Mini Ep. 69: Consistency

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free, go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And today, I want to talk to you about a really simple concept, but a tremendously important one. Let's talk about consistency. My advice is that you should take a step every day to improve your Jiu-Jitsu, even if that step is small. It doesn't have to be a big thing, but every day there should be something that you do that furthers your goals in the sport. Sometimes that might mean you put in a full hour and a half class. It might mean that you go to an open mat, or it could be something smaller, maybe you study an instructional, maybe you do some strength and conditioning, maybe you listen to a podcast. Even these little things matter. It's not the size of the activity that you do every day that is most important, it's the consistency with which you do them. People, especially early on in their journey, tend to fall in love with Jiu-Jitsu and train incredibly intensely. And it's hard to maintain that degree of intensity over time. What you'll often find is that a person who can prioritize consistency over intensity, over the long run, they're likely going to have a more successful journey in Jiu-Jitsu because of a variety of factors. One of them is just the reality of how habits work. The most important thing if you want to get good at something is to do it consistently, and the way that you do something consistently is by building habits. If you're doing something frequently, then it becomes a habit, and it's easier to do it again the next time if it's integrated into your lifestyle. If you're doing something every day to improve your Jiu-Jitsu, it's not going to be a big stretch or deviation from your schedule to do that again tomorrow. On the other hand, if your training is relatively infrequent, say something that you only do once a week, maybe once a month, maybe less frequently than that, then every time you want to go work on your Jiu-Jitsu, that's a deviation from your schedule. It means you got to think about it, it means you got to stop what you're doing and work this Jiu-Jitsu habit back into your life. That makes it difficult to stay engaged over a long period of time, even if those training opportunities that you have are really intense. So, always make sure that you are more consistent than intense. The consistency is what matters. There's also a variety of other reasons why consistency is super important in Jiu-Jitsu. One of them is just the reality of compound gains. If you listen to financial investors, often their best advice will be consistency. Make a point of investing consistently over time because it is through compound gains that you start to see big results. That's very different from making one single big investment into a single stock and hoping that it goes up. The reality is that a consistent, more diversified approach is going to perform better for the majority of people. Any activity like Jiu-Jitsu is more about luck than people want to admit. Yes, your talent matters, yes, your attributes matter, yes, your hard work matters, but luck is a big part of it. For everyone who's had success in Jiu-Jitsu, to some extent it is due to luck. They had circumstances that allowed them to be successful, and that is not to take away from their hard work, but the luck was part of it. And part of the way that you become lucky is by being consistent. The more opportunities you take to try something, the more likely you will be to succeed. This is often why when people give advice about starting any new initiative, they will tell you, don't give up too early. You have to give things a solid effort to make sure you've given them enough time to get the results that you want to see. People give up too early when they try difficult things. Jiu-Jitsu is a great example of that. So, if you want to be lucky, be consistent. Consistency is not just the key to being lucky, it's the key to seeing compound gains, it is the key to building and maintaining the habits that are required to get good at anything over the long term, and all of that is going to be more important than a single intense training session. So, always make sure that consistency is the backbone of anything that you want to do for the long term. So, I hope that was a useful explanation of the concept of consistency. This is the kind of thing that we talk about at BJJ Mental Models. There's more of this at BJJmentalmodels.com. Our podcast, both full-length episodes and mini-episodes like this are completely free. Our newsletter is free, and if you want to level up with us, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium, the world's largest library of Jiu-Jitsu audio courses on Jiu-Jitsu concepts, strategy, tactics, philosophy, mindset, the kind of things that are hard to fit into a traditional instructional. It helps a lot of people. I think you'll enjoy it. So, all of that is at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you in the next episode.