we are looking for a structured way to do 'competition training' after practice since we don't have a competition team. Thoughts, all feedback is welcomed!

Without knowing how your regular classes are run, it would be tough to give you any personalized advice on how to structure your comp training. However, I can tell you what we do, as we do have structured, dedicated competition classes: While the structure can sometimes vary, the classes (Monday - nogi, Tuesday - gi) generally follow the same format, especially if we're preparing for comps in the 'standard' rule set, or a variation thereof. It's an hour class, broken into 3, 20min sessions: 1) 'first point' - following a 'king of the mat' / 'winner stays in' style of sparring, we start from the feet and go until the first point is scored. This is important, because if you examine the data from ibjjf world competitions over the years, you're statistically much more likely to win your match if you're able to score first. 2) positional/situational sparring: this depends a good deal on what we need to work on. Do we suck at half guard? Then it's pass-sweep-submit sparring. Do we need to work on getting out of submissions? Then we'll start our rounds in a bad spot. This portion varies the most out of the 3, btw. Sometimes I'll even show some technique during this portion. 3) sparring rounds, generally starting from the feet, and generally conducted in the match time we're expecting for the next upcoming tournament. For example, if the majority of my students are competing in the blue belt division in an ibjjf competition, er, excuse me, 'championship', then it's probably gonna be 6 minute rounds. Anyway, I hope this helps, and I'd be happy to explain this approach in more detail, since I kind of nerd out on lesson planning and curriculum design and all that.

This is a great start, we both have two completely different games. He is an ex-wrestler and my game is heavy on reversals and counterattacks. I think this will serve us well and it's fun. I'm sure we will get more buy-in once people see it being organized and consistent. Thank you so much for your knowledge, we will be in touch along the way!

First, and most importantly, train for your rules set. Having a favorite move is useless if it doesn't help you win. A good example is reversals from side control. They are great, but in the IBJJF rules set, you don't score any points with this, so it's probably better not to rely on that move. Secondly, study your rolls/competitions. Just rolling more isn't going to solve all your problems. If, for example, someone is constantly scoring Takedowns on you and winning by stalling after the first score, this happened to me, then you should prioritize takedown defense over passing. Thirdy, try to train with people close to your weight class. If you're competing in the 76kg division, only training with the +110kg guy isn't the best use of your time. Heavyweights move different. They might be super technical, but it won't be the game you're going to need to face.