Goal Setting for Longevity

Robin Gieseler of Graice Ohio Jiu-Jitsu Academy has been doing jiu-jitsu for a long time. He started at the age of 20 and is now close to 50, so the lessons he’s learned about sticking with jiu-jitsu are extremely valuable. Even some of the most intense jiu-jitsu practitioners bow out or slow down after a few decades, but Robin is not your average practitioner of jiu-jitsu.

While Robin argues in the above video that achievable goal setting is crucial to longevity in jiu-jitsu, it’s actually key to learning and perfecting any complex skill. That’s just how most people operate. They need to feel as though they are achieving something or at the very least making tangible improvements to continue trying to perfect that skill.

Right-Size Your Goals

A lot of white belts come into class with the lofty goal of getting a black belt in a short amount of time. That’s not a bad idea, but when you’re talking about goals, that’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of steps. It’s even a lot of belts.

Getting to the level of black belt typically takes well over a decade. To put that in perspective, it’s about the same amount of time it takes to go from a college to being a fully licensed doctor. While it’s good to maintain focus on the big goal (getting a black belt, becoming a doctor), the only way you will be able to get there is by accomplishing more immediate goals like perfecting your armbar technique or passing an anatomy test.

For Robin, those who lack the ability to set smaller goals for themselves rarely make it. Every person who says, ‘I want to be a black belt in 10 years,’ doesn’t manage to earn their blue belt, he says. To make it, you need to focus on smaller achievements, but also more manageable big picture goals that are described below.

Learn to Survive

When Robin got into jiu-jitsu, he trusted his instructors and trusted that consistency would eventually get him to the point where he would be good at jiu-jitsu. His first goal, he told himself, was simply to learn more jiu-jitsu and to survive when rolling with partners in class.

He learned humility quickly. Everyone in class beat him. Initially, he’d get submitted five or six times in a five-minute session. He’d get caught making dumb mistakes or trapped by moves that he didn’t even know. Rather than wanting to win or hoping to beat his opponents, his goal became surviving for longer than the last time. He wanted to close that gap.

As time went on, he noticed that he was surviving a little bit longer. Instead of getting caught five or six times, it was four, then three times. Eventually, he was able to go for five minutes without getting submitted. Even if he was massively outscored and would have lost an actual competition, going that time without getting submitted was like a victory.

Learn to Be Effective

As he got better, Robin realized that his training partners were having to fight harder to get past his guard. Eventually, it got so challenging for them that they began to make subtle mistakes, which Robin began to pick up on more and more. Robin would notice an arm lock was open, and he’d go for it. And it worked. Suddenly, he was not just surviving, but actually beating the same people who had mopped the floor with him just a few months before.

At this point in time, his focus changed from survival to effectiveness. He wanted to make his jiu-jitsu more effective than his opponents’, and he measured this not only by rolling with partners in his class but by competing in tournaments.

No surprise, the more he practiced, the more effective his jiu-jitsu became. More importantly, he recognized that he needed to constantly practice each move to make it more effective. This gave him an almost endless number of smaller goals to set because each technique could always be improved upon.

Learn to Be Efficient

As Robin has gotten older and moved on from competitive jiu-jitsu, his focus has become more centered on efficiency. This is not to say that he’s no longer interested in survival or effectiveness. Rather, he’s recognized that he has to be more efficient than he used to because it helps him to stay healthy, to avoid injury, to conserve energy, and to continue perfecting his technique.

For Robin, he has learned that the way to continue practicing jiu-jitsu into your forties and fifties is not through constantly redlining your body or focusing on defeating your opponents. It’s above self-improvement and focusing on the core philosophy of jiu-jitsu, which is first based on survival, energy conservation and the effective execution of technique. The belts, and the skill, will follow.