Interesting post.
BJJ works this way, not only on blue belt, it will alternate between progress and stabilisation, on progression time you feel like you can enter to Worlds and when you stabilise, you feel like you have loosing your Mojo...
This is why so much People leave the gym, because it's hard to stay motivated when you feel you didn't progress anymore but it's crucial to stay in the game and then you will progress again.
What's pretty cool with the blue belt time is that you learn new stuffs every day.

To further Professors point. Blue belt is the first time I believe you feel more weight, literally and figuratively.

You have teammates and higher belts gunning for you, and now not "going easy" on you. Worse, you are more heavy on yourself and uber critical. Ihad done martial arts for over 12 years before starting BJJ (doing it for 7 so far) and I was worse to myself then ANYONE else ever was.

The only thing I can suggest is to be easy on yourself, compare yourself to no one else but your reflection from yesterday, and enjoy learning at the buffet of jiu-jitsu.

I'd also suggest studying the same position / sequence / guard / system for at least a couple months before moving on. try shit that speaks to you. try shit that you think you'd hate / never use.

Also, forgive the feeling that you suck, because well, we all do. Higher belts just suck at a higher level ;)

Also, when you survive blue, purple belt is super fun. ;)

Good luck. Hopefully these ramblings made sense, guess I shouldn't have written this after watching the season finale of Picard (was very deep and moving this season) lol

One strategy that helps (at least subjectively) on plateaus:

Take a really narrow "project" that youre interested (!) in. A specific move or position to investigate, develop and build a small "game" around. Focus on that for specific time (no less than 3 weeks, no more than 3 months).

Luckily I have been a white belt for quite a long time, and therefore at some point after getting my blue I knew I wouldn't stop anymore. Having spent so much time and effort, I would have been just a waste of my life to throw that away. After it took my almost as much time from blue to purple. At some point i might be a brown belt.
Maybe it takes 2, maybe it takes 10 years. Doesn't matter to me.

What is your motivation to go to class? Why do you do BJJ?
Grinding thorugh the plateaus is tough, but since you know its going to come, you also know, you will get beyond. Still coming to class, working on your weaknesses, overcoming your anxieties is personal growth, that you rarely find somewhere else.

Just enjoy the moment, have fu., sweep that one purplebelt once that always crushes you, survive a round with a coach with less taps than before, get a nice transistion from triangle to omoplata, listen carefully to someone telling you "good job" or that you have improved.

The best thing you can do is have good communication with your instructor, they know your game and can help you through any dips in your journey. Communicate, communicate, communicate it the key.

I’m a big fan of this approach. Maybe not a plateau but after lockdown, I returned to training and was lagging in every aspect (cardio, technique, instinct) I decided to embrace holes in my game, research some approaches and concentrate on these. It made it possible to enjoy and l victories during rolls even as I’m getting tapped out.

Great advice.

Allow yourself to fail. Embrace the grind. Blue belt means that you know how to tap. You'll be tapping often as you try to get better at specific stuff. Tapping doesn't mean you failed. It means you didn't get injured and are able to try again.

And to quote Roger Gracie: "Just keep training."

I always make it a point to have 2 or 3 sessions a week where I'm doing something very hard or only doing something I'm objectively bad at and nothing else.

Additionally, I like to have an overarching aspect of my game I want to improve. I recently spent a ton of time working on Positional escapes. I still practice them, but my focus is shifting now to focus on my stand up game and improving my attacks from a few different positions.

I've been grinding for almost five years now and I've just accepted that BJJ is something I do without any real objective in mind. Sure, it will be nice to get my purple belt some day, but I get my enjoyment out of the sport in the rolling, so it really doesn't matter what belt I am because I roll with all belt levels at my gym. BJJ is a sport in which you hardly see any improvement from day to day or even month to month so it's better to just take it as a habit and ignore the plateaus because they really don't exist. You're still improving, but you're improving imperceptibly. Also, your volume may be too high. That's a lot of hours you're putting in which can lead to injury, or just emotional burn-out with the sport. Better to just be consistent with less gym time than go gang-busters and get an injury. This is a marathon.

Pick an elite competitor whose style you like... watch their matches/study their instructionals try to use their moves, etc. I really like watching Adam Wardzinski and gained a lot from watching his matches and taking elements from his approach.

@ Skyler Burns
I have never plateaued. I always feel like I am getting better. I compete a lot which helps. But I don't think that is why I don't plateau. Everytime I go into class I have a list of several different things I am working on from various positions. So no matter who and where the rounds end up going I have some things I am working on and improving. If I get something out of the daily techniques that's awesome but I am not relying on that for my daily agenda.

Also It is extremely important that you don't focus on "winning" the spars that often. Focus on working on things that are going to improve you A/B Games and help you connect the dots to those positions and submissions. You need to develope your own unique spider web where you have connection points and you can easily connect everything you enjoy to do together.

It doesn't matter how good you or your partners are when they are going 80 to 100%. Focus on how good your control, transitions and set ups are when your going between 30 to 70%. Working on being more efficient and having maximum control with less energy and effort regardless if your opponent is going as hard as possible is going to help you more in the long term. Even if you can destroy someone who is going harder than you by just going harder yourself try to prevent yourself from doing that. You have to allow yourself to be worse in order to get better.

I will also roll with every person different. I may work on takedowns against one person, guard another, lapel subs another, the back another, turtle another etc etc. Enter into your opponents strengths or take advantage of your opponents weaknesses as you see fit. Not every thing you want to work on is going to be the best thing to work on against each training partner.

Blue belt is a beginner belt. Even though I am still a blue belt I often times take it very easy on other blue belts and so do higher belts. And anyone over 45 regardless of belt I don't care if they are a black belt or white belt I don't ever go over 70% against them period unless they really are wanting that pace. Once you get your purple is when higher belts will really go at you for real. Blue they might sorta go at you a little bit but not really.

@ Benoit Zenthner
A lot of the times before people really develope a well rounded game at lower belts white/blue especially it ends up being like paper rock scissors. By brown belt the paper rock scissors sorta thing should be less of a thing. Certain styles just hard counter other styles when your a blue belt and only good at a couple things you may do really well against other people you counter and horrible against people who counter what your doing. Some academies are really good at certain things. You may visit a different academy and feel like your doing far better or worse.

@ John A. Byrne
Competing and sparring against Purple Belt's is way more fun. Blue belts often times have an idea of what they are working on but are still confused and obssessed with winning.

@ Brad Neumyer
Yea first figure out a strong neutral position. Which basically is whatever guard you prefer. Use this as a base that you can reset to from losing a strong position or work back into from bad positions. Figure out what are the pros and cons of each guard and why your using those guards. Eventually get to where you can easily transition between a couple guards. Being good at just 1 guard will only get you so far. You got to be able to use a few different guards for different reasons.

Understand things like 1/2 guard your mostly wanting your opponents body weight on top of you or getting underneath them. Closed guard your removing space. Open guard you can use distance to your advantage and is all about timing. Different body types will be able to take advantage of different guards for different reasons. Really work on having guards you can use for different scenarios. Understand why your choosing which guard your choosing. Sounds simple but it's important to understand why your doing something and not just do things because that's what everyone else is doing.