Learning from my videos: Often I am asked what is the best way to watch and learn from my instructional videos. Instructional videos have been around from the earliest days of the arrival of Jiu Jitsu in North America. They all followed a similar pattern. They were a collection of an outstanding athletes favorite moves, usually within a given general topic domain, say, guard passing. Despite being present for decades, they had only a sporadic effect on the development of most students – a kind of “flavor of the month” effect where a popular current move was offered in an introductory and rather random fashion and you tried to copy it as best you could. When I went to create instructional videos I wanted to completely split away from this traditional model and instead, capture what is doubtless one of the major themes of my teaching; that DEEP AND COMPLETE EXPLORATION OF A FEW TECHNIQUES WILL GARNER FAR GREATER RESULTS FOR A STUDENT THAN SHALLOW TINKERING WITH MANY RANDOM TECHNIQUES. I teach in terms of sub systems where A GIVEN TECHNIQUE IS EMBEDDED WITHIN A COMPLETE FRAMEWORK OF SUPPORTING SKILLS THAT MASSIVELY INCREASE THE CHANCE OF THAT TECHNIQUE BEING SUCCESSFULLY APPLIED AGAINST SKILLED RESISTANCE. As such, my videos were radically different from the norm. Instead of being a forty five minute sampling of moves they were up to ten hours of highly detailed analysis of every skill required to get a few winning moves to work against the best athletes in the world. The idea was to move away from sampling videos and offer genuine coaching videos that could have a real impact not only on your game, BUT EVEN HOW YOU THOUGHT THE GAME. Because the videos are so different in format and style – I recommend watching them differently. Watch them sections at a time. Only the most zealous students can watch for hours and stay focused. I generally recommend watching a section or two and trying to work those lessons into your next session on the mats. Use it as you would a series of private lessons that you can repeat at will over months and years to get to the level you want. Just as you never learn by reading a book, but only by RE-READING IT, so too with these videos.
