Know where you are now and where you want to be in the future: Most of my time coaching is spent upon technical guidance and development. In truth however, one of the most important roles any coach can play is that of ASSESSING WHERE A students CURRENT SKILL LEVEL IS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE ADDED. This is why I always try to monitor my students training and chat with them afterwards about what is good about their work and what needs to be improved. It's tempting to just come in and roll around and play with your favorite moves – there is nothing wrong with that and you can make decent progress in this way and have a lot of fun. However, if you have higher aspirations you will definitely need to go beyond this. There must be a constant sense of PROGRESSION. You will need a sense of your current level and where you wish to be within a given time frame. If you don't have that constant set of eyes on you – THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO OBSERVE YOURSELF AND DO YOUR BEST TO MAKE SELF ASSESSMENTS. Whatever errors you may make will not harm your progress nearly as much as making no assessments and merely drifting from one workout to the next with a “let's see what happens” approach. Interestingly, I am the eyes that monitor my students, but there are no eyes that monitor me – so all my career I have had to use self assessments to gauge my own progress as a teacher and coach. You can do it too. Fortunately the very nature of Jiu Jitsu makes it relatively easy – every time we spar we get direct feedback as to our skill level and we can see very clearly both in ourselves and others which moves work well and hence what we might want to add to our arsenal in the future. So make sure there are some eyes on you – whether your coaches or your own – so that your workouts BUILD YOU UP OVER TIME rather than degenerate into repeating the same moves and tactics from one day to the next.
