OK, so, this title is a little bit inaccurate, because you probably know by now that you cannot do BJJ alone, and that you HAVE to be able to try new moves/concepts/approaches on at least one totally resisting training partner, the more the better! But this doesn’t mean that you can’t explore your own path and chase your own ideals and interests.
Your instructor is most likely very knowledgeable and competent, so they are probably going to be your best resource regardless of what you decide to learn, but sometimes you need extra details that your instructor may not be able to provide or communicate as well, and I would say that it’s very common to have an instructor whose style is just not appropriate to yours or their body type is way different etc…
Sometimes you just want to explore and understand a certain position/move/system, so why not? There are TONS of free and effective resources out there to help you customize your BJJ and help you make it yours: anything from youtube to Globetrotters in Action, to just asking that random sparring partner during open mat.
This is the approach I take to understanding and then developing new techniques to add to your game (or not):
You need to understand the fundamental movements of the move, and teach your body to do those first. When I’m studying a new move, I try and break it down to fundamental movements such as shrimping, framing, posting, gripping, etc. Most likely you’ll have added the majority of these standard building blocks as a beginner, so you’ll only have to learn maybe a couple different concepts when teaching yourself the new move, instead of all the concepts at once. Way easier this way. One caveat to this is that your instructor may not know the basic movements involved in a specific system, but if they don’t, somebody else does for sure!
The second thing I usually do after I understand the basic movements, is to try and understand the basic mechanics of the move, so now it’s time to grab a partner and to work through the move, as slowly as necessary, until you get a “feel” for it. This could be as easy as just running through it a few times and totally getting it, or it may take you a few weeks to get a feel for it. At this point I usually make the decision whether or not to actually pursue this move or not, which is a big decision since I know it will take a lot of time and effort, in most cases, to actually be able to effectively add the move to my arsenal. A lot of the time it’s just good enough for me to understand a move and leave it at that.
After I’ve decided whether or not to try and pursue the move, I now drill the shit out of it any chance I get, and I look to make the move work against experienced white belts or newer/smaller blue belts. A fancier way to label this second concept is “drilling with resistance”. This is usually the longest, most arduous step in the whole process, and it normally takes months, if not years, to finally be able to execute the move against anybody close to my own skill level.
And that’s pretty much it! Simple as that lol.
I’ve spent a great deal of time in self-directed BJJ study, as I’ve never had just one instructor, some of my instructors weren’t that good at teaching (so I had to do it myself) or I’ve always just been too poor to pay for private lessons or whatever. I’ve been using this method for some time, so let me give you some real-life experience examples of how I’ve implemented new moves/systems into my own personal game over the years:
When I was living in Gunnison Colorado for about 7 months, I trained with a small group of grapplers, and since we were such a small team, there would be times I would show up to an empty mat. The first couple times it happened I just left, but once I understood this was a normal pattern of behavior, I decided to come prepared to drill. I really thought inverted guards looked super awesome at the time and wanted to understand what the hell was going on.
I spent a lot of time on various granby roll drills: pretty much any variation of the granby roll I could find online I would try and master, whether it was using a wall, using a partner, line drills, guard recovery drills, just to name a few. There are so many situations where one might invert in order to achieve a certain goal, so I’m so glad I had 7 months I could dedicate toward learning this one skill.
After I started to get a feel for the movements and various situations where you would go upside down, I started trying to execute the movements whenever I could during sparring. Of course I failed all the time, and of course I expected it. If I needed to make myself feel better I could always go back to my bread-and-butter, which was good old-fashioned smashy wrestle-jitsu. But otherwise I just tried it all the time and eventually integrated the movement into my game, and now I do it all the time.
Like I was saying, this took me all of about 7 months to get to a somewhat competent level, and I would consider this a fairly fast process. I was a purple belt at this time so I already had the proficiency in many of the other movements necessary in most situations.
I taught myself the imanari roll in maybe 3 months, but this was partly thanks to the fact that I could already invert/granby, so I’m glad I learned that first.
I taught myself how to do the Shaolin sweep in about 2 months or so…
On the other hand, I’ve been working incessantly at rolling back takes for the better part of 3 years at this point of time, and I’m just barely reaching some level of competency in certain situations, while also realizing that this system/approach can go VERY deep; there are like 5 thousand variations of the berimbolo, nevermind trying to figure out the truck position and nevermind the fact that you have to use the crab ride to make any of this shit work anyway. Ugh…
While I am finally getting to some of the control positions and working my way through some spots, finally getting them to work on purple and brown belts, I’m solidly banking on still not being very impressive for at least another year.
The main thing is that I am consistent, and I trust the approach. If I just rinse/repeat the 3-step process outlined above, I know that I can eventually become proficient with this system and I’m really looking forward to it at this point. I know this process works because I’ve done it several times before.
So get to training! I probably neglected to expound on some important details, but hopefully you’ll also be able to find success with this learning process. Good luck!
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