In January of this year, our Youth Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competition team began ramping up their training in preparation for their next tournament. We set our sights on NAGA Atlanta on April 29, 2017.

The team was now 19 members strong but all of the kids would either be competing for the first or second time. Thinking back to our last tournament in October however, I sat down to lay out the curriculum for the next few months by trying to do more of the things that led to success at the last tournament, and fix some of the errors our kids were making the most.

It's an interesting process because there are thousands of techniques and variations they will learn in the coming years. I have to boil these thousands down to the most essential techniques to learn in the limited amount of training sessions between January and April.

So with this limited amount of time and practice, one of our themes at competition practice has been "Maximize your repetitions." The kids must have heard me say this 100 times over the last few months.

You only have a limited amount of time on the mat to practice the techniques being taught to you. Each repetition needs to be maximized, and I believe most of the time they aren't.

What does it mean to maximize a repetition?

It means to learn the most you possibly can from each repetition.

Here are five tips to maximize every repetition on the mat:

1. Fully Engage Your Mind

Fully engage your mind to the smallest of details of the technique and analyzing them. We often just go through the steps without any thought as to why we are doing them, or what makes them work.

2. Learn Both Sides of the Fight

You can learn twice as fast if you also analyze what the person on the other end could do to stop this technique from happening. You can often learn to counter most techniques by just thinking about what makes the technique work.

Example: If you are learning a collar choke, and the first step is to open the collar with one hand and feed a deep collar grip to the other hand to keep the opponent close, then we could deduce that if we are the other guy we should immediately establish posture and prevent our opponents from getting deep collar grips. Understand?

You can do this with every technique and learn twice as fast. While most students are learning one side of the fight, you are learning both.

3. Practice Full Speed*

*Note: Full speed should be the fastest that you can do the technique smoothly without losing any of the details.

Try the technique at a faster pace to see what it will feel like when done in a live scenario. Often mistakes are disguised by speed (we'll talk about this more in another post), so be careful not to lose any of the details.

If you catch yourself leaving something out, figure out why, slow it down, and get that piece back in there. This will also help you realize which details are the most essential, and potentially find new details that make the technique work for you.

4. Don't Goof Off

Training is incredibly fun. Don't let yourself relax too much on the mat though and waste valuable practice time. It isn't good for you OR your partner.

5. Practice Kata & Randori at the Appropriate Times

In Japanese arts, training is divided into "Kata" and "Randori."

Kata is the technique practice. This is where you learn a technique and practice it in the air or on a partner. At this time, no resistance should be included. The partner should set the technique up perfectly for you, and you execute it as close to perfect as possible.

Randori is the live practice or sparring. This is where you and your training partner have different objectives, and you are no longer just allowing your partners to practice the techniques.

Both of these are vital to success but do not confuse or blend the two. During technique training, do not try to stop your partner from being able to do the technique, and don't ask your partner to give you resistance either. That also means that you should strive to keep the technique refinement out of the randori practice. Don't stop a sparring session to ask about a technique, or correct your partner's technique. This can be done later and is not very beneficial.

At both tournaments I have taken our kids to now, I have had referees, other coaches, and parents let me know how impressed they are with the PMA team. The kids act like total pros, and their technique is improving so quickly. I am unbelievably proud of them all and having more fun than I ever could have imagined coaching this team.

Check out a couple of matches from this past weekend's tournament:

Match #1 - Grady Fox

Grady was one of our most dominant competitors this weekend. You can always see the determination in his face, and he is focused from start to finish!

At eight years old and weighing in at a little over 40 pounds, he is usually fighting kids a little bigger than he is, and this match falls into that category. He went undefeated in his matches to win double gold in gi and no-gi!

Match #2 - Alex Torres

Two of our competitors, Alex Torres and Aiden Hemsley, did not have anyone in their division registered, so we chose to bump them up in skill level to the Intermediate division.

Alex's first match was a kid older than him with a couple of years of high school wrestling experience. The referee told me afterward that he thought Alex was going to get obliterated! Once the fight hit the mat, Alex's Jiu Jitsu took over, and he controlled the positions on his way to a 15-2 win. Alex went on to earn a silver medal in both gi and no-gi in the Intermediate division!

It’s hard to believe that I have been training for over ten years now! When I first started my martial arts journey, I was an awkward seventeen-year-old who thought Jiu Jitsu would be the perfect fit for someone like me - gangly and graceless and likely to trip on air. I figured if my training started on the ground, my lack of coordination and surplus of clumsiness wouldn’t be noticeable.

I was right and wrong. My lack of grace was, and is, very much noticeable, but despite this, Jiu Jitsu was perfect for me. And from it, my love for training expanded into other areas of martial arts.

Brittany sparring with her friend and training partner, Elizabeth, at 17 years old.

Now, with ten years of experience under my belt, I can say a lot has changed - both for me personally and for the dojo that I call my home.

Personally, I have grown faster, stronger, and healthier. I’ve received a wealth of information that has improved every aspect of my well-being, from my knowledge base and execution of techniques to mental strength and peace of mind.

I’ve also acquired a number of valuable friendships and acquaintances over the years. I’ve had the privilege of training with partners of every shape, size, age, gender, skill level, temperament, etc., and I deeply value the relationships that are built among training partners.

You have the ability to learn invaluable tips and tricks from them, and the honor of returning the favor with helpful skills of your own. Your training partner is there to help you, encourage you, and constantly challenge you. Training with others forces us to be vulnerable (it’s how we learn and grow as martial artists!), and because of this, there is a level of mutual trust and respect that is necessary for any training partnership to be healthy and beneficial.

Many things can get in the way of a healthy training relationship - ego, pride, and hygiene are a few that come to mind - but the way we talk to and about each other is paramount when building the rapport needed to maximize our mat time.

I can speak from my own experiences, both positive and negative. I have unfortunately put my foot in my mouth more times than I’d care to count, and I’ve also been on the receiving end of a few too many well-meaning “can you believe a girl did that?!” jokes. From these experiences, I’d like to share a few basic comments or quips that I’d love to see leave the mat.

1. Compliments are appreciated - patronizing is not.

Please don’t compliment your partner’s technique and then undermine it by telling them you were really/actually trying to escape or maintain the position.

While the sentiment can be appreciated, I know personally that I will always try my best in class and hope my partners will do the same. Please follow the instructor’s directions where intensity and resistance are concerned within a specific drill. If he or she tells you the goal is to maintain the mount, please give it your all and assume your partner expects that of you. While there may be some exceptions, you typically won’t need to tell them. The favor will be returned when you switch top and bottom.

2. Please do not comment about anyone’s fight/feistiness to them or anyone else.

I hate overhearing one training partner telling the other that they “have alot of fight” in them during a roll. It’s a pet peeve of mine that might come second only to hearing someone warn the class to “watch out - she’s/he’s a feisty one!”

Always assume that your partner’s skill has more to do with their focus, execution, and consistency in training than their feisty personality. Your partner might have successfully landed that sweep only after weeks or even months of practice and failed attempts. Don’t take away from their moment of success by belittling their hard work.

3. Let the instructor be the instructor.

I know it can be hard, and it almost always comes from the best of intentions, but try to avoid coaching or teaching your training partner - especially during sparring/rolling. When your working technique with someone, it’s natural to point out a tip you use to make something smoother or share something someone told you that helped you remember which side your blocks start on or which hand goes on top in a Palm Up - Palm Down choke, but don’t overdo it.

Don’t spend the majority of your practice time breaking the technique down for your partner, and try not to ruin their enjoyment by pointing out too many mistakes they’re making in the technique they just learned five minutes earlier.

Avoid slowing down the flow of a roll or the momentum of a sparring session by stopping to point out something to your partner. Instead, try to remember the details to discuss after the training session is done so you can both get the most out of your randori.

Something that goes hand in hand with this is focusing on your own training. Don’t play down your partner’s recent improvements by saying things like, “looks like someone’s been getting some extra training” or “you must have learned that in a private lesson.”

Instead of making excuses for why someone’s forms might be looking sharper or why someone is suddenly having success completing all of their arm bar attempts, try taking advantage of the training opportunities that are available to you. Try maximizing your repetitions in class as an alternative to worrying about how much mat time other people are receiving.

Let the instructor worry about teaching and keeping track of everyone’s material while you simply enjoy the class.

At the end of the day, no matter our respective motivations, we all just want to have the best training experience possible. In order to learn and improve, we have to help each other - as training partners, as peers, as human beings. Communication, among other things, can help build mutually beneficial and strong relationships with our training partners and even our instructors.

So let’s build each other up and encourage each other with our words as well as our actions!

Do you have any other comments or habits that you'd like your training partners to stop doing? Or maybe something you enjoy that you'd like to see more of? Leave me a comment below!

Maximize Your Repetitions - 5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Every Training Session