Despite spending a few years in Jiu Jitsu, I’ve only spent the few past months really focusing on drilling. The benefits have been astounding. The purpose of this blog post is to convey to you what exactly drilling has done for me, and what it can do for you.

Of course the biggest benefit I’ve gotten from drilling is muscle memory. You do enough repetitions and you become good at something. Its very simple. More than physical though, drilling has effected my mentality on the mat and my perspective at gaining skill in anything.

Moves I  considered myself “not good” at became part of me, and I started using them a lot more. I realized it wasn’t a question of “being good” at something, but just putting the work in to bring a higher level of body-mind understanding.

It can’t just be theory, because you won’t ever touch it. Thats why you can have someone explain the technique to you in perfect detail, and you still “won’t get it”. At the same time, you can’t just show up and mindlessly do reps and expect to have real progress. I found focusing on the details, listening to my coach, tons of reps, and feeling what my partner was doing when I was on the receiving end of the move all elevated my ability.

In my case, I developed a decent X-choke from guard after drilling it for a month. Before drilling I considered my X choke weak, and that I just didn’t get it. The grips seemed too tough for me, it was hard for me to finish. After doing tons of repetitions and listening to details with real concentration, its become one of my go to moves. I think this is possible for nearly any move for nearly anyone.

Check out one of the drill classes at 10:30 AM, or really focus when its the technical side of class and get as many reps in during then, or the open mat after. Your game will elevate big time.