Is training jiu jitsu twice a week enough?

Twice a week is enough to stay consistent. You will keep your conditioning, keep the techniques you already have, and stay part of the room. What it will not do is move you forward much. You are treading water, and the gap between you and someone training three or four times a week will widen over a year. Plenty of people live at twice a week because of work and family, which is reasonable, but if you have been at two for a year and feel stuck, adding a third session is the fix.

Can you get good at jiu jitsu training once a week?

Once a week is not optimal, but it is not nothing either. It adds up to 52 sessions a year, which is fifty-two hours of learning to control another person who is trying to control you. After a year of that you will handle anybody who has never trained. Progress will be slow and some weeks will feel like starting over, but you will be a year into jiu jitsu rather than a year into meaning to try it.

Is it bad to train jiu jitsu every day?

Nobody needs seven days a week to get good, and people training that often are not getting seven days' worth of improvement from it. They are there because they would rather be at the gym than anywhere else. Some people do train six or seven days once they are a few months in and feel the pull, and that is fine, but it is not necessary for progress.

Why do beginners quit jiu jitsu?

The most common failure has nothing to do with talent. People come in hot, train five days their first week, wreck themselves, take two weeks off to recover, come back and repeat the cycle, then quit around month three. Consistency beats intensity. Pick a number you can hit on your worst week rather than your best one. Someone training twice a week for two years straight is a blue belt.

How Often Should You Train Jiu Jitsu?

Three times a week. If you want to get good at jiu jitsu rather than just dabble in it, three sessions a week is the number, and almost everybody can find three.

We get asked this a lot, usually by somebody after a trial class trying to figure out whether this incredible thing fits in their life. So here’s the breakdown of what each level of commitment gets you.

Three Times a Week Is the Goal

Three is where people start getting noticeably better, and it’s not a coincidence. You’re on the mat often enough that the thing you learned Monday is still in your body on Wednesday, so instead of relearning it every session, you build on it. Your body stops being sore all the time. You stop gassing out in round two. The positions start to feel familiar instead of chaotic, and somewhere in there you realize you’re thinking a move ahead instead of just surviving.

Three is also the number most people can really hit. We run adult classes six days a week with morning and evening options, so the odds are good that three of them land somewhere in your week without you rearranging your life for it.

And if you want to be in great shape, add an open mat on top of that. Saturday open mat or Airlock After Dark on Thursday both count. Three classes plus an open mat and you’re in a really good spot.

Twice a Week Keeps You Consistent

Two is enough to stay in it. You’ll keep your conditioning, you’ll keep the techniques you already have, and you’ll stay part of the room, which is important for investing in this community.

What two won’t do is move you forward much. You’re treading water. You keep what you’ve got and you don’t lose ground, but the gap between you and the guy training three or four times a week is going to widen over a year.

Plenty of people live at two times a week because of work and kids and life, and that’s a perfectly reasonable place to be. Just know what it is. If you’ve been at two for a year and you’re wondering why you feel stuck, there’s your answer, and the fix is one more session a week.

Once a Week Still Beats Everybody Who Doesn’t Train

We’re not going to tell you once a week is optimal, but we’re also not going to pretend it’s nothing.

Once a week is 52 sessions a year. Fifty-two hours of learning to control another human being who is trying to control you. After a year of that you’ll handle anybody who’s never trained a day in their life, and that’s not a small thing to be true about yourself.

Progress will be slow. You’ll feel like you’re starting over some weeks. But you’ll be a year into jiu jitsu instead of a year into meaning to try jiu jitsu, and those are very different places to stand.

The Other End of It

Some of our guys train six days a week, and a few of them make it seven by driving up to cross train with our friends at 10th Planet Austin on Sundays. That’s not a recommendation. That’s just what happens when a few people get completely obsessed, and every gym has them. At ours, they’re purple and brown and black belts. Wonder if that’s a coincidence… (it’s not).

If you’re a few months in and feeling the pull, go for it, that’s how most of us ended up here. But know that nobody needs seven days to get good, and the people training seven aren’t getting seven days’ worth of improvement out of it. They’re there because they’d rather be at the gym than anywhere else.

Consistency Beats Intensity, Every Time

The most common way people fail at jiu jitsu has nothing to do with talent. They come in hot, train five days their first week, wreck themselves, take two weeks off to recover, come back, do it again, and quit in month three.

Meanwhile the guy who shows up twice a week for 2 years straight is a blue belt.

Pick a number you can hit on your worst week, not your best one. If three is realistic, go three. If two is what you’ve got right now, take two and be religious about it, then add the third when your schedule opens up. This is a long game, and the only people who get good at it are the ones still showing up in year three.

How to Fit in Three

Look at the schedule and pick your three.

Mornings are a helpful way to pump up the numbers, because a 7 am class is nearly impossible for work or a kid’s practice to run over. Evenings are busier and more social. We’ve got both, and plenty of people mix.

One more piece of math that helps: at $160 a month, training three times a week works out to about twelve bucks a session. The more you use it, the better the deal gets, which is a nice thing about unlimited classes.