who has already started learning, but learned the wrong way, and break their bad habits in order to help them improve.
Man, this is so spot on!!
I had a couple classes only, and I'm lost. The instructor will be like "okay we start from side control and then.. "
And I'm like "what the hell is side control? "
It's unfortunate in Romania we don't have (at least not in any school I know of) fundamentals classes like the USA seems to have.
A good BJJ gym should address most of the concerns raised in this comment. The place I train at has a set number of intro classes covering one fundamental topic per class, and those classes can be repeated. Then you move onto the white belt class. There is a mixed belt class, and an advanced class for the higher belts. It sounds like you had the misfortune of joining a poorly structured gym.
Good on you, Stephan!
Keep them coming, there's some subscribers who really and deeply appreciate ALL aspects of your unvaluable Knowledge & Experience - as this nice conversation you both are sharing here.
Cheers!
28:00 "Everyone helping to clean the mats..."
That's all well and good, but consider that all of those people are paying to learn Jiu-Jitsu, not to clean your gym and may have other obligations that they have to get to. It isn't the same thing as helping do dishes at a dinner party because that is a social event which is totally different. If you have work, a wife, kids, etc and you managed to find some time to learn Jiu Jitsu and pay a pretty good amount to do so, part of that being cleaning the gym after your class may be asking a bit too much.
There is something about martial arts where people running the places like to act like the people going there need to provide free services for the instructor which goes into what you were talking about earlier. Those guys running that school are just regular guys doing a job, not your "master." I've seen people get pulled into teaching classes for free, running errands, etc.
Imagine going to a restaurant, you pay, eat your food and they ask you to come back to the kitchen to help do the dishes and clean the stoves.
+Matticus Barticus
This is probably a bit late, but I do BJJ in a place where you can go for free, but you have to help and clean up the place every now and then. In this case, I think the cleaning up is an amazing idea!
+Matticus Barticus Just to touch on the topic of helping to clean the gym...That is actually a custom that comes from Japan's more traditional academy's....when you study martial arts in Japan it is customary for the pupils to keep the dojo clean....The thing is it shows respect for the dojo and the sensei...They will even offer to take over if they see a senior pupil sweep the floor...when you are on the mats your personal life is outside the door somewhere...if you dont have time to study that is no ones problem aside of your own....Im with you on the money thing....many of these gyms are way too expensive because they offer other programs that you may not have any interest in and it costs a lot for them to run the big ass space and keep the lights on....its even harder to find a gym that is exclusive to BJJ...
***** I'm not a religious person, so I don't see any art or spirituality in it. I see it as a practical skill being taught like learning a foreign language or playing soccer or baseball. I wouldn't pay to learn soccer and then stay late to help landscape.
***** Damn Americans!
+Richard Gredwulf It's relative. Like music, it is an art and can be subject to interpretation. However some people could care less about the lyrics, they just like the sound or beat which is not the same for everyone. Look at Eddie Bravo.
I really think principles are important, but teaching basic technique is the best way to give a practical example of those principles. I found it tough, just getting taught advanced techniques in a mixed class, then getting beaten up in sparring. I think that is how you get bad habits. A pyramid can only be as tall as its base, and I think that is the purpose of a beginner class, is to get those fundamental techniques and the higher level thinking comes from that.
As a very recent white belt, I have to say one of the things that attracted me to bjj is the fact that they let you roll from the first class and that you have access to people of all levels. This is very refreshing, especially comparing with other sports where only occasionally they allow you to play with the best and get a feel of what the sport could be. Plus, I am the most scared when I roll with other white belts, as I feel that they could easily injure me (none of us really knows what we are doing). That said, beginners classes are necessary and super useful.
Stephan! I'm thinking you need a podcast! Great insight!!!
Hello everyone !
Thank you for this video Stephan and Ritchie! There are though a profile of new student you didn't really consider here: being a small woman. That makes a lot of things said in the video not apply. First one, no one is ever smaller than you and weaker than you when you are 50kilos woman. And you don't usually come with a big ego either (and it turns out to be even the opposite after a couple of extermely hard session with colored belt).
The second one is that, I feel from my experience and talking also with women around me practising, it is harder to deal with BJJ sparing than boxing or striking conditions. Because in striking you can always run and escape naturally, because of the slight scary back feeling experience it gives (in nighmares a rape starts often by being pinned helpless on the floor) and for some women because of previous experiences (abusive boyfriends, brothers...)
So when small white belt women jumps into classes packed on purple belts and brown belts that are larger to be sparing from butterfly over and over again without even knowing how you defend from there, it gets tough and frustrating pretty quickly. I don't think gender segreagation is the solution but maybe level segregation is an answer. What do you think ?
Thank you,
I think this is kind of like learning to play a musical instrument. Not physically but mentally. I think I might give bjj a go with a good attitude and respectfulness.
7:00
The great flaw of how many practitioners approach JJ. I guarantee the man who is stronger and equally skilled in grappling will find MORE advantages. This is why when wrestlers (catch/freestyle) who are very good at coming out on top are giving jits guys fits. Honestly I don't understand the obsession with staying weak... What's wrong with improving your physical capability? obviously nothing.
Beginners shouldn't focus on speed and viciousness, but once you've got your basics down (takes a long time in jits) I think you should condition almost as much as you roll. Not everyone is trying to compete, but if you are GRIP STRENGTH IS KING
I think you got it wrong. While obviously you want to be a stronger athlete, what he tries to say is that in the beginning, as they are talking about beginners, most of the time we don't have enough knowledge to know when the guy is just stronger than you and when he's just using leverages to "look stronger" than you. Hence why he says to try befriending a smaller, but higher belt guy. Because then you won't be able to think he's just has more raw strength when he's a 120 pounder who has more knowledge than you.
It's not the obsession of staying weak, it's the obsession of getting the technique to better use your strength. As a 300lbs of pure muscle white belt you may wrestle your way out of some situations against other white belts, and it may create a false sense of security when you think you're doing fine but you're just not learning anything.
You just confirm everything he says on your last lines. xP
The conversation is about beginners.
First lesson: At my uni club about 30 guys there 20 brand new
"Everybody partner up.... heres a single leg"
5 minutes later
"Ok were going to spar for ten minutes, its fight club so if its your first time you gotta fight,"
5 minutes later
"STOP !!!! WOAHH STOP!!!"
"Ok new guys BJJ is a grappling sport so youre not allowed to punch each other"
"If your being choked youre supposed to tap your partner to get him to stop like this"
"You arnt allowed to slam each other, this isnt MMA"
"Maybe I should have said before sorry, NOW LETS GET BACK TO SPARING!!!!!
"
Ll
Very good points. An intro to fundamentals course for the a few weeks is a good thing.
Hey Stephen. I've been a subscriber for a few years now and find your videos helpful. I train in BJJ and I have a question for you. It's not a right or wrong or technique based question but it's more of an "As an instructor, what would you do?". I have been training at a large gym/mma gym. It's one of those "We've got over a bazillion square feet of MMA awesomeness!!" kind of gyms and it's packed with people every time I go in. I actually like that because they cover a lot of what I'm looking for. Anyway, the big hurdle for me is that I have social anxiety. I've had it all my life and the challenge I find is that even though I'm used to the gym I go to, every time I go I get that same feeling most of us get when it's our first day of high school and it makes it hard to leave the house and go there.
Anyway, long story short is that because I keep missing classes, I'm still obviously a white belt. I've been working on strategies to push through my anxiety and I'm hoping that I can go to class regularly, but because I've been a white belt for 6 years now, my concern is that the time that I start putting in from a full time point of view from this point on, is only going to be seen as that, with none of my training prior to it within that 6 year period like I mentioned.
As an instructor, if you had a student in my position, would you take into consideration the 6 years of on and off training that they've done as a white belt and take some time off of X years it takes to get through to X belts as long as the techniques are learned and done proper, or would you discard that and gauge roughly when they've started full time training and consider that to be year zero and have them spend a year or what not to attain blue belt?
Thanks man.
Same thing here man. Try to not think so much
I love these chats with Ritchie and Rob etc... :-)
I've just started BJJ, thanks for the helpful advice 👍 from England 🇬🇧
i went to the fundamentals class for the first two months before i started going to the other classes where we roll and higher belts are there. i felt it was smart to get a little bit of a base and understand basic positions before i started rolling with higher belts. i still get my ass kicked every day rolling with the more experienced guys but I think learning techniques and movements first was best for me.
Its crazy to have all in classes. The idea of not having a basic curriculum for beginners to start with is nuts. Having separate beginner and advanced classes makes much more sense. You're always going to get a wide variety of experience in any class, whether they're all white or all black. You still get the experience of training with people far better than you. There is no way you can keep everyone interested in a class that includes first-timers with purple and brown belts; Ritchie is deluding himself.
true this. I'm the biggest and strongest guy in my gym, and I get dominated by people half my size all the time.
Nice Video, as always haha. Stephan Kesting
A friend of mine kept bugging me to join his school but when I heard there were a lot of injuries during training...not a good sign.
+mang kanor That's the fundamental problem in the rather unstructured and casual training methods (aka "learning through osmosis") of many BJJ schools that is broken and needs to be fixed. It's what leads to the large turnover of BJJ students and many BJJ schools just don't get it. You have to teach someone to do a front crawl in the 3 ft pool before making them do a reverse dive off a spring board in the deep end.
To Ritchie Yip it may have been an exciting and challenging thing to be constantly tapped out. He's the 10% who continue on. The 90% of the others get frustrated and quit. That's a lot of lost revenue and membership for that BJJ school. As Stephan Kesting said, how do you resolve the problem of a beginner becoming overwhelmed by moves that are way too advanced? Imagine going to college and taking the fourth year studies classes in linear algebra and calculus before you have even learned the basics. But that's how many BJJ schools still continue to teach. It's rather Darwinian.
The Gracie Academy is changing this in their curriculum by making every beginner go through a "boot camp" with a structured curriculum where they learn the necessary basics. Although they are getting burned by many BJJ traditionalists for trying to reinvent the wheel, they are in essence fixing a very bent wheel!
The basics and having a foundation is important to accelerate your learning in anything - be it BJJ, golf, math, - and it's good that many progressive BJJ schools are finally recognizing that the old method of throwing beginners into the fray is just an inefficient way of teaching and leads to the high turnover, and injuries.
Once again professor, great video!
Great video thanks
It's now 2019. Not a lot has changed since hzuiel's lengthy, but poignant comment. Beginner's classes are still a random hodgepodge of techniques that act as puzzle pieces that you're supposed to put together in the long run. That's so fucking backwards from how it should be done. I'm returning to BJJ after quitting 16 years ago. That's a long time. BUT I still remember a LOT from what I learned back then because I had an incredible instructor. We focused on the very basics in our beginner's classes. We learned mount defense, mount escapes, side mount defense, back defense, closed guard basics and how to pass the closed guard. We learned some submissions as well, but we mostly focused on basic positions and defense. We also started every class with 10-15 minutes of self-defense (how to defend a head lock, bear hug, someone punching you, etc.) When I trained back then, I did mostly fundamentals for 6 months before I was allowed to start attending some of the intermediate classes.
Guess what?? Because those fundamental concepts were drilled into my head for almost a year, even though I've taken time off I can still mostly survive on the mats. I've even been able to tap some people even though I've only been back to training for a month. It's incredible what a solid foundation can do.
I was hoping to get a refresher of all that stuff when I signed up again. My new school is owned by a multiple time world champion. But he doesn't actually teach very much. He has his brown belts and one of his black belts teach. I have only been going to beginner and "fundamentals" classes, but in the 4 weeks I've been back to school, we haven't done any basic hip/elbow escapes, we haven't worked on any side mount defense, we haven't learned to protect ourselves from the back and we haven't learned the basics of the closed guard. We've been doing random sequences like collar drag to take the back, open guard sweep to side mount, etc. That's all fine and everything, but when it comes to sparring I can still smash people because of the fundamentals I've somehow had in my brain all these years.
One girl who is new to class struggles even with warmups! When we roll forwards and backwards, she's falling over sideways. When we're shrimping during warmups, she is struggling to get across the mat. Then when we're doing our insane 20 minute conditioning/warmup session, we start working on drills like sweeping from open guard and transitioning to single leg X when the opponent resists. WTF? How is that useful in a beginner's class?
16:33 me when I’m in front of anyone above a white belt lol. Can’t wait to learn some more
The schools here in Toronto Canada are expensive. 160 to 180 bucks a month. It is insane.
40 a week is expensive?
idk what that is in US dollars but here in NY i pay 140 per month. it's not cheap but it's worth it for what i get out of it.
Great vid! Thanks.
Thank you for this.
Good content, but it's a bit hard to watch with the stammering, hopefully it's just an inexperience in front of a camera and will improve.
I'm not perfect either...
What camera is being used here?
A digital one
Split classes based on spirit and how much people love the thing
nah. enthusiasm can be contagious. use that.
Meh
4:45 If you wanna listen how Stephen trash talking Ritchie
Thank you! :)
But really long :D Stephan Kesting .
Enjoyed the talk, but I feel like you're boiling down the nuances of striking too much. Can you be proficient in 6 months of boxing? Sure, with hard training you bet. But to get to a high level of striking takes many hours of training footwork, positioning, distance control, generating power, accuracy. And that's not even adding kicking into the mix.
captions annoying. ill listen to video
"Nobody says 'he is a good business man, I should listen to what he has to say about... whatever, my marriage', it's apples and oranges!".
Obviously this video was done before Trump...
The guy on the left is trying too much to be like the Gracie brothers. Painful.. >_<
Just be yourself, dude.
How in any way is he trying to be like the Gracie brothers Please mate when the only thing that comes out of your mouth is garbage , just don't say anything