In a world of many options, focus on the scenarios: When it comes to selecting techniques, Jiu jitsu offers far more choices than you can realistically master in a life time. Your task isn't to master them all but rather to select a few and spend your Jiu jitsu career mastering those. This begs the question – OK if I'm supposed to learn and master a smaller number of techniques and largely ignore the rest, which ones should I focus on? To a large degree this will be answered organically over time. Your body type and personality will tend to favor certain moves and create an aversion to others. Over time you will invest in those you favor and they will be the bedrock of your game. Your coach will influence your selection also. Every coach has their own philosophy of Jiu jitsu and tends to push that in their teaching and naturally the students tend to think and act upon similar lines to the doctrines they are exposed to daily. You can go beyond this however and start asking yourself what general scenarios always seem to emerge in a given skill area and which need to be covered. For example, in guard passing the basic choice is between standing and kneeling passes. Whichever passes you decide to incorporate into your game, make sure that they cover both standing and kneeling methods. Don't select only kneeling or only standing methods – you need to cover both scenarios. Go further, you need some passes that work through pressure/weight and some that work through movement/positioning. Make sure you have a solid representative for both approaches. It's good to focus on the moves that come naturally to you, but make damn sure that they cover the main scenarios the sport presents in that domain, otherwise you will be left with an incomplete skill set that a good opponent can take advantage of.
