I bartered successfully! English tutoring for BJJ training. Today we met for our first English session, and it was all about goal setting. His goals will help me set the curriculum, figure out what activities to do, and ensure he’s “getting the most for his money.” 🙂
It got me thinking: many people don’t know how set good goals/objectives, whether for losing weight, writing lesson planning, learning a language, or training BJJ. Setting SMART goals gives you focus, milestones, helps you improve faster and spend your time more wisely!
SPECIFIC
A specific goal gives you something exact to work on. The more specific, the better! You can start by writing down your main goal, then work step by step to make it more specific. Improve BJJ (which aspects?)<guard (which position?)<closed guard (chokes? sweeps?)<sweeps from guard (which sweeps?)<scissors sweep etc.
Other BJJ questions: What is a move you consistently tap to? What is a move you’ve tried to do in sparring that hasn’t worked well for you? What are your go-to moves?
Programs like the Royce Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Network set these specific goals for you. If you’re part of this program, you know exactly what to work on! Sometimes, the instructor does it–like when you’re positional sparring and focusing on NOT letting the other person pass your guard.
Now THAT’S specific!
MEASURABLE
A measurable goal is observable with the senses. It can be seen, heard, felt, smelled or tasted (cooking classes anyone?). There is an objective way to say, “Yes, they did it.” If your goal is work on scissors sweeps, I can’t know if you’ve achieved your goal, but if your goal is successfully use a scissors sweep while sparring I can! In language it’s the same: “I want to use my new vocabulary while having a conversation.”
The Gracie Academy Women Empowered curriculum has this as a goal: By the end of the course, students will be able to overcome panic and apply the techniques against a resisting opponent in the Attack Simulation Drill. Anyone could watch and see if the person could do it. They are ticky-box goals. Saw it? YES/NO Heard it? YES/NO, etc.
ATTAINABLE
An attainable goal is do-able given your current knowledge, skill and ability. A new language student flat out can’t do a debate. It is unrealistic for BJJ beginners to work on the 50/50 guard when they don’t know what full guard is. Set a goal you can realistically achieve. Aiming for something unreachable means you’ll ultimately get burned out and frustrated.
NOPE! Ain’t happenin’!
RELEVANT
A relevant goal is one related to your overall gameplan. If your language goal is to do a job interview, why is your goal to learn 5 new slang words per day? If your goal is to compete in tournaments, don’t spend time on tournament-illegal moves. In other words, have focus!
Teachers should have their overall goal in mind when they are teaching moves or doing warmups! Often beginners can’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why are we shrimping? The teacher should be able to explain WHY they are doing something and should share those goals with the students instead of just pulling a Miyagi on them.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T10ycFr770g]
TIME-BOUND
A time-bound goal has a deadline. It gives you incentive to work so you can achieve it by that time. It could be a week, year, or for BJJ may be the next tournament or next belt.
Programs like the Gracie Barra Fundamentals program set dates for you: 16 weeks in this case.
You want it WHEN?
GOALS? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING GOALS!
“I don’t need goals. I really just want to improve my BJJ and I don’t have any specific needs.” Maybe, but whether you realize it or not, you have needs, and you should identify them. If they aren’t being met you will feel unsatisfied. Once identified, you can set goals. They will help you prioritize, focus, help you know what you’ve achieved. Ultimately, they will help you get the most out of your experiences.
FOR THE TEACHERS
Children will do whatever they tell you (in theory anyway :D). Adults in general have their own specific needs and if those needs are not met, they will leave. Whether they realize it or not, they do have needs, more specific than just “I want to improve.” A successful tutor/instructor/teacher should be able to help students set goals, set long term goals, and goals for each day (lesson planning, anyone?), identify student needs, weaknesses and strengths, and adjust accordingly.
Anton Farb tells new students the long term goals for his Krav Maga class. First three months: hand-to-hand combat, punches, kicks, grab releases. Next three: sparring and knife defenses. By sharing his overall plan, he can alleviate potential frustrations (why not knife defenses now???) and give them something to look forward to and work toward.
A FINAL CHALLENGE
You will need to balance time spent on basics vs more advanced. After living in Ukraine for two years, I can speak Russian but always test low on tests. I focused on communication rather than grammar. If I took Russian lessons I’d want a mixture of strengthening more advanced language, and perhaps going back and filling in some gaps. If a purple belt is ONLY working on shrimping and bridging, he’ll likely get extremely frustrated. At the same time, if all the techniques are too advanced for white belts, they’ll also feel frustrated.
A CAVEAT
What if you DON’T achieve your goals? Goals should HELP you, not HINDER you. Be okay if you don’t meet all your goals! You are NOT a failure if you don’t achieve them all. Don’t be SO FOCUSED that you can’t enjoy the ride.
So…what are YOUR BJJ goals? And for the record, I absolutely believe a belt is a valid goal. But go ahead, disagree!
*Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with any of the schools I listed (though I do know Anton personally)–I simply used them as real examples.*
I’m a goal-freak too! My partner and I ‘live’ by SMART goal-setting and are big fans of the GTD productivity system; we have a selection of whiteboards with our various shared goals – in our 5 categories of pursuit – and within different time ranges! HAHA. I keep my BJJ goals in my ‘training diary’. One of the things I’m working on right now is my offense from guard, especially a high guard > triangle > armbar flow and in context of larger opponents and/or people of similar or greater experience.
NICE! Yeah–I spend all my days teaching participants how to write good Student Learning Objectives, and it’s a tough concept for some of them. My favorite “new” info though was when someone said “It must be observable! You can’t know it through ESP!” At that point things clicked for me. 🙂
For some reason our “goals” are so vague: I want to lose some weight. I want to get healthy. I want to drink less soda. When it’s so vague you can’t possibly know objectively if you’ve met your goal.
My first goals when I joined BJJ was to go 3 times per week because ultimately I wanted to lose size, weight, and get in better shape. I couldn’t necessarily define all those, but I didn’t care because anything was better than what I had been doing. Very quickly it stopped being about health and about my obsession. 🙂
I’m still working on super baby goals, but I haven’t been consistently focused on them. It’s easy to get swept up in “just going to class” and I’m definitely better when I’m goal oriented.
I am all about going back to basics. Eliminating all the fancy stuff and drilling the stuff I really like and what works for me.
Cool cool! I do wonder about the people who just want to learn fancy, flashy things. Who are they? 😀
This is great! One of the things that really started helping my bjj is just focusing on ONE part of my game for months at a time. For instance, I spent all of 2008 and 2009 working on sweeps.
Huge improvement!
I remember you wrote about that. Do you have the link to that page? Link it here. In an unrelated note: this is, so far, the most spam-attracting post I’ve done! 😀
How did you keep from being mentally bored? What did you do during your routine?
I’m asking because if I went to a Russian 101 class, even if I was plugging holes, ultimately I would end up being VERY bored. Sure, my Russian would be better, but it would be hard for me to continue going. I’ve seen it with my students as well–if you focus too much on, say, the “to be” verb with your advanced studetns, they’ll end up resenting it.
Though–one difference would be that you’d still be rolling with advanced partners. And if I had advanced speaking partners in my Russian class that would probably make a huge difference–working on basic grammar but still communicating during half the class.
I agree with Rob. At my current school, we spend 3-4 months on one positional family before moving on. By that time most of us are thoroughly sick of it, but bored is not the right word. Bjj is so complex. Using your analogy, my verb reference book has 20 forms of the French verb “to be,” with six persons each. Looks like plenty of material for several months of study if a teacher ever tried to focus on just that. None has; I wonder how well it would work? You can learn one or two variations of half guard, for example, every week for three months and then still have the half guard top game left to cover. Granted, some of the variations are minor changes, but small things make a big difference in bjj, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. When we roll, we have to incorporate other positions, building the complete vocabulary, so to speak. I find that I retain skills much better this way than by learning something completely different from one week to the next, because the new move is sumultaneously a review of the previous week. If you are new to bjj, you may have holes in your game for a while since you aren’t learning the other guards, but if you are going to stick with this for years, there’s no rush. The holes take a while to fix anyway.
Well I hate goal setting. It’s like too much hard work. But yes, I do set myself some. for example, my current BJJ goal is to train properly, professionally and diligently for a forthcoming comp in November. This takes some planning.
But overall, I’m a bit of a slacker and just coast along. why do you think it too me six years to obtain purple belt?
for my blog, I don’t set goals so much but I do seize on opportunities – like the one we discussed privately a little earlier today. I have an aim. To offer the best read I can possibly make with my posts.
Anyway, nice work, good to see how your various interests gel together and help each other .
I never thought about applying SMART goals to my training – great idea. I use them in other areas of my life p so why not bjj? Thanks.
SMART goal setting is a very dangerous tool and, IMO, should be treated as such. Nothing puts the blinds on a person like having a SMART goal. I used to categorically hate them, now I just use them very carefully (I still hate them tho!)
🙂 Very dangerous? Why do you think so?
I read on graciemag:
Understand that the belt is not the only objective, but the result of effort and learning. One whose only objective is to get a new belt limits his own potential, which is always enormous and unknown. Rather than focus on that, concern yourself with developing technical aspects of the fight.
Let’s say that that is true, and I believe it is when you exclude all other goals. Why is it bad to set SMART goals related to your practice? One of my goals is to be able to successfully do a cross collar choke against a resisting opponent. Why not focus on specific techniques or specific transitions?
I’m very curious as to what you think. I’m also curious as to what has changed your mind…you said you used to categorically hate them. Why not now?
I do also agree that goal setting is not the most fun thing in the world.
Haha I’m happy this intrigues you.
Whatever I say and however I say it, I know I will miss out an idea or two but I will try to put across what I mean.
Let’s start with the cross choke example and bring in my blinkers analogy:
If you use SMART literally (e.g. I will get my cross choke to work against a resisting opponent of equal size and experience within a 4 minute round) it will result in:
1. You getting the choke (happy) or not getting the choke (less happy)
(That’s what the M stands for) There is no point in setting SMART objectives without investing emotionally in them, or at least that’s howI have been taught SMART and I find it dangerous to play the emotional game in BJJ. Any boxer will tell you that you can’t be angry in the ring. I don’t want to get/not get a technique. I want to experience what happens in both cases.
2. You missing out on a number of other opportunities such as armbars, other chokes, back takes and sweeps
(That’s what the S stands for). Finger…moon…heavenly glory. You know the quote.
3. Sooner or later using too much strength
(That’s what the stress caused by the T can do to you). This is not a given but really go-getters who use SMART fall for this.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to utilise SMART and still have a happy life or at least BJJ career. It just strikes me as flawed and too narrow.
(I haven’t yet suggested an alternative :o) )
What changed my mind? I’ve long believed that most absolute statements are unrealistic (pure socialism or pure market-theory…etc.) and I recently noticed that there are small, very limited windows of opportunity in life where SMART can be very usefull. Also, SMART is not a frikking religion and can be modified and that’s what I do. I add a sprinkle of something wonderful (Not telling you what just yet!!!)
The alternative and magic ingredient is….in a future blog post of mine!
I think what you’re saying is that if you are too goal oriented that it gives you tunnel vision, and to some extent I agree with you.
I think ultimately if I’m going for something, goal or not, and I make it (happy) don’t make it (less happy), so I think that is a wash regardless of whether or not I have it as a goal.
Personally I see a whole lot of not-getting-it on the road to getting it. I see 50 “failures” before a success. And that’s absolutely okay! I’m sure you’ve had times when your instructor has had you drilling a move and you attempt it in your roll that day and if you get it you feel happy and if you don’t you feel less happy. Your instructor set a goal and you’re going for it.
I do think if you set healthy goals that you will not have such a tunnel vision, so you won’t necessarily MISS as much, but you’ll be MAKING/FINDING opportunities to use the move you’re focused on. And don’t they say in BJJ that you should practice 1 move 1000 times? Focus on a technique and nail it, work on the muscle memory, etc? Isn’t that setting a goal there?
I personally see it as not too narrow, but you CAN make it very narrow. It’s interesting–I see that we are both looking at SMART goals in the opposite way we see Learning Styles/VAKT. I looked at that as too narrow but see SMART as being ABLE to be very very narrow, but that if it’s wider it’s okay.
For me, it just makes your goals better than had you just said “I want to be better” and makes you think about what that means for you.
Then again, I’ve always been a goal driven person, though not ever let it hinder me. For example, my goal was to graduate college. I took 3 years off, and that was okay. Then my goal was to get my Master of Education. It took me 4 years, and that was okay. Then my goal was to do Peace Corps and I did. Now my goal is to pay off my student loans by the time I’m 40. It may not happen, but it’s a great goal.
With BJJ I have some longer term goals: Rio in 2013, Ukraine and practice sambo in 2014, and hopefully get my black belt one day…it would be super awesome to get it by the time I’m 50 (I’m 34). Me=long term planner. 🙂 Shorter term goals are to actually be able to use some of the things I’ve been drilling in class.
I suppose what I’m saying is that a healthy use of goals should help you focus rather than give you tunnel vision, and should let you know when you’ve accomplished something rather than have a vague sense of it.
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