Knowing what to look for: Have you ever watched two high level grapplers battle with each other and tried to figure out exactly what each was trying to achieve as they grappled? This is quite possibly one of the most useful activities you can perform outside of your own physical training. This is a very pure form of training your mind in jiu jitsu. When you first begin, you will see only the broad outlines of what they are attempting. Soon however, you will start to see patterns of behavior that occur regularly in certain situations and what was once chaos starts to become a little more predictable – this is a good sign that you are getting better at seeing the second by second goals of each athlete and the physical means by which they are attempting to get to those goals. In time you will learn to see what most people do not – this is what you want. Once you recognize the patterns of behavior you can begin the see ahead of time what they will do as they enter into a scenario – at this stage you know what to look for and thus you will see it. When teaching, I try always to point out the placement and function of the body when performing certain moves – quite often students will come to me afterwards and say that they had always seen my students do this but either not really paid attention to it or not known it's purpose – my goal as a teacher is to get you to be able to see these things on your own – but this takes time and it's good to get a little help at the start. Remember that even a little time a day invested in watching great grapplers in action along with ACTIVE ATTENTION on your part will make you a better athlete in short time. Don't just WATCH the action – SEEK TO UNDERSTAND IT – with the goal of one day being able to PREDICT it. This is in my opinion the single best form of mental training for performance improvement you can partake in.
