Any time we are training in a physical activity where there is oppositional force such as in any of the combat sports, we run into the problem of measurement, specifically in a regular measuring of our performance and whether we are getting better or not.

If we are lifting weights, doing cardio or yoga, or shooting on a range, performance tracking is easy. With strength training, all we have to determine is are we lifting more weight, or more often? With cardio, are we going longer and/or faster? With yoga, are we stretching more, or hitting poses more solidly for longer periods of time. Shooting may be the easiest to track. Are we more accurate/faster than we were the last time we shot? All easily measured and even more easily understood.

But when working against the variable and almost endless possibilities that occur going against someone else, all that measurement becomes more like guesswork and a lot of “well, maybe”. Nothing is more frustrating that working really hard at getting better at a particular move, being able to do it perfectly well in isolation, but never pulling it off when there is resistance. We wonder if it is the move, or us. Actually, there is something more frustrating – when sometimes a move works, but other times, against the same opponent, it does not, and we can’t figure out why! That can border on heartbreaking.

The solution? I don’t know that there is one! Comforting, right? What we can do though is re-orient how we view progress, especially in the macro sense.

One of the things that it is easy to forget is that the person we are training against is working too, and may very well be working as hard and as much as you. We have to remember that while we are getting better, so are they and that can skew our relative view of our performance. Take my personal case as an example. I have 4 regular black belt training partners that are truly my peers. We are all within 10 years of each other in age, close in weight, and have been doing BJJ for close to the same amount of time, and we all train around the same number of hours in a week. When any of us roll against each other, the chance that one of us is going to dominate the other is remote. Occasionally, one of us might pull off someone cool, and be able to fully control the round, or even get the other person to tap. More often, like 98% of the time, the rolls are pretty even. If we were scoring them like a tournament, the typically result is either a close victory 3-2, 5-3, or pretty much a tie 0-0 where one or the other may have gotten an advantage (i.e. “almost a point”). If I focus on how I do with them, I could easily get discouraged. No matter how much I train, unless they stop training totally, I am not going to leap past them.

Instead, the person to focus our measurement against is the newer person, the less experienced guy. Can we get a move on him that we have not gotten before at all? If the answer is yes, more often than not, it means you are getting better. Especially if we are focused on self-defense, then the more accurate gauge anyway is against a person how knows little if any about BJJ, so the newer trainee is more precise in letting us know whether we are better or not.

Another way to look is against someone much superior to us. If that guy for example typically taps us five times in a six minute round, but then we consistently only get tapped two times, then we are better. Is that as much of an ego boost as being able to do something offensive back to them? Well, no, but it is realistic.

To sum up, don’t view your performance on a day to day measure, but rather over a longer period of time, say a month, and focus on what you did against people who you can do stuff against.