How to get a blue belt in BJJ in 6 months

Can you get a blue belt in BJJ within 6 months? (without prior grappling experience)

Yes, of course you can get a blue belt in 6 months.

Let me explain what I mean…

The only reason most people take 2 years or longer to get their blue belt is because they train in a bad way.

How most people train is: they train at a gym where every class you do a warmup, then 2 or 3 techniques, and then free sparring.

The problems with this training method are:

  1. You don’t remember the techniques you learn
  2. You focus on the wrong things
  3. You don’t get specific feedback on your progress

If you want to get your blue belt super quickly you have to train smarter than this.

How?

By focussing on quality.

Always remember that how fast you improve in BJJ is determined by two factors:

Progress = quality of training * quantity of training

And in my opinion quality is more important than quantity.

Why?

Because it’s hard to drastically increase your quantity of training.

Maybe you can come to an extra class per week. Maybe even 2.

But you can’t easily train 10 times as much. Unless you’re some kind of professional super human without a life.

But you can easily make the quality of your training 10 times better.

How?

Let’s do a thought experiment.

What if you got a black belt coach to watch all your rolls and explain what you had to do in every position the whole time.

AND what if the black belt analyzed your rolls and gave you a report with your most common mistakes and how you could improve them?

Do you think that you would get better 10x faster than you do now?

I think you would.

So the question becomes:

Can you convince a black belt to coach you during all your rolls, analyze your mistakes and help you improve?

Yes, you can.

Let me tell you how.

I connected with Steve Kwan, a great black belt form Canada and the guy behind the platform called BJJ Mental Models.

That platform has many useful resources for fast improvement in BJJ, but my favorite is the free unlimited sparring analysis feature.

How it works is that you send a video of you rolling (in training or competition) and Steve will analyze your game.

Steve will:

  • talk during your roll
  • pause the video
  • draw errors on the screen

to clearly show you what’s happening and what you can improve.

You can watch an example down the page of a video analysis he made for me.

But first I want to explain how you too can access this platform and the unlimited free sparring analysis feature.

It’s very simple: all you have to do is sign up for BJJ Mental Models Premium.

To sign up you need to click the button that says ‘sign up for BJJ Mental Models Premium’, which takes you to Steve’s website. There you should click on the button that says ‘Get Access Now’, and this automatically qualifies you for the 7 day free trial.

(Oh and one thing I forgot to mention is that it’s actually FREE for the first 7 days.)

This is the best resource for improving fast in BJJ

Like I said, the best way to get better at BJJ faster is to convince a black belt to coach you, analyze your rolls and give you specific feedback on what to train.

And as I explained, the easiest way to do that is to sign up for Steve’s free service on BJJ Mental Models with the link above.

But now I want to show you exactly how his service works.

I uploaded a video of a sparring analysis Steve did for me below.

In this video you can see just how good Steve is at identifying and fixing your biggest mistakes.

(It’s kind of embarassing, because it took Steve less than 5 minutes to point to a big mistake that I make the whole time and that causes most of my other problems in BJJ…)

So here’s the analysis video, I’m the guy in the purple gi, the guy you hear talking is Steve Kwan.

Steve analyzes my sparring and identifies my most common mistake

To summarize the video, Steve had many great pointers, and he identified my biggest mistake that I keep making over and over again:

My biggest mistake was that I was standing way too straight.

Standing so straight puts 0 pressure on my opponent and opens me up to many attacks from my opponent.

So Steve adviced me to stand in a more crouched position.

I applied this in my next training and I could immediately tell the difference.

That 1 tip completely changed my game for the better.

My opponents are under way more pressure, they can’t easily move their legs, I’m not off balance the whole time.

This tip actually solves multiple problems that I had all at once:

  • I get swept very often
  • Guard players can easily get their legs back after I pass them
  • I always lose the scramble after a position change (for example after I open the closed guard)

I think that’s the power of video analysis.

Steve didn’t just teach me 1 extra technique – with his analysis he was able to make me more effective in all positions at once.

Do you also want Steve Kwan to analyze your sparring videos?

Sign up for his platform BJJ Mental Models Premium and you can send in unlimited videos for analysis (but only 1 at a time).

Learn more about the platform by clicking the button, or keep reading to learn what Steve told me next about fast progress in BJJ.

Focus on this to progress much faster in BJJ

This is related to Steve’s philosophy for fast improvement in BJJ:

If you want to learn BJJ fast, focus less on techniques and more on concepts

Concepts are things like:

  • Me crouching more instead of standing straight.
  • Keeping your elbows close to you instead of reaching too much.
  • Changing angles instead of attacking in straight lines.

Concepts fix many problems in many different positions, whereas techniques are much more specific to 1 certain situation.

BJJ teachers usually focus too much on single techniques, instead of on concepts.

But Steve brought together a bunch of teachers on his platform that put concepts first, such as:

  • Pritt Mihkelson who focuses on the principles of proper defensive positions
  • Jon Thomas who breaks down the concepts behind not getting your guard passed
  • Andrew Wiltse on which training habits actually lead to fast improvement in BJJ

And many others too.

What they all have in common is that they teach you concepts that work throughout jiu jitsu.

By the way, another huge advantage of concepts over techniques is that concepts are much easier to remember than techniques, because they’re true everywhere. So instead of having to remember a specific technique for each different situations, you can apply the same concept everywhere.

Steve brought together these teachers to make courses on his platform BJJ Mental Models.

Why this platform is better than all other bjj courses

And what’s so cool and different about this platform is that you can ask questions to the instructors.

How valuable is that?

I think it’s incredibly valuable, because you learn much quicker and deeper if you can ask questions to the instructor.

For example, when I followed Priit Nikhelson’s course about a new way to defend in BJJ (which introduces a lot of new concepts that seim weird at first) I had to ask Priit many questions.

Priit is actually very active online so I was able to have a 45 minute conversation with him through the platform, which was amazing.

He clarified a lot about his approach to defense, and shared many videos with me in which MMA fighters apply his concepts in the UFC.

So that was super cool and helpful actually.

And as I said earlier, you can join this platform too and you’ll get access to:

  • Unlimited (free) sparring analysis by black belt coaches
  • Dozens of courses that put concepts before single techniques
  • A direct line of communication to the course instructors, all high level, world famous black belts

And you can even try the platform out for FREE.

If you click the linkt below, you go directly to a page where you can sign up for a 7 day free trial.

Sign up for the 7 day free trial

During these 7 days you have full access to the platform, including all the courses, communicating with all the teachers, and free unlimited sparring analysis.

My special offer to you

For those of you that read the whole article I have a special offer.

On top the 7 day free trial that I told you about, you can also get 50% discount on your first 3 months if you use the code ‘MAX’ (that’s my name) when you sign up.

(Steve gave me that code because he’s a good lad.)

So if you use my code you get your first 7 days for free, and the 3 months after that for only $10 per month.

That’s what you get for sticking with me through this entire article 😉

So go ahead and sign up for the free trial! You won’t regret it, and I’m confident you’ll love the platform.

I’m on there too, so I hope to talk to you there!

Oss!

Max

Claim your 7 day Free Trial

Instantly get access to:

  • Unlimited (free) sparring analysis by black belt coaches
  • Dozens of courses that put concepts before single techniques
  • A direct line of communication to the course instructors, all high level, world famous black belts

And use code ‘MAX‘ (my name) to get an extra 50% discount on your first 3 months.

50% off Craig Jones, John Danaher and many other instructors!