This is fun. I think about this a lot. The most important ones for me would be:

1. You learn good habits from fighting lighter most of the time and hard some of the time

2. By extension: dont only fight guys that smash you. It doesnt mean worse guys can’t get you, it probably means you lose confidence and learn (again) bad habits.

3. I’d tell myself to play FYJJ a lot and play this flow roll game where every move you make you try to isolate a limb no matter what. Getting a lay of the land as a starting practitioner is so much more important than learning techniques.

4. Never let anyone control your head and shoulders, whether it be directly or indirectly.

5. If you find yourself using a lot of strength likely there is a better angle for you. Find it!

Edit:
6. You only learn from tapping if you actively try to identify your mistake and fix it next time around.

The only thing hold you back is the expectations you think other people have of you. This creates a fear of failure and the fear is what prevents you attempting new things.

Instead of learning a million techniques, pick one and get good at it.

My advice to white belt

- Survive
- Survive
- Thrive
- Enjoy the journey

My advice to myself

- accept the suck
- fundamentals first
- knowledge over medals
- don’t get discouraged
- have fun!

I wouldn’t work any submissions for the first year at least. I would work solely on posture, balance, guard retention and pinning.

Sack all the Hail Mary stuff off.

- Drill baby, Drill.
- You were a wrestler, now you’re a BJJ player. Get comfortable on your back.
- You’ll love the Gi, especially as you get older.
- This is your journey, no one else’s. Don’t compare yourself to anyone but who you were yesterday.

1. Don’t be afraid of those blue belts, instead be brave and ask to train with them.
2. Maybe don’t train with the person that has one more day experience than you.
3. It’s ok that you don’t get it or remember it the first time.
4. Be patient. This ride is going to last a lifetime.

Advice to my white belt self:
You’re not stupid if the way a coach/upper belt explains a concept doesn’t make sense to you. Ask for clarification.
Be patient.
Accept the fact that men are really smelly. 😂

That goes for life. If you didnt understand it, it wasn't explained well enough.

The way I see it. If it is possible to explain Special Relativity in a way that makes sense, how hard can anything else be 🤣

Yes! Big life changer for me. Took that off the mats and it rippled out into other mentalities I needed to change as well.

I'm still a white belt, almost 2 years in at this point. I've been listening to a lot of bjj podcasts recently. I unfortunately cant remember 100% who said this one but..
1. They were talking about drilling both sides, and if you only drill the one side it's not like your only learning 50% it's actually more like 30%. I've been pretty bad with favoring my strong side until I heard this and I've been focusing on doing both since. Partnering with a new guy recently that I've been trying to drill that concept into his head. He seems to be getting better a lot quicker from my experience with other new guys.
2. Another good podcast snippet was about how they did an experiment with dominant rats, they will let the lesser rats win every so often, otherwise the smaller rats wont playfight with them. They had removed the prefrontal cortex from these rats and they still would do this. Don't have less social awareness than a rat without a prefrontal cortex.🤣 make a purposeful mistake and let a new guy catch you (once you trust them) every so often, or at least give some advice as a color belt if someone is constantly making the same mistakes. This can help reasure them of future competency, which is the same idea.
3. Go listen to the bjj mental models uke's responsibilities podcast. Really this one should probably go to number one. If your a better training partner everyone gets better quicker.

I made this image/post exactly after having trained jiu-jitsu for 1 year.

I had a theory back then. And surprisingly as much as I got wrong in general about other things, I think I got this one mostly right.

I would just say the first 6 months you are learning a new language and just gathering information.

During that time you could try to just simply find a neutral position you like. Like a video game controller where you can go up, down, left, right...once your in this position you start having an idea of how to advance and then you have a fallback point if things go wrong. If you end up in a bad position you have a place to work towards that you feel comfortable in once you get to. This neutral position is your guard while on the ground and standing when you are not. So you need to figure out a guard you feel comfortable with be it Closed, Open, 1/2, butterfly etc.

Eventually you will want to start to connecting dots together somewhere and start to build your own spider web. Doesn't mean that you have to create your own A game or anything. But until you start connecting dots together you will be lost entirely. Don't think of building up your jiu-jitsu foundation as a house and that it has to be balanced and even at the start. It's always good to have balance...but balance is a long-term goal not a short term one. Even at black belt you will not be balanced, but you should be well rounded before then. We should always be working on things we are the worst at over time to be come more well rounded/balanced. This is something that takes time and is not possible to achieve as a white belt.

You also do not need to train both sides the same. Sure you can train armbars, triangles etc both sides but even those you will end up having a preference to one side. Same thing for being in dominant positions. Take side control. Instead of getting good at every technique on both sides it's way easier to just get really good on one side and then know how to transition if you end up on the other side back to the good side. You will still have different attacks from your weak side but you should not be spending the same amount of time on each side. Each hand has it's own brain like driving a car. You should not actually drive a car with two hands the majority of the time but just with one at a time. You can develop entirely different strategies and gameplans on each side. For example when I play guard with my right hand I am being athletic and mobile and aggressive. When I grab you with my left I am being more 10th planet and removing space sorta style. Entirely different game plans with different hands. Sorta got this idea when I was injured and instead of just working on getting the other side the same ole same ole was better to just develop an entirely different game. This way if one is not working you can easily switch to the other. Muscle memory is a weird thing. If you try to do the exact same thing on each side your brain won't like you. Figure out ways to do things slightly different on each side even if it's just a different set up or entry that will be enough for your brain not to get confused.

Don't try to win practice. You have to take two steps forward and one step back to get better. Every time you feel like you got decent at something start to work on something new which is you taking a step backwards and you will feel like you getting worse but after you have gotten better at what your working on you will have taken two more steps forward and gotten better. Even in tournaments I do this where I will work on new stuff and it makes you feel worse but once you fix the mistakes and figure out ways to add new stuff all of sudden your now better than before and you can connect more dots togethers to that spider web. If you want to add more dots allow yourself to work on what your training partners are best at as well. If your partner has a good closed guard then maybe go into their open guard and work on them not pulling you into closed guard and then getting out once they pull you into it. If they are good at sweeps try to see how long you can go without getting swept and so on.

The only thing that is dangerous is not knowing when you are in danger. Learn and understand when you are in danger and don't take unnecessary damage from someone twisting your neck/knees/shoulders etc and you will avoid most injuries.

Don't do MMA/NHB. You aren't ready and your brain will never recover.

Compete more/appreciate where I'm at. I started grappling in my mid 30s, the pools can be skimpy at times at masters. As you progress and get older they seem to only get thinner and you end up in situations like this