The Drilling List

The Drilling List

The best way to improve at jiu-jitsu is this: just come to class and practice the move the instructor shows. It really is that simple. At white and blue belt especially, showing up to training and putting in the drill time will get you where you need to be. As you advance in jiu-jitsu, setting aside time outside of class for drilling becomes a solid strategy for improving — one that becomes more and more important over time. These days, I’m teaching a lot. As an instructor, my first responsibility is always going to be making sure the students are Read more »

Solo Drills for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Solo Drills for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Drilling — practicing movements over and over so your body learns how to perform them instinctively — is one of the most important things you can do to improve at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I’m a huge believer in maximizing my time, which means if I don’t have a training partner, I’m still going to try to use time to improve. That means solo drills!

Five years ago, I did a post about my favorite solo drills for BJJ. Since then, I’ve learned some new drills and some of the embedded videos have died, so here’s an updated post. Many of these you’ll know, perhaps from warmups at your gym. There might be new material, though, to try out when you have time and space but no one to grapple with. Also check out my how to drill post (mostly for partner drills) for some more details on the method.

Here are 10 or so great solo drills for BJJ that you can do in your free time. If you train at Bellingham BJJ, you may recognize a lot of these as warm-up drills. Many of these fall under the “you can’t do this too much” category. Read more about Solo Drills for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu