When you first start out in BJJ it’s only natural to want to try everything new in an attempt to short circuit the system and progress as fast as possible. You will see it a lot. The new guys who always are trying something new and fancy every other week, immediately throwing away that technique when they find something fancier and newer online. These kind of practitioners do not make it very far because in the very beginning they had no solid foundation to come back on.

The basics are extremely important. When I mean basics I mean like hip escaping, how to maintain side control, how to maintain mount e.t.c. The really basic core fundamentals that should form the foundation of your game later on and the very thing you should rely on when all else fails. Without understanding of the basics, it will be very difficult for you to understand the concept of more advanced techniques and also when to employ these techniques.

Many people try to “force” cool looking moves without really understanding when to use it because they never understood the concept of why that move was invented in the first place. As cliché as it is but truly you must learn to crawl before you can walk.

The way to really solidify your basics is to drill and drill and drill and drill. No matter how mundane the task you need to drill until it becomes engraved into your cerebrum. The actions become as easy as breathing, your body will automatically do what it needs to do to maintain all the basics leaving some space in your mind to strategize because everything is so called automated already.

Some people would say that the basics do not work at a higher level but it’s untrue. Look at Marcello Garcia he perfected the guillotine, a very basic move, to a point where he can land it almost anywhere. How do you think he got there? By practising the guillotine for thousands of hours. The thing is he can finish it in any position and not in fancy positions but really basic ones like half guard, mount and open guard.

Drill your fundamentals, your basics. Drill until it becomes as automatic as your heart beat, until your limbs just seem to react to the situation without you having to think about it. I can assure you your learning process of the more ‘advanced’ stuff will become a lot more streamlined and easier.