Everything involved with learning Jiu Jitsu requires repetition.
It doesn’t matter whether you prefer drilling (in the rote sense), learning via a conceptual framework, rely on being entirely coach-led or indeed, if constraints-led pedagogy is your thing; doing something once isn’t enough – competence comes from repetition and practice equals permanent.
The issue is how do you ensure you’re getting the most out of your time, on and off the mats.
An acceleration in acquisition of skill comes when you are constantly invested in “stealing a rep”.
Stealing a rep is: being devoted to the moment. Your attitude, behaviours and consciousness are fully dialled in, to reaping the minutiae from every expression of movement, every observation, and every thought. It is the idea that you maximise every minute of your training session enabling you to compete with excellence within your domain.
There are two necessary ingredients to stealing a rep: being present (in attitude, behaviour and consciousness) and being interested – curious to every application and consequence – loving the learning.
Stealing a rep is being invested in bettering yourself, being focused 100% of the time when you’re on the mats and being productive, thinking laterally, when you are off the mats. At my academy, our philosophy insists on “A Different Kind of Jiu Jitsu”, when you learn to ‘steal a rep’ at every given opportunity, you’ll become “a different kind of grappler”.
Here are three instances where you should aim to steal a rep.
AS THE PERFORMER (TORI)
As the performer, during drill, success comes from embedding your kinaesthesia into a specific routine of action, the action is the skill you are trying to master, so start slow.
Start slow and remain slow.
Less speed fosters reliable repetition, a fluidity and confidence in action. With that, capability and recognition of error, both seeing and feeling.
Grips, base, posture.
Grips: natural or cloth, do they meet their purpose, are they positionally correct? Base: too wide, too narrow, too short or long? Have good base and you’ll never lose your balance. Posture: defensive (jigo tai) or offensive (shinzen tai) – every posture has a purpose.
Without correct interpretation, your basics will fail – as tori, you should learn to do the basics well.
Behind the ‘key-three’ follows connection and leverage – moving through the skill. Notice your connection, are you leaving space? Learn to deliver and distribute weight – feeling, watching and listening as you go. Be conscious of your effort. With good leverage comes efficiency – no broken positions, no broken transitions. Slow is smooth and smooth is correct.
All connection has purpose, it should create, illicit a reaction. Speed up and slow down responses. Go too fast, too soon and you’ll miss the simplicity within the complexity.
As tori you’re developing a deliberate tone to your work, trust in yourself to be direct, to be precise. Pay attention to the intention, precise performance transforms into excellent execution.
Speed is not a cheat code, drilling requires exactness, and observation. Drilling fast over a prolonged period has its place but fatigue becomes a factor, a factor that compounds bad habits, bad movement mechanics and a loss of context. Unnecessary speed forms partial repetition. Stealing a rep is not partial or forced repetition, this is quality not quantity.
In introduction, focus on technique: the grip, base, posture. Where’s the perfect placement? Be precise. At isolation, focus on your partner: the connection, distance, leverage. What’s the perfect response? Be observant. During any integration, focus on your strategy: the distance, timing, rhythm. Be first.
Focus on the craft.
Understand the principles, concepts, and technicalities; what, how and why of the skill. Focus will lend itself to other knowledge, it will breed nuance, guile, subtlety, and appreciation in equal measure – you’ll get so good, others won’t be able to ignore you and your end goal shall materialise sooner than you think.
Develop the master skill in all of this: ‘relaxed concentration’ – find the zone.
Flow.
AS THE RECEIVER (UKE)
This is where people fall down, it’s your partners turn now. You can switch off.
If you’re stealing a rep, you can never afford to switch off!
Observe your partners drill: what are they doing? How are they doing it? Why would they do it like that?
Once you’ve garnered a basic level of understanding of the days drill; as your partners “uke”, you become the coach. Provide feedback, through progressive resistance [silent] or otherwise, learn to communicate – steal reps together.
Remember, this is your partner’s time to be tori but you’ve got time here, use it. Navigate through it all, 360-degree awareness. Visualise everything, centre yourself, head-toes then centre, work in the periphery.
Appreciate any poise, balance and robust brilliance but recognise hesitation, instability and fault. Together: Navigate (use the cues), communicate (configure the cues), and administrate (consider the cues). A major part of stealing a rep is just understanding this, the more alert you are, the better your become.
Have you ever had the pleasure of being an uke during a seminar? Worked with a world-class performer? How did that feel? If you can’t remember, you have just missed the best lesson you could ever have had.
Be interested in learning, getting better, gaining knowledge, figuring out the why?
Learn to love the learning.
To get better, ultimately, you need to be inquisitive, curious. All journey’s are characterised by a never-ending search, an inquisitive pursuit so don’t settle, search.
Be interested in why your partner/coach/guest instructor is drilling/demonstrating in a particular way, what’s with their peculiar grip, base, posture? Is their stance different to yours? What about their weight transfer, do you feel their pressure? That’s connection. Why are you not doing that?
Be curious to the actions required to acquiring the skill. Without curiosity you are limiting your capacity. You should aim to become the drill partner you want to have, act like someone you’d like to drill with and you’ll attract the same mindset.
DURING TIME AWAY FROM THE MATS
Practice and solo-study go hand in hand in getting better. How invested are you in your betterment?
Journaling post-roll to help with sticking points in your game and imagery, watching instructional content and studying matches are all invaluable adjuncts to the work you do on the mats, but are also a great way to ‘steal a rep’ when you’re away from the mats.
Reflecting on class, or more specifically every competitive roll from your classes, enables high-level of introspection. There’s no need be too technical or too descriptive, lock in on the parts where you felt the tide change or the flow shift, both in your favour and against you. Even better if you can attach some emotions to the feelings, both in victory and defeat.
How did you feel rolling? What could have been done better? What did you do well? Where did you excel? Is there anything you can take forward into other matches? Are there parts that recur? Are there patterns, areas of your game that need closer attention?
This is the beginning of being responsible and accountable for both the physical act of skill (or lack of) and shifting from reactions to responses. This is stealing a rep.
Alongside this method comes conversation, do you have a mentor?
One of my most enlightening ‘training’ sessions was away from the mats during conversations with a mentor of mine – we had gotten changed with every expectation to train but just chatted for around 2 hours. It put things straight in my mind about practical jiu jitsu, provided clarity to certain aspects I should be letting go of and gave me the permission to develop thoughts I’d had about technique somewhere else.
Finally, instructional content is a great tool and study here is certainly a way in which to steal a rep – there are a copious examples available online. However, unless you’re particularly adept and knowledgable about a specific areas you’d like to fine tune, it can be hard to sift through the sheer amount of content available.
Another way is to change the lens, remove the noise and use this tool to focus on a specific instance that your coach has not been able to help you with. A far better use of time is learning from live events, developing an ability to commentate any rounds/bouts you are choosing to study.
Do this out loud: where should person A be placing their frame to escape? What does person B have to do complete their guard pass? Learn to appreciate the problem and provide a solution – this is another form of the ‘navigate, communicate, administrate’ I touched upon as uke earlier.
To clarify, watch matches without volume and do the job before watching through a second time, with the audio. Did the ‘expert’ agree with your assessment? Was your narration astute?
Here you will learn to pre-empt tactics real-time, ideas and direction that will carry over to practice. This is a coherent choice to maximise your learning – stealing a rep.
One final aspect to stealing a rep when you’re away from the mats is what to do when injured.
Always come to class, it’s routine; the easiest thing to lose is routine. Observe others, the tuition, journal on it. If your coach allows it, record the class. This is your chance for a 30,000ft view of every one of your training partners and, whilst you’ll not be able to feel the drill, experience the pressure, or pre-empt the response; you can observe grip, off-balancing, viable options, positional exchanges, and execution.
How did they do it different to you?
Consider being injured as feature not a bug in the system – acumen over abandonment
To sum up, ‘stealing a rep’ doesn’t mean squeezing an extra movement in after “time” is called or before the clock ends. That’s nothing but an impromptu decision to rally another half-action. Stealing a rep discerns whether, as a performer, you approach success or avoid failure.
Build your practice around being present, build your practice around being interested, and your development will go through the roof.
Now, Go Steal a Rep.