Coaches Guide

If you haven’t read it yet, please first read our pedagogy article: GJJ Pedagogy

This is the main reference document for coaching at Golden Jiu Jitsu. Read through it fully when you start the coaching program, and come back to it periodically as a reference while you develop as a coach.

How to use this guide: Each module follows the same flow — listen to the assigned podcasts first, then read the sections, then complete the quiz/reflection questions. The podcasts provide context that makes the written sections land better.

For program-specific coaching guidance, see:

Coaching Kids Classes
Coaching by Program: Fundamentals & Advanced (coming soon)

MODULE 1: PHILOSOPHY & MINDSET

Listen First

No podcasts assigned for this module — just read the sections below.

WHY COACHING BJJ IS SO HARD

Coaching jiu jitsu is arguably harder than coaching most other sports. If you coached soccer, wrestling, tennis, or football, you’d have three huge advantages we don’t have:

Everyone in a session would be roughly the same skill level. In any given class at our gym, you might have a white belt who’s been to four classes in the same room as a black belt with ten years of mat time.

You’d see the same group every day. You can’t build a structured week where Monday’s content sets up Tuesday and Tuesday sets up Wednesday. You’ll never have the same group two days in a row.

Everyone would share similar goals. Some of our students want to obsessively study and improve. Some want a social club. Some just want to destress and sweat. You can’t rely on anyone studying curriculum in their free time.

All of this makes coaching jiu jitsu hard. Knowing that going in is important.

COACHING VS TEACHING

The goal of a good coach is to ensure safety, foster a playful environment, and maximize skill development. The best tool we have for all three is grappling games. We want to maximize the time students spend playing, and minimize the time they spend watching us talk.

Students need breaks between games — they can’t grapple for an hour straight. Those recovery windows are our natural opportunity to communicate information that can improve their performance. But even in those windows, we want to be quick and get them moving again.

This is something I struggle with because I’m excited about jiu jitsu and want to share everything I know about a position. But 99% of the time, that doesn’t actually help students. You don’t want to be the “sage on the stage.” A coach who can show 10+ variations of a random move isn’t helping students — they’re actively hurting retention and skill acquisition.

95% of learning comes from playing games (including sparring). Prioritize their time playing above all else.

The practical rules:

Don’t talk for more than 2 minutes between games
Don’t interrupt games to bring everyone in and correct a mistake. Address it between games — either verbally or by changing the rules so the mistake is no longer a viable strategy.
Don’t try to correct every mistake you see. Clumsiness is a feature of the learning process. So is frustration. Embrace it.
Don’t pause students for more than a few seconds during play. Even individual coaching should be quick — keep them moving.

Quickly and effectively communicate how to play the game, give them a concept or two that can help, occasionally show a movement option, and get them playing as fast as possible.

ACCEPT THAT STUDENTS WILL BE BAD AT GRAPPLING

It is hard to watch them be bad at a game. This is doubly true when you had high hopes for covering something interesting but realize it’s way beyond their current level.

You don’t have to — and shouldn’t — try to correct everything you see. Focus on what you can change and accept what you can’t.

It is okay. Most of them will get good over time. Their current performance is not a reflection of your ability as a coach.

Don’t be frustrated with them for being bad. Under no circumstances should you ever be rude or condescending about their lack of skill.

You sucked at jiu jitsu too, once. The reason we got good is because we love the game. Convey your excitement and love to them — not judgment because they’re not as good as you are now.

I have seen coaches belittle students and publicly shame them for their inability to move well or comprehend something. This is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated at our gym. It’s fine to talk with other coaches about a student struggling. It’s never okay to put a student down in class.

Many students struggle athletically. Many have never played a sport. Some have lost coordination from health issues.

Have empathy for them. We will all grow old and lose our grace and movement.

MAKING MISTAKES & IMPROVING AS A COACH

Mistakes will happen. I’m a much better coach than I used to be, and it took a long time. I still make mistakes every class. One thing I struggle with is wanting to give too much information — being the sage on the stage. My current goal is to get more succinct between games.

After every class, reflect: What went well? What could improve? What should you cut next time? What should you add? What should you change?

Just like training, introspection is invaluable for improvement. We’ve all seen people plateau on the mats because they stopped thinking about their game. The same happens with coaching. If you do the same thing every class with no thought about what could improve, you won’t improve.

I don’t expect you to be a perfect coach. I do expect you to get better over time.

MODULE 1: QUIZ & REFLECTION

Placeholder — quiz/reflection content coming soon

What are the three disadvantages BJJ coaches have compared to other sports coaches?

In your own words, what does “sage on the stage” mean and why is it a problem?

How should you respond when a student is struggling and performing poorly?

MODULE 2: GAME DESIGN & STRUCTURE

Listen First

Listen to all three of these before reading this module:

Ep. 262: Gamification, feat. Rob Biernacki — BJJ Mental Models

Why and how gamification works in jiu jitsu. How students and coaches can gamify training.
Ep. 185: F Your Jiu Jitsu, feat. Rob Biernacki (BJJ Mental Models)

The FYJJ game, self-handicapping, and how to keep training interesting across skill levels. Warning: lewd and condescending at times toward beginners, but the information is valuable.
Ep. 378: Repetition and Representation, feat. Cal Jones — BJJ Mental Models

Quality of reps over quantity, the PVCT model for layering training tasks, perception-action coupling, invariants, and designing training that transfers to competition.

GRAPPLING GAMES VS POSITIONAL SPARRING

We differentiate these heavily. Positional sparring looks like: start in butterfly guard, top wins if they pass, bottom wins if they sweep or submit.

That’s okay, but it’s open-ended application, not structured skill development. Students who prefer loose passing will immediately stand and disengage. Students who prefer half guard will abandon butterfly within seconds. There’s no consistency in what anyone’s working on.

When games are open-ended, 99% of people unconsciously default to their best skills and stop trying to develop new ones. They try to win instead of trying to learn. That can be useful for honing existing strategies, but it’s not effective for everyday skill development.

We design games with specific goals. For example, if we’re working turtle back takes, a game might look like:

Start in turtle with one player holding rear body lock. Attacker wins if they get to a claw ride with a same-side motorcycle grip or takes the back. Defender wins if they get to four points.

Why those win conditions? We know that once a turtle player reaches four points, back taking becomes much less viable — so we make that the defender’s win condition to force the attacker to develop that prevention skill. We know that seatbelt is generally the preferred grip from back control, but it doesn’t let you separate elbows from knees to create space for hooks. Claw ride plus motorcycle grip does — so we make that a win condition.

Instead of asking students to have the self-discipline to work on unfamiliar skills, we take away their comfortable options and force them to develop new ones with high ROI.

F* YOUR JIU JITSU

We play a game called F Your Jiu Jitsu (FYJJ) a lot. One of its biggest goals is getting players into a mindset of playing instead of competing. The idea is that we have low-resistance opportunities to practice skills and self-handicap as much as possible to keep the game interesting.

If you’ve been training for less than a year and I don’t want you to sweep me, you’re not going to. Period. If we play 100 rounds of guard passing vs sweeping, I pass 100 times and you sweep 0. That’s not helpful for either of us.

When we play FYJJ, I can self-handicap so a week-two white belt has a chance of sweeping me. I can give them sleeve grips, let them break my posture — making it hard for me to prevent the sweep. They get real practice sweeping a resisting opponent without the threat of having their guard passed. I get to work late-stage sweep defense.

If I’m playing with someone who’s trained for several years, I handicap less. Maybe I let them get one dominant grip but not both. I work mid-stage defense; they work sweeping against real resistance.

With a brown or black belt, I give even more resistance — working early-stage defense while they work early-stage setups and dominant positioning.

The game stays interesting despite skill disparity. Both players learn. Both players do more jiu jitsu. Both players have more fun.

This also develops our ability to vary resistance linearly and smoothly for training partners. It teaches us how to train with people who are older, younger, or smaller than us.

We got this game from Rob Biernacki, who got it from Ryan Hall.

COMMUNICATING RULES FOR A GAME

This is a learned skill. When telling students the rules, you need to cover five things succinctly and without ambiguity:

Where do players start
What are the players’ objectives
What are the constraints
What are the win conditions for each player
How do players switch sides (by time, by win, etc.)

One of the biggest hurdles I’ve seen with new coaches running game-based classes is forgetting one of these, or leaving ambiguity in the win conditions.

We need to avoid ambiguity. If they win from a “guard pass” — what counts as a guard pass? Give concrete, measurable goals: connecting your chest to their chest, or connecting your chest to their back.

If they win from “escaping” back control — does that mean getting rid of hooks? Getting to mount? Give them something concrete: you win if you turn your chest to face their torso.

Win conditions should be understandable to someone on their very first day. If goals aren’t concrete, students spend brainpower on confusion instead of playing the game.

If you give multiple win conditions, make sure they’re distinct situations.

PERCEPTION CUES IN OUR GAME LIBRARY

Every game in our library has four sections per player: Starting Position, Objective, Constraints, and Win Condition.

The “Objective” section has cues that guide athletes’ perception of their environment. For example, in the game “Leg Spaghetti,” the attacking player’s objectives are:

Control the knee line
Control the secondary leg
Expose the heel

The win condition is getting a submission, but those three cues tell the athlete how to win. They increase control when they manage the secondary leg. They lose the position if they lose the knee line. They get submission threats by exposing the heel.

If you find other cues that work while coaching, take notes and share them. We always want to improve our content.

THE DRILL-TO-GAME PATTERN

Games are the core of every class, but drilling has a specific role: introducing movement pathways that students need before they can play a game productively.

If a game starts from a single leg and a student has never shot a single leg, they won’t learn much by getting stuffed every round. A few minutes of drilling the entrance gives them a movement pathway they can connect to the game. Once they have that pathway, more drilling doesn’t help. Playing does.

The pattern: brief isolated practice of an entrance or movement (two to four minutes), then immediately into a game where that movement is the starting point. The drill gives students a stable waypoint. The game develops everything else.

Why the direction matters

The order is always drill first, then game. Never game first, then drill.

If you start with a game and then introduce a drill or complicated movement pathway, students will downshift. They’ll naturally lower their intensity in the game to have a chance at completing the new movement. The energy you built during the game dies, and students start treating the game like a drill: going through the motions at half speed instead of playing.

Going from drill to game is an upshift. Students practice the movement at low intensity, then the game gives them a reason to use it at full speed against a resisting partner. The energy builds instead of fading.

Progressing from stable to unstable

You can also use the drill-to-game pattern to control how much chaos students face. Start the game from a later, more stable position (the single leg is already secured, now finish the takedown). As students improve, move the starting point earlier and less stable (now you have to shoot the single leg first, now you have to get a grip before you shoot, now you start disconnected).

This progression from stable to unstable is how we move students through blocked, serial, and randomized practice within a single class. With relatively athletic students, you can often skip the drill and drop them straight into a game. With less athletic students or complex movements, the drill-to-game bridge matters more. Read the room and adjust.

Entropy always increases

Within any segment of class, chaos should only go up, never down. Drill → constrained game → less constrained game → open positional sparring. Each step adds unpredictability and decision-making complexity. You never reverse direction.

This is one of the most common mistakes new coaches make: they get excited about a movement or technique they want to show, so they stop a game to demonstrate it. The room downshifts. Students lower their intensity to accommodate the new thing, and the game degrades into half-speed drilling. You’ve lost the energy and engagement you built.

If you want to introduce a new movement mid-segment, don’t stop the game to drill it. Either address it between rounds with a quick concept, change the game constraints so the movement is more likely to emerge, or save the demonstration for the start of the next round as a new drill-to-game entry point.

For more on the learning science behind this, see GJJ Pedagogy.

MODULE 2: QUIZ & REFLECTION

Placeholder — quiz/reflection content coming soon

What’s the difference between a grappling game and positional sparring? Give an example of each.

Explain the concept of FYJJ to someone who’s never heard of it. How would you adjust resistance for a brand new white belt vs a purple belt?

What are the 5 things you must communicate when explaining a game’s rules? Why is ambiguity in win conditions a problem?

What was your biggest takeaway from each of the three podcasts in this module?

MODULE 3: COACHING IN REAL TIME

Listen First

Ep. 145: The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, feat. Doug Lemov — BJJ Mental Models

Less is more, coaching language, and teaching principles. This is arguably the most important podcast linked in this entire document.
Ep. 299: Student Assessment, feat. Adam Medlock — BJJ Mental Models

Assessing student understanding in real time. He uses a more technique-based approach than ours, but the assessment principles are useful.

PREPARING FOR A CLASS

Disclaimer: there is more information in each week of the curriculum than you could possibly get through in a single class. That will always be the case. The expectation is not to cover everything.

The curriculum is a guideline of vetted information for skill acquisition on each topic. It exists to give students resources for independent study and to give coaches a reference for what concepts, movement pathways, and information could be useful during class.

There are also more games listed than you could play in a week. The goal isn’t to play all of them.

My expectation: when you walk in the room, you’ve read that week’s curriculum and some game library options, and you have at least one game already picked out for each topic being covered.

You don’t need notes for exactly what you’ll say between games. You should have a sense of concepts and movement pathways from reading the curriculum, but you can’t plan it all out — too much depends on what you see in the room.

ACTUALLY COACHING CLASS

When starting a portion of class, minimize talking. Your main goal is to get students into a game you’ve picked. Once they’re playing, watch them and figure out what information to focus on before the next round.

Between games, convey information that will help them in the next round.

While they’re actively moving, watch the room. What are the weak points? How are students “breaking” the game and arriving at outcomes you don’t want? If you see something critically bad — don’t interrupt the game to change it.

If you can add a rule to prevent a bad strategy, tell them without pausing play. A quick “if you’re not touching your training partner for more than 2 seconds, you lose” works better than stopping the timer, bringing everyone in, and explaining why disconnecting is bad. It saves time, and telling someone they lose for a bad strategy gets them to stop faster than trying to convince them it’s a bad strategy. Often it’s actually a good strategy for winning that particular game — not being connected does prevent being swept.

Side note on voice: If you talk loudly over the music with downward inflection, students are less likely to pause what they’re doing. If you speak at normal volume, they’ll stop to hear you. If you use upward inflection, they’ll interpret it as a question and stop. Speak loudly, speak down, keep them moving.

LESS IS MORE

If you chase five rabbits, you will catch none.

If we’re working guard retention, there are many concepts you could cover: keeping feet pointed at your opponent, self-framing, inverting when your leg gets pinned, knee-elbow connection, preemptive framing, foot frames vs shin frames, Gongorra movements, guard-pass-specific retention patterns. This isn’t even exhaustive.

If you try to cover all of them in a single class, students will retain nothing.

When you’re coaching, aim for a single concept or point per break. You can cover a few facets of the same point, but don’t talk about pointing feet at your opponent, knee-elbow connection, and under-the-legs retention all at the same time — especially for beginners.

While walking the room, give individual feedback. But as a group, streamline their goals and perception cues to make them as simple as possible.

STUDENT ASSESSMENT

One of the biggest factors in the quality of your class is understanding where students are at in the learning process for a given topic.

Your two biggest tools:

Asking questions. This is underutilized in grappling classes. I ask questions to work through problems with students, to tie perceptions to actions, and to assess whether they’re understanding what we’re working on. That assessment information can change the current class and the curriculum as a whole.

Watching them. Most of the time when we play a game, I give limited information before the first run and start as quickly as possible. I keep the first run short — normally 2x2 minute rounds — to watch and identify common themes.

Here’s an example of using assessment in real time:

Yesterday in fundamentals, one of our topics was guard retention. We were using guard retention FYJJ to develop this skill live. I planned on talking about concepts for the guard passer only. But while watching the first few rounds, I noticed passers were only attempting loose passing around the legs.

Between rounds, I addressed this. I told students there are four main ways to pass: around the legs, under the legs, through the legs same-side knee, and through the legs cross knee. I mentioned that having one leg high and one leg low as a guard player helps deal with all four.

In the next round, I immediately saw a huge uptick in under-the-legs passing — both players making new connections. I didn’t see an increase in through-the-legs passing, but we’re not looking for perfection in a single class, just improvement.

CHANGING THE GAME BASED ON ASSESSMENT

You can talk a student blue in the face about why their strategy wouldn’t work in a live roll, but it’s rarely useful or quick. Instead, when you see students gaming the game with bad strategies, change the rules so the strategy is no longer viable.

Example 1: I found a standup game online and used the win condition of connecting your hands around your partner’s torso. But students were “winning” with terrible shots — hands connected but hips a mile away. Instead of explaining why it was bad, I changed the rules: now you win by connecting your hands and connecting your hip to their hip. Shot quality improved immediately.

Example 2 (kids class): We were playing 2-for-2 takedowns. Some kids started falling to their backs instead of shooting, claiming they were “taking their opponent to the ground.” Instead of arguing, I added a rule: if your butt touches the mat, you lose. Then they started falling to their shoulders while keeping their butt up. So I iterated again: if your shoulders, back, or butt touch the mat, you lose.

Kids will break every game you design. That’s actually a great feature — it forces you to iterate.

If you have notes about how students broke a game, share them. We want to continually improve our games and make them as bulletproof as possible.

DECIDING WHAT TO COVER BETWEEN GAMES

While students play, watch for weak points and prepare for the next break. Your options:

Change to a completely different game
Change the variation of the current game
Ask pointed questions to assess understanding
Share a concept about their objectives or win conditions
Show a few movement pathways
Give position-specific information (grip names, pros and cons of options)

If you have time, walk the room and give specific individual feedback. I try to do this at least once per student per class, ideally twice — one positive (“that was good movement”) and one nugget (“he got that because you were standing too tall and he could reach your knees”).

Give every person in the room something so they know we care about their development. Don’t just focus on the best performers.

MEETING STUDENTS WHERE THEY’RE AT

Most students want to get a sweat in, make some neural connections, and play. Meet them where they are, give them the most important concepts, and prevent cognitive overload.

I have a plan before every class, but I pivot most of them based on what I see in the room. Sometimes big pivots, sometimes small, but almost every class I’m making changes to games based on how students are performing.

BEING ENGAGED IN CLASS

When you’re coaching, the expectation from me, other coaches, and our students is that you are engaged during class. Not 100% every second, but present and active — not just when students are grouped up, but while they’re playing games.

That time should be spent:

Assessing the room: What are students struggling with? Are they perceiving cues and acting on them? What strategies are they leaving unexplored?
Preparing for the next break: What will you change about the game? What concepts will you share?
Checking the clock: Are you on track to cover all topics in your allotted time?
Giving individual feedback: Both positive reinforcement and constructive nudges.

Coaching is hard and requires significant mental bandwidth. Sometimes you need a minute staring at a blank wall to recoup. That’s fine. Sitting in a corner on your phone is not.

MODULE 3: QUIZ & REFLECTION

Placeholder — quiz/reflection content coming soon

What should you have prepared before you walk into the room to coach a class?

Why shouldn’t you interrupt a game to correct a mistake? What should you do instead?

Describe a time (real or hypothetical) where you’d change the rules of a game based on what you’re seeing. What was the bad strategy and what rule would you add?

What does “less is more” mean practically? How many concepts should you cover per break?

What was your biggest takeaway from each of the two podcasts in this module?

MODULE 4: COMMUNICATION & FEEDBACK

Listen First

Ep. 305: Common Coaching Language, feat. Rob Biernacki & Island Top Team — BJJ Mental Models

Building a unified coaching vocabulary across your team. Why consistent language matters.

TRAINING ATHLETES’ PERCEPTION

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.

When athletes perform, they perceive their environment and act on it. They perceive an opportunity for a guard pass and go for it. They perceive a lack of post and attempt a sweep. They perceive someone passing and throw up preemptive frames.

Above all else, we want to train these perception-action linkages.

Games do this well, but our cues should train perception too. One of the best ways to give feedback is not to tell a student what to do, but to start by asking what they see.

Maybe you see someone playing a sweeping game and notice the top player has zero post. Instead of saying “sweep now” — which gives them a fish — pause them and ask the guard player what they see. Guide them toward perceiving the lack of post. Ask them what that means. Help them build the link between perception and action.

This is a core idea in ecological dynamics and is discussed in Rob Gray’s How We Learn to Move and Doug Lemov’s Coaches Guide to Coaching.

LANGUAGE OF FEEDBACK: INTERNAL VS EXTERNAL VS METAPHOR

This is from Doug Lemov’s Coaches Guide to Coaching. He studied many coaches and found a clear pattern in the language they used and its effect on athlete performance.

Internal language has the least value. It tells a student how to move their body:

“Put your hand on their shoulder”
“Backstep with your right leg”
“Move your weight down their body”

This is how most coaches give instruction. There’s conclusive evidence it doesn’t work well — not in the moment and not long-term.

External language is much more effective. It tells an athlete how to manipulate their environment — in our sport, their opponent’s body:

“Don’t let their head touch the mat”
“Keep their weight on that arm”
“Don’t let their chest touch your chest”

Metaphors abstractly convey information without concrete directions:

“T-Rexes don’t tap”
“Pass like an inchworm”
“Wreck their posture”

These give athletes autonomy in figuring out how to solve a problem.

We use concepts heavily at GJJ because they’re more effective — in many ways, concepts function like metaphors. They give students insight into how to play without telling them exactly what to do. Use concepts first. When they aren’t working, try external language. Resort to internal language only when nothing else lands.

Avoid internal language like the plague with beginners. It won’t work. They’ll be frustrated and feel too dumb to learn. You’ll be frustrated by their performance. Nobody benefits.

SPEAKING IN A COMMON LANGUAGE

This is incredibly important. We need coaches to speak in a relatively unified language — especially around core concepts and models.

The most important is alignment:

Base
Posture
Structure (aka the frame-lever battle)

Information and definitions for alignment are covered in the Alignment curriculum article.

The second most important are the base mechanical models:

Frames
Levers
Wedges (blocking & prying)
Clamps (aka closed wedges)
Hooks
Posts

In-depth descriptions are covered in the Core Mechanics curriculum article.

When a student asks you a question, we should always strive to answer using these terms. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

GIVING FEEDBACK

All unsolicited feedback that isn’t positive is criticism.

That’s a powerful statement to keep in mind while coaching. Constructive criticism is one of the most powerful tools we have, but any time you tell a student to change something, you are criticizing them. Some people don’t handle that well — especially adults who didn’t play sports growing up.

Part of being a good coach is learning who you can help. If a student gets defensive and argues every time you give feedback, I have no expectation that you keep trying. We have students I don’t give negative feedback to because of how they react. They won’t improve as quickly, but we don’t get paid enough to deal with it.

Positive feedback is incredibly valuable. It doesn’t directly improve grappling skill as much, but it makes the experience fun — and if grappling isn’t fun, nobody keeps coming.

Go around at least once per class and give every person positive feedback. With beginners, the most common things I hope to say are “that’s a good pace” or “that’s a good level of playfulness.” We want students out of fight-or-flight mode as quickly as possible.

Beyond that, reinforce perception-action links (“good decision to try that sweep when you saw his elbow cross your centerline”), good movement, and playfulness.

Build bonds. A coach’s job isn’t just to make better grapplers — we want the whole experience to be fun, productive, and sparking curiosity.

MODULE 4: QUIZ & REFLECTION

Placeholder — quiz/reflection content coming soon

Give an example of internal language, external language, and a metaphor for the same coaching situation. Which would you use first and why?

What are the core alignment concepts and mechanical models that all coaches should use consistently?

How would you handle giving feedback to a student who gets defensive every time you offer constructive criticism?

Why is asking a student “what do you see?” more valuable than telling them what to do?

What was your biggest takeaway from the Common Coaching Language podcast?

MODULE 5: CULTURE & ENVIRONMENT

Listen First

No podcasts assigned for this module — just read the sections below.

ENFORCING GYM CULTURE & ETIQUETTE

As a coach, you are responsible for modeling and enforcing gym etiquette when you’re in charge of a class. You’re representing our gym. That means saying something when something unacceptable happens.

You don’t need a long conversation. But you do need to say something.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s a learned skill. It will happen to you. It is part of your job.

I’ve had students talk explicitly about sex on the mats and had to tell them it’s not appropriate. I’ve had students try to coach the whole room during my breaks. I’ve had students hit on trial women. I’ve had visitors tell new people they’re not allowed to ask higher belts to roll.

If you coach long enough, you’ll experience all of these. My expectation: say something in the moment if it’s egregious and everyone needs to see it addressed (like inappropriate talk on the mats). Talk to them individually if it can wait (like hitting on new members) to avoid public shaming.

And if you’re coaching fundamentals, you’ll probably have to tell someone every other class to chill the fuck out.

Culture is maintained through effort. It’s not built in a day.

GETTING PEOPLE TO CHILL OUT

Cues we use to shift students from competing to training:

“We’re fighting injuries, not each other.” Frames games as learning opportunities and reminds them that escalation carries real risk.

“Quit trying to win practice.” I use this when someone’s going too hard. “Hey man, quit trying to win practice, that’s lame.” There’s value in light shaming of ego-driven behavior that risks injury.

“I don’t care if you win a game. I care about how you move.” Tell beginners directly: neither I nor any other coach is watching who wins. We watch movement quality and playfulness, and that’s what we base promotions on.

“Taking your ball and going home.” For loss aversion. Some people — especially beginners and upper belts from other gyms — treat preventing any loss as a win and shut down the entire game. It’s like a dog that takes the ball and hides it in their kennel. Now nobody gets to play.

“You’re the game level designer for your training partner.” When we play games, we’re responsible for adjusting complexity and intensity for our partner. If you win every time instantly, you’ll get bored. If you never win, you’ll get frustrated.

“Adjust complexity or adjust intensity, but never both at the same time.” Gives concrete guidance for how to calibrate. If it’s too hard for them, dial back one. If it’s easy, add one — but not both.

A note about showing beginners we’re playing with them: If a newcomer thinks they’re having competitive rounds with coaches, we need to make clear they’re not. That realization isn’t fun for anyone when it comes too late. I’ll sometimes remind them directly that we’re going maybe 20% — so they understand the dynamic.

WELCOMING NEWCOMERS

This is part hospitality, part setting expectations. I like to address the whole class:

“Hey y’all, we have some new people here. Please show them how playful we are instead of trying to show them how good we are. I don’t care what they think of your skills. I care about your movement quality and playfulness. Be a good representation of our sport and our gym.”

This reminds existing students how to play and takes pressure off them to perform for visitors.

MODULE 5: QUIZ & REFLECTION

Placeholder — quiz/reflection content coming soon

Describe a scenario where you’d address a culture issue in front of the whole class vs pulling someone aside individually. What’s the difference?

Pick three of the “chill out” cues and explain when you’d use each one.

How would you handle a visiting upper belt who’s going too hard and scaring newer students?

Why is it important to address behavior issues even when it’s uncomfortable?

RESOURCES

Books:

Rob Gray — How We Learn to Move
Doug Lemov — Coaches Guide to Coaching

If you want to read either, let me know and I’ll buy you a copy. I’ll also give you $50 per book for reading it and talking to me about your favorite parts.

Rob Gray also has his own podcast — not the best produced, but often informative: Perception & Action Podcast

All podcast episodes referenced in this guide:

Episode	Module	Topic
Ep. 262: Gamification, feat. Rob Biernacki	2	Why and how gamification works in jiu jitsu
Ep. 185: F Your Jiu Jitsu, feat. Rob Biernacki	2	The FYJJ game and self-handicapping
Ep. 378: Repetition and Representation, feat. Cal Jones	2	Quality of reps, PVCT model, designing training that transfers
Ep. 145: The Coach’s Guide to Teaching, feat. Doug Lemov	3	Less is more, coaching language, teaching principles
Ep. 299: Student Assessment, feat. Adam Medlock	3	Assessing student understanding in real time
Ep. 305: Common Coaching Language, feat. Rob Biernacki	4	Building unified coaching vocabulary