The most important part of your workout: Imagine if you had some strange brain disorder that resulted in total amnesia after every jiu jitsu workout so that everything you learned in that lesson was forgotten. Progress would be impossible! Every class you did would be your first class! The basis of all improvement over time is MEMORY – memory allows us to retain information and apply it the next time we work on the same problem so that we do not have to re-learn the same things every time, but can move on to new lessons and accumulate knowledge. IF MEMORY IS THE BASIS OF PROGRESS – SHOULD WE NOT BE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO ENHANCE OUR ABILITY TO USE MEMORY TO TAKE THE INFORMATION FROM A PREVIOUS LESSON AND APPLY IT TO THE NEXT? One of the most beneficial things you can do as a student is at the end of each lesson to think of the single most important thing you learned in today's class and ask yourself how you will try to apply that lesson tomorrow. If you can carry just one piece of valuable information from one class to the next, I assure you that you will make fast progress over time and surpass most of your peers. It always amazes me that people who are happy to perform three hours of hard physical training every day will balk at the idea of thirty seconds of easy thinking after that workout that could greatly benefit the next workout and ensure that a year from now they will be far better than they currently are. YOUR WORKOUT DOES NOT FINISH WHEN YOU STEP OF THE MAT – IT FINISHES WHEN YOU USE THE experience GAINED TODAY TO CREATE A PLAN FOR WHAT YOU WILL ATTEMPT TOMORROW.
