We live in a time when everything that we want is literally at the tips of our fingers, you want food. You got DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub. Want to learn something new? You can google, YouTube, or Amazon prime your way to becoming an expert in just about ANY subject there is.
Except Grappling.
Now, we’re not saying you can’t learn from sources like instructionals, and social media videos, of course you can. Just not exclusively. You eventually need to put your hands on somebody and train. In fact, there are 4 key things you need to reach a high level of proficiency in Grappling and become the athlete you want to be:
1. Time
Do you know why the Olympics happen on a 4-year schedule? It’s because 4 years was considered the MINIMUM required time for an athlete to reach that caliber, and that’s for athletes who have already been training their entire lives. So, why would you stop after 3, 6, or even 12 months of training? Things take time. There needs to be consistent practice, trial and error, adapting, struggling, and growing mentally and physically.
2. Consistency
This is going to be a word you’ll see a lot from us when it comes to improvement. It really should be 1-A but that wouldn’t make sense for a top 4 list. Even if you are a non-competing athlete, you need to be consistent to improve. You can’t just show up every now and then and expect your skills on the mat to improve. That would be like saying “I ate some broccoli back in January, why am I still overweight?” or “I did a set of bench yesterday. Why aren’t I strong yet?” Those sound ridiculous, right? You need to show up and do so consistently to make big jumps in your grappling training.
3. Effort
You get what you put in, it’s really that simple. Half-hearted effort will get you half-hearted results. If you come in and kind of go through the motions and you think good enough is good enough, you might not get the results you want. But if you’re attentive, try hard, ask good questions, and are a good training partner, chances are pretty good you’ll start to see the improvements and results you want.
4. Patience
Going back to the introduction to this blog, we’re kinda conditioned at this point in society that everything we want in life is available to us in just the swipe of our finger. Information and products can be acquired and downloaded in a matter of seconds. Grappling isn’t one of those things. EMBRACE THAT. Learn to love the process. The bad, the good, the successes, the failures. Grappling is a daily exercise in self-improvement. You might not get where you want to be as quickly as you want to, but we promise the journey will be worth it.