Balancing Your Life with Jiu-Jitsu

You got bit by the BJJ bug too, huh? Welcome to the club! Unfortunately, the reality is that for most of us, we have full-time jobs, a family, or school (or all of the above) which can take away precious training time.  So, how do you balance your “full time” life with your constant craving for jiu-jitsu?

Here’s a few tips that we’ve come up with based on our experiences with trying to find the right balance between life and training:

Make a schedule and stick to it. Planning out your days, weeks, or month can be beneficial to staying in line with your goals. If you want to train every day but your schedule doesn’t allow it, compromise for three days instead, maybe four if you can – but make sure you document it. Nothing says commitment like writing it down on paper (make sure its in pen so you can’t erase it). Also, writing down your goals for the day, week, or month help too. If you want to improve in BJJ, you need to make the time for it.

Make it a family affair. If you have kids or need more quality time with your significant other/spouse, get them on the mats with you. Not only does it give you an excuse to go to the gym together, but it also gives you something in common where you can relate to each other. If training with your significant other/spouse is not an option, invite them to the gym to help them understand your fascination/obsession/whatever you wanna call it with BJJ.

Set your mind over matter. Life can be exhausting – especially if you work or go to school for 8-9 hours and spend a good amount of time on the road getting around. Often times it is easy for us to go straight home instead of going to train… then you instantly regret it once you pull into your driveway and realize it really is too late to turn around. Pack your training bag the night before, schedule an alert on your phone, and make a conscious effort to head to the gym after work/school. If all else fails: coffee or a good pre-workout is your new BFF. On a side note: good nutrition and hydration throughout the day also help keep your energy level (and motivation) up.

Find a training "buddy." If you need someone else other than yourself to keep you accountable, hit up your favorite training partner and have them keep tabs on you too. It helps if someone else is encouraging you to hit the mats with them, you're more likely to carve out more time in your busy schedule to train. Sometimes you may even score a free ride from work or home to the gym because they need you as much as you need them. 

Sometimes open mats are the only option. (And that's perfectly fine to get some mat time in when you really need it.) Just don't rely on it all the time because nothing replaces quality mat time like an actual class -- especially if you want to improve and move up in the ranks. If you need to drill, use the open mat time to drill. There usually aren't any hard and fast rules that you have to spar the entire time at an open mat, so use it to your advantage to drill and work on the areas that you've been obsessing over when you're thinking about BJJ at work/school.   

Sometimes the answers aren’t as simple, but the bottom line is that you can make it work if you really want to. Even if it’s 30 minutes a couple times a week, any mat time is better than nothing to satisfy the craving of BJJ.