7 Things to do to Gain Your Blue Belt! (Checklist)

Your Checklist to gain your Brazilia Jiu Jitsu Blue Belt:

1. Learn a Take Down!!  - doesnt matter which one it is. Just try to learn one that you feel most comfortable with and just go for it!

2. Learn One Pass - ideally you should have several types of guard passes that you can chain together to develop a complete passing game but at the white belt level, after a few months of learning and drilling the different passes, choose one and be relentless about going for it. 

3. Learn a Sweep - as a brazilian jiu jitsu player you need to be able to work off your back. I would learn and try to drill several sweeps from the closed guard, half guard and any other guard you feel comfortable but at the end of the day you need a GO-TO move. My preference would be the butterfly guard sweep or the classical half guard underhook sweep. 

4. Submission - try learning one basic submission to attack. I recommend either the arm bar or the triangle. Both are available from top and bottom. Both take years to really master but you can use these basic attacks at any level. 

5. Go to a Seminar - you want to get your belt but you really have not seen any BJJ until you have gone to a seminar, preferably with one of the top instructors or competitors. You will find seminars everywhere on the internet. Pick one and try it out. It would give you a second perspective and its a lot of fun if you go with your team for a few hours to learn something different. 

I strongly recommend seminar of more classical jiu jitsu guys especially and white and blue belt levels. 

6. Private Lesson - an excellent way to make progress is to take private lessons. At the end of the day it is for you to actually make notes and ask the questions. if you ask the good questions, you will get the information from your instructor that you need to make progress. Take a private lesson every month or two and you will be a much better brazilian jiu jitsu player. 

7. Compete! So you want your next belt huh? well you need to deserve it! you may have been training for a year or two but only in competition can you really find out where you are on the food chain. Compete as much as you can at white belt, gain confidence and it will be a matter of time before your instructor just hands to you that long awaited blue belt

I would say that typically it should take at least 2 years to gain a blue belt training at least 3-4 times per week (consistently) but the reality is that if you actually want to get good at this sport you need to train as much as you can. 

Khabib Nurmagomedov's BJJ Game

The upcoming UFC 223 main event looks is due to feature Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Tony Ferguson on April 7 2018. These two guys have proven themselves to have the incredible ability to get the W with Khabib proving especially dominant in the last few fights.

While Khabib's takedowns have been spectaculor I think there is an overlooked fact that we actually have not seen him grapple on the ground against top brazilian jiu jitsu black belts and while Ferguson is not a specialist, I think it will be interesting to see how he is able to control Tony on the ground.

What we have seen little of is actaul pure grappling from Khabib and looking back to Fedor's days, it has been especially worrying when Sambo fighters have claimed that Sambo and wrestling was sufficient in terms of ground game for MMA. I would argue there are nuances to the ground game that arent covered. For example you are definitely not going to see a great passing game from a pure sambo player and on the bottom, sambo fighters have very basic guard retention skills.

If we look back to Fedor's days he had great trouble with Ricardo Arona in Rings and then when Bigfoot started passing he showed very little in terms of both guard skills. He had this great arm bar but when tough BJJ guys reversed the position and got on top he had very basic defenses.

In Khabib's case I think his top game is very strong and it would be difficult to easily sweep him but I would argue that all three of Khabib's last opponents were mainly strikers and I think he should watch out with Tony even if he gets his favoured half guard position.

From what i've seen Khabib's passing game is based on setting up passes with strikes but in some of the grappling videos in Naga floating around on the internet it really looks like he did struggle to pass the guard in a pure grappling environment. It could be that he does not need this skill as he is not really looking for submissions but I would be curious to see from the ground game stand point he is able to actually improve position on the ground.

In Russia & Dagestan BJJ and Grappling is still in its early days as far as I understand and although there are some good submission grapplers around, I would be curious to see what is the ground game level in some of these places where Khabib trains at back home. 

BJJ All Roundness

I think one aspect of BJJ that is not talked about enough is regarding building up an all-round game.

Classical BJJ has been oriented at judo take downs, passing the guard => mount => taking the back

Today one should consider two additional aspects:

1. Leg lock game = still very neglected aspect that due to the IBJJF rules is almost a part of a different sport these days. (IBJJF does not allow heel hooks)

2. Wrestling game = as great as Judo is, i think anyone will agree that some of the throws expose too much and leg focused takedowns are not allowed based on the latest iteration of judo rules

Both are better trained in no-gi/grappling in my opinion but its great to mix it in the gi as well.

I think wrestling & judo are an important aspect given that many schools have little or no takedown training. Im a brown belt at the moment and as I progress, more and more I feel the need to tighten up my takedown game because it would be a shame to start training takedowns when you reach black belt level as it feels like being a black belt with white belt takedowns is just embarassing.

For street self defense the takedown game is critical. The reality is you dont want to be on the bottom in a real fight no matter how good you are on the ground. You never know what situation you will be in and it just makes sense that if you can take the guy down and start from the top position, you can not only win but also stay safe. afterall the guy could be much stronger than you