Immediacy of input: We get thousands of moves shown to us in the course of a given year in jiu jitsu. In a time where there are schools on every block, numerous champion authorities teaching online, and a veritable plethora of enthusiasts happy to share what they know to anyone with ears – the problem for the student is not access to information, but RETAINING information. I often find the best way to make information stick in a student is to teach it immediately after they are stumped by a given problem. Sometimes as we spar, we run into a problem and fail to overcome it. There is a feeling of frustration in that moment – if the lesson is quickly taught to them in that moment – an important point demonstrated- I find it tends to stick in the student's mind better than if I simply offer cold information unrelated to their sparring experience. There is something about immediate feedback to a frustrating problem that aids retention. This has to be used sparingly however; as general rule rule I don't like to interrupt live sparring (randori). I like to see students moving continuously through sparring time as they would in a match, but occasionally if I feel the situation warrants it, I will see a situation where the student can benefit from a quick insight in response to a problem and failure – I will make the point and then get them immediately back into sparring. Usually just a quick point can make a substantial difference in performance with regards that problem and, as I noted earlier, the immediacy of the point and it's psychological link to a moment of frustration, tends to make it more memorable to the student. Here I call out a few details of wristband elbow position to a frustrated Garry Tonon during a time he was working on guillotine attacks with mixed results – in time it became one of his best weapons.
