As a BJJ athlete your primary responsibility is improving existing skills & acquiring new skills to further enhance your BJJ performance and success.
There are many ways to classify skills. However, as a BJJ athlete, you’re primarily concerned with improving your motor skills.
Successful motor skills are determined by the quality of movement above all other considerations.
Psychologist E.R. Guthrie defined skill as the “ability to bring about some end result with maximum certainty and a minimum outlay of energy, or of time and energy.”
Skill can also be defined as proficiency, facility or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training, experience or as a result of practice.
Your goal is to arrange the training session in a manner that promotes learning and solidifies the desired skills so you can successfully recall those skills at a future date.
This is known as motor learning.
Motor learning is defined as changes in the body’s internal processes that determines ones capabilities to produce a motor skill.
All learning requires repetition and rehearsal. Proper rehearsal is the greatest contributor in acquiring new motor skills.
Research shows that 300 to 500 repetitions are required to learn a new skill, but 3000 to 5000 to correct to faulty movement pattern. It’s much more efficient to practice and learn new skills correctly the first time through.
Also, when discussing motor learning and skill acquisition it’s important to understand your BJJ drilling & training environment.
For example, there are two ways to classify skill when dealing with different training environment.
A Closed Skill is a skill performed in a very predictable or stationary environment, where you can plan your movements in advance. This is usually referred to as drilling.
An Open Skill is a skill that’s performed in an unpredictable or in-motion environment and requires you to adapt your movements to the dynamic properties of the training environment. This is usually referred to as rolling or sparring.
When first learning a skill I recommend learning and spending a great deal of time practicing and drilling in a Closed Skill environment, with no resistance or surprise actions from your training partner.
As your skill becomes more refined you can slowly shift from a Closed Skill, to an Open Skill environment with your training partner offering more resistance, while adding a more unpredictable and chaotic training situation.
Now remember, proper rehearsal is the greatest contributor in acquiring new motor skills.
You must make sure that you create an environment where you can perform a high volume of high-quality repetitions.
The chart below will help you track those repetitions and ensure that you’re on the path to creating skills that are performed with maximum certainty and a minimum outlay of energy, or of time and energy.
This will ensure your BJJ performance and success.
Jason C. Brown has been helping BJJ players and martial artists improve their performance since 1999 and have created astounding resources specializing in BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) conditioning and preparation. His online resource at BJJWorkouts.com has become the “Gold Standard” for all aspects of BJJ conditioning and preparation. You can get Jason’s Free BJJ Training video Courses Here: http://www.bjjworkouts.com