It happens to everyone. Nothing seems to be working. You cannot pick up anything new. Pitchers fall into slumps. Writers get blocked. It is the dreaded plateau.

But sometimes they seem to be just too difficult to overcome. Have you noticed that a lot of students will quit once they achieve blue belt status? The just don’t seem to improve past that point even thought they have learned and developed enough to earn that rank.

For some people a plateau can just be in their head. But for others there are a lot of problems that prevent them from being able to move on to that next level.

If you find your jiu jitsu stuck at a plateau or feeling like its stalled out completely, here are some things that you can think about that might help.

Diminishing Returns: You will never increase your jiu jitsu knowledge as much as you did when you first started. Think about it. You walk onto the mat knowing nothing. Anything you learn is a 100% increase in your knowledge. But as you add more and more maneuvers to your arsenal, each increase feels smaller by comparison. You will never have those huge leaps and bounds in skill that you had as a white belt. Adjust your expectations. Focus on fine-tuning and learning new variations on techniques you already understand.

Learn to “go deep” with your techniques and skills instead of going wide. Do you do one technique again and again, or many techniques just a few times each? If you spend your time trying to add new techniques instead of mastering the skills you already have, you will never master anything. Bruce Lee once said, “I don’t fear the man that can do 10,000 kicks one time; I fear the man that has done one kick 10,000 times.”

Getting enough sleep is important to breaking that plateau. Research studies have shown how learning and athletic performance can be negatively impacted by a lack of sleep. Getting the proper amount of sleep each night will also help your body to recover from intense workouts and injuries. The experts say that 7-9 hours of sleep is needed for an adult each night. 9-10 hours of sleep is needed for adolescents and teens. Recent studies have shown that if an athlete gets 10 hours of sleep or more, he will be able to perform skills that require coordination and accuracy and be able to run much faster.

Keep it fun: Are you thinking about work while training? Don’t think about problems at work or at home when you workout. If you’re carrying stress onto the mats, it’s going to distract you in training. Stress has a way of multiplying itself. If you bring it to the academy, it affects your performance - which stresses you out even more. Stress can quickly becoming a never-ending loop of anxiety - if you allow it. When you go to the mats you should push away all of the things that cause you stress in life. If that’s something you cannot do, you need to figure out some way to separate jiu jitsu from the outside world.

Learn a Lesson: A plateau shouldn’t be fatal to your jiu jitsu career. Every jiu jitsu player has experienced the same sense of frustration. Even world champions have felt like their progress stalled at some point. Keep training and never give up. The resolve needed to break out of a slump is the same mental fortitude required to come from behind for a victory or face a seemingly invincible opponent. This can only make you stronger.

Visit Draculino’s online training site to train using the same jiu jitsu techniques and approach he uses. Be sure to also check out his jiu jitsu iphone apps.

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