How to Study Jiu Jitsu

Resources

Listen to these first. They go deeper on each idea covered below.

Ep. 220: Note-Taking for Jiu-Jitsu, feat. Rachel Ranschau (BJJ Mental Models)

Ranschau has been keeping jiu jitsu notes since white belt. This episode gets practical about the binder system, the shorthand, and why writing after class beats writing during it.

Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

Ep. 374: How to Study BJJ, feat. Jake O'Driscoll (BJJ Mental Models)

O'Driscoll's count-based approach to getting notes out of a seminar or class without losing the thread of what's actually being shown.

Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

Ep. 316: Content Overload, feat. Jake Luigi (BJJ Mental Models)

Luigi on the Netflix problem in jiu jitsu study, why picking anything beats picking the perfect thing, and how to make study sessions connect back to your actual training.

Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

Ep. 295: Organizing Knowledge, feat. Sebastian Brosche (BJJ Mental Models)

Brosche on how to structure what you know so you can actually find and use it, rather than just accumulating notes.

Spotify (show page) | Buzzsprout

Ep. 365: Analog Versus Digital, feat. Chris Wojcik (BJJ Mental Models)

Wojcik on finding the right balance between in-person training and digital study, and why most instructionals show but don't teach.

Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

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Practical ideas for members who want to get more out of their training outside the gym.

You Don't Have to Study

Let's get this out of the way first: you do not have to study jiu jitsu outside of class. Most of our members don't, and they still progress. If you show up consistently, roll with intention, and pay attention in class, you will improve.

This page is for members who want to accelerate that progress or who find themselves thinking about jiu jitsu between sessions and want to channel that energy somewhere useful. It's not a checklist of things you're supposed to be doing.

If the idea of "studying jiu jitsu" makes training feel like homework, skip this page and just train.

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What Actually Helps: Notes After Class

Of all the study habits people try, writing down what you learned after class is probably the highest-value one. Not during class. After.

Here's why the timing matters. When you take notes during a class, your brain splits its attention between listening and writing. You end up as a transcriber, getting words on paper without actually processing them. You might catch all the steps, but you haven't owned the idea.

When you wait until after class and try to write from memory, something different happens. Your brain has to work to retrieve the information, and that effort is the point. Every time you actively reconstruct something from memory, you push it deeper. The things that don't stick were probably too detailed to matter at your current level anyway.

A practical approach:

• Write after class, not during. Even an hour later is fine.
• Keep it short. One position, one concept, one question you want to answer. You don't need to document everything.
• Write in your own words. "If I'm under side control, extend my bottom arm to create distance so I can re-guard" is more useful than "frame with bottom arm in side control."
• If you can't write it in one sentence, you probably don't own it yet. That's useful information.

You don't need a system. A notes app on your phone works. A dollar-store notebook works. The format matters less than the habit.

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Organizing What You Know

If you stick with note-taking, eventually you'll have a pile of information and no way to find anything. That's when organization starts to matter.

The simplest structure: organize by position. Create a section for guard, a section for passing, a section for pins, and so on. When you learn something useful from side control, it goes in the pins section. When you find something useful for your guard, it goes there.

This does two things. First, it makes notes searchable, which means you'll actually go back and use them. Second, it builds a map of the positions you actually play, which is more useful than a journal of every class you've attended.

A good starting point is the positions you already play, even badly. You understand those positions well enough to file information about them. From there, you can build outward to adjacent positions over time.

The GJJ curriculum already gives you a structure to hang this on. We organize by position (guard, guard retention, passing, pins, and so on), and your notes can follow the same map. When class covers a position, you have a place to put what you learned.

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Dealing With Information Overload

There is more jiu jitsu content available right now than any person could watch in a lifetime. Every position has ten instructionals from black belts you've never heard of. Every concept has a podcast episode. This abundance creates its own problem: you can spend more time deciding what to study than actually studying, and more time studying than training.

A few principles that help:

Train more than you study. You should never be spending more time consuming jiu jitsu content than training jiu jitsu. Study supports training. It does not replace it.

Pick something and move. The thing you pick to study matters less than the act of picking something and going. Spending a month trying to figure out the optimal thing to focus on is less valuable than spending a month actually focused on anything. You can always adjust.

Study the opposite role. A useful approach if you're watching content outside class: study the opposite of what your coach is teaching. If class is covering guard passing, spend time outside class looking at guard defense. When you run positional rounds from guard, you'll have ideas to test from both sides. This turns passive study into active experiments.

Less is more. If you watch an instructional and get one thing you can actually use in the next month of training, that's a win. You don't need to absorb everything. One useful idea per session, per class, per week is a high success rate.

The content recommendations page has specific resources worth your time, organized by what they're good for.

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Digital vs. Analog

People have strong feelings about this. Phone notes or a physical journal? Apps or paper?

The honest answer is that neither is better. What's better is the one you'll actually use.

Some things worth knowing about each:

Phone notes are always with you, easy to search, and hard to accidentally step on. The downside is the same phone has Instagram on it, which is the opposite of a focused study session.

Physical journals have a tactile quality that some people find helps with memory. Writing by hand is slower, which sometimes forces you to summarize rather than transcribe. They're also indestructible in a way that a tablet isn't, which matters in a gym.

Video review (filming rounds and watching them back) is powerful for people who have access to it. You catch things you weren't aware of in the moment. It's also time-consuming, so it's worth being selective about what you review and what you're looking for.

Voice notes work well right after class when you want to capture ideas quickly without stopping to write. You can transcribe later or just search by keyword if your app supports it.

A basic phone note after class is a perfectly good study habit. A physical binder organized by position is a perfectly good study habit. The study habit that doesn't work is the one you designed but never actually do.

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The Simplest Habit That Works

If you take nothing else from this page, take this: after each class, write down one thing.

Not a full recap. Not a step-by-step technique breakdown. One thing. A position that worked. A question that came up. Something your training partner did that you didn't know how to answer.

One thing, written down while the class is still fresh.

This habit is so small it's almost not a habit. That's the point. It takes less than two minutes. It forces a moment of reflection, which is where most of the learning from a class actually happens. And over time, a notebook full of one-thing entries becomes a record of your actual jiu jitsu development.

Consistency beats complexity here. A short note after every class is more valuable than a detailed study session you do twice a month.