How much should I practice to get where I want to get in Jiu-Jitsu? It’s a question that any of us who go from checking out a BJJ class to fully embracing the study, should consider. Once the bug has hit us, and we find ourselves mentally committing to the art, muttering “Oss!” to strangers, and—sometimes to our own dismay—holding up the Shaka in photo after photo; we will probably develop some BJJ focused goals. These goals may be strictly health or fitness related, or may be primarily knowledge based. Most want to test ourselves at different sparring levels, while some will take that further into different levels of competition. Maybe we have the ultimate goal deep in our heart to make this a lifelong climb peaking somewhere high up in the never-ending levels of mastery. Our personal goals will vary between the reasonable and the lofty, somewhere in-between, or maybe some strategic mix of all; however, these are goals that (to be met) will require consistent, deliberate, physically demanding practice from us. Add to the puzzle our commitments to our jobs, careers, families, friends, and communities and it becomes apparent that some planning should be done. After all, one of the golden tenants of goal setting states: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”
This quote is typically attributed to Benjamin Franklin, sometimes to Winston Churchill, but in the spirit of community, I will credit Professor Cobrinha and refer you his page for additional tips on BJJ goal setting
Setting Goals is different than Hitting Goals
We’ve covered some thoughts on goal setting before: this article is about the tactical angle of planning the steps to hit those goals, or at least give you a fighting chance. One thing is clear – it will take committed, regular time on the mats. How much time? That is the real question. It actually leads to a series of questions about the amount of time we have available, the amount of time we are willing to make available, our current physical capabilities and limitations, and of course, what our specific goals are. Knowing that our goals may evolve throughout our studies, it is also worth considering what goals (especially the lofty ones) you may consider in the future – even if they seem a far cry from realistic today. Expertise in a cognitively demanding skill set takes an especially considerable amount of practice time, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu certainly fits the mold. How you set your schedule today, or more importantly over the next few years, can have a tremendous effect on where you can expect to be later in your journey.
Somewhere between 20 and 10,000
With a thank you in large part to author and journalist, Malcom Gladwell, and his best-selling book Outliers: The Story of Success, many of us have heard of the 10,000 hour rule. The rule, brought to light in Gladwell’s book, actually comes from a study credited to Dr. K Anders Ericsson and published in a 2007 Harvard Business Review. Ever since, there has been considerable back and forth about the validity of the rule. I first read Outliers in 2008 and have casually followed this debate ever since. It seems that the majority of attacks on both the book and on the study itself fall into two categories: a misinterpretation of Mr. Gladwell’s statements in his book, or a comparison to a study of notably different variables or subjects. For me, enough evidence exists to lend credence to the rule, but that doesn’t mean that 10,000 hours of practice is what everyone needs. It’s just a fair high-level benchmark in my mind.
What the rule states is that in order for someone to attain a level of expertise in a cognitively demanding skill set, the average amount of deliberate practice time required is around 10,000 hours.
The building blocks of deliberate practice from the source!
Misinterpretations run from the ridiculous (it takes 10,000 hours of practice to learn a skill – we’ve all learned skills quicker than that), to the understandable (to be really good at something takes 10,000 hours of practice – we are talking well beyond “really good”), to the logically invalid (anyone can become an expert at any skill by putting in 10,000 hours of practice – there are other factors involved, many of them subjective). Follow up studies that seemed to conflict with Ericsson’s study, were often an apples to oranges comparison when you dig into them. Some utilized subjects that would be considered good to even great at a skill set, but not the expert level of the original study, and certainly not the extreme outlier level of expertise that Mr. Gladwell investigated. Others looked at beginners and average performers. Perhaps the best known and laid out “rebuking” was David Epstein’s The Sports Gene, but along with studying subjects that were not all verifiably experts, there were also skills looked at that did not fit the cognitive criteria of the original study. In the end, Mr. Gladwell and Mr. Epstein (after some published rebuttals) agreed that both of their books had validity and that discussing the differences in subjects and skill sets was an equally fascinating continuation to the story.
Other people, especially in the business world where Outliers had been a huge hit, became interested in the subjects and variables not discussed in the book: the average person becoming an expert, learning a skill as opposed to mastering it, simply being reasonably proficient in a skill. This led to the 20 hour rule. This rule states that 20 hours of devoted, structured, deliberate practice allows you enough practice (when done right) to be reasonably proficient at a skill. I liken this to simply not being a newbie. If you devoted 20 hours of solid structured practice into BJJ, it would likely be clear that it wasn’t your first time on the mat. However, I think most BJJ students would consider ourselves far less than reasonably proficient after just 20 hours. I also think that those 20 hours would be completed in the “checking it out” stage, and if we are structuring a practice schedule for multiple months to multiple years, we are beyond that.
Nonetheless, we have a spectrum. Our goals will require somewhere between 20 and 10,000 hours of practice to build the foundation required in the hopes of reaching them. Hours alone are not adequate. Both Mr. Gladwell and Dr. Ericsson agree that there are other factors involved in becoming an expert of notable level. You must have passion, interest, capacity, drive, opportunity, luck, support, etc.; yet, in every instance they studied (with insignificant to very little exception), also required was a set of circumstances that enabled the practitioner to rack up 10,000 hours of practice. In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell is looking at the pinnacle of expertise – Bill Gates, The Beatles, elite Canadian hockey players. A BJJ focused chapter would look something like a historical study of Sam Sheridan’s chapter on Marcelo Garcia in The Fighter’s Mind. As a matter of fact, as we break down what 10,000 hours means, it is clear that Marcelo has probably at least doubled 10,000 hours of practice: he has been competing and teaching at a world class black belt level for over a decade already.
Breaking it Down
The “fast track” to 10,000 hours of practice breaks down to 20 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for 10 years. That was what most of the experts studied were able to average (typically beginning in youth). In our world, that is 5 days a week spending no less than 4 devoted hours on the mat, for the next 10 years. If you are lucky enough to invest that amount of time into BJJ, then you have a chance to build the required foundation in one decade. Anything else suggests (if expertise is your goal) you will have to plan on more than a decade of serious training. For most of us, where BJJ is a side hobby to our everyday lives, putting in 10 hours of mat time per week is still fairly aggressive (but doable) – and at this rate it will take 20 years!
This is not meant to discourage anyone. Not everyone has that goal of high-level expertise. For your specific goals, 5000 hours of mat time may be more than sufficient. That is still a decade of 10 hour weeks and you will be quite a solid player at that point. However, while setting your goals you also need to consider the evolution of your goals. For example, you are past the introduction to BJJ, and starting to get serious, perhaps you have ramped up from 2 classes a week (1 and ½ hour per class) to longer sessions or more days totaling 8 hours per week. For the moment, that is all that your schedule and body (until it is stronger) can handle. After your first year putting in 3 hours per week, you ramp the schedule up for the next two years intent on getting to a blue belt level. You remain focused and after 3 years of 50 weeks of consistent training, you have accumulated 950 hours. At that pace, you still have 23 years to go. Following that 3rd year of more intense study, your level of fitness has raised, maybe some of your other obligations have waned in importance, and your schedule has become more laser focused to family, career, BJJ. Other goals such as competition or instructing beginners may have forced you to become more deeply invested in your gym time. For the next 3 years, you hit it hard, averaging 5-6 days a week with 2-3 hours per session and are averaging 12 hours on the mats, week in and week out. Now, 6 years into your studies, you have accumulated 2750 deliberate practice hours, and are likely a high-level blue belt or on your way into early purple belt rankings. If BJJ has become a way of life and that schedule remains active, you will reach 10,000 hours a little after 12 years from then (18 years into your BJJ journey). While that is daunting, it is toward a very lofty goal, and depending on age and condition, certainly attainable. Even falling slightly short will create a very high level of knowledge and skill.
However, if you make that same decision after spending the first 6 years at the more casual pace that you began at, you will have not yet cracked 1000 practice hours, and moving up to that same first tier (more than double where you are at) of 8 hours per week, puts you at nearly 23 years of your new schedule, for a total of almost 30 years into your BJJ journey. Again depending on age and condition, that extra 12 years may make a goal of 10,000 practice hours unreachable. There is no time like the present. Studies of expertise seem to truly put that in perspective. Now whether your goal is to ever attain that level of intense foundation or not, at least you can make some decisions about what your next few years will set up for the future.
Image credit: http://marcelogarciajj.com/mga/pages/marcelo-garcia/
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