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Improve Muscle Memory with a Solo Daily Drill Routine – Gracie Jiu-Jitsu

A big part of Jiu-Jitsu is muscle memory.  If you play basketball you shoot hoops over and over to improve your shot.  Its no different with Jiu-Jitsu.  It is just a little harder given you don’t always have a partner.  So what can you do to improve muscle memory?  Most of the books in, My Bookshelf, have drills in them.  You can find drill routines on YouTube.com. 

Here are some I like on YouTube:

When it comes down to it you need a routine tailored for your own needs that you can do anytime. 

Here is a example:

  1. Basic Warm up.
  2. Basic Survival Techniques from Jiu-Jitsu University
    1. Solo Side Control Guard Recovery Drill x 20
    2. Solo Mount Survival Drill x 20
    3. Solo Mount Elbow Escape Drill x 20
    4. Solo Knee-On-Belly Prevention Drill x 20
    5. . . .
  3. Escapes
    1. …
  4. Submissions
    1. …

You get the idea?  I love Saulo Ribeiro’s book, Jiu-Jitsu University.  It has some really good solo drills.  I would recommend you get it and see what I mean.

Start to build your drill routine by identifying where you want to improve.  I personally know I want to be strongest in my survival and escapes.  After that comes sweeps and submissions.

Some considerations you might want to take into account as you build varied drill routines.

  1. How much space to I have to work with?
  2. How long can I take on a routine?
  3. How often should I do my drills?
  4. How will I know I am progressing and need to change my drills?
  5. Are my drills effective or am I just making a fool of myself?

These are the questions I am asking myself as I build my drills.  I have already begun to notice changes in my game.  The techniques I’ve been drilling at are becoming automatic.  I do them without thought.  This has forced my opponents to change tactics and now I have a whole new set of techniques I need to better understand so that I can survive or escape.  This means I need to create new drill centered around them or include the techniques I need to improve on in my present routine.

Please share with me your drills that have helped you improve your Jiu-Jitsu.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Improve Muscle Memory with a Solo Daily Drill Routine – Gracie Jiu-Jitsu”

  1. [...] a morning and evening drill routine with the Submission Master.  I used my post entitled Improving Muscle Memory with a Solo Daily Drill routine to help me outline what I want to do and accomplish.  For starters it has already improved my [...]

  2. [...] swing of things.  I’ve started jump roping again.  I’m going back to my daily drill routine.  I’m feeling rested or healed up (they are one and the same to me).  I missed out [...]

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