Hi everyone,

This is a document I put together as a way for students of mine to self-assess (with input from me) their knowledge and application of BJJ fundamentals, based on the fundamentals curriculum I put together a while ago. I wanted to share it here freely in case anyone else wanted to use a similar system. This was based off a video done by Ryan Young from Kama Jiu-Jitsu on YouTube. Essentially, students rate themselves from 0 (I don't know what this is) to 5 (I am amazing at this and catch upper belts with this) in terms of positions, escapes, passes, submissions, and sweeps. It is not an exhaustive list of every possible technique, and an omission on my part is the leglock game.

The idea of this is the student could use this to mark out what they believe they are good at, what they are OK at, what they suck at, and what they do not know at all. Part of this as well is for them to be honest - if they rank themselves as awesome at everyone, yeah that's cool, but that doesn't help them grow.

It's for those students who want some guidance on what they should be working on and who want to use it. I don't expect all students to want to do this. This gets brought out when students ask me what I think they should be working on. It can also serve as a journal or progress tracker of sorts, e.g. "hey a few months ago I was a 2 at cross-collar chokes, now my coach thinks I'm at 4 on this!".

It is not meant to be a definitive guide for when someone is ready for the next belt, but it could help provide direction to getting there. It's also not meant to replace stripes or anything like that. Put simply, if someone wants some guidance on what they should be working on, this can help point the way.

It's free for anyone to adapt and use as they see fit. Please feel free to make it your own if you'd like to use it.

The link to it is here: https://1drv.ms/w/c/f3379[...]g?e=hi7np0

Thanks for sharing

Thank you Sir!

Thank you! For me personally, especially as a beginner, it is a very good orientation to find out where I am with my BJJ knowledge, what strengths I have and what I should still work on.

I posted this a year ago, and since then I've updated this self-assessment document. Link is here (and updated in the original post): https://1drv.ms/w/c/f3379[...]g?e=hi7np0. If the link doesn't work, let me know and I'll see if I can send it to whoever is interested via another method.

The main differences between when I first posted and now are I've added more of an explainer at the beginning about what the document is, including how blue belts and above can (and imo should) modify the document. I've also included some information about leglocks in positions (e.g. ashi, honey hole), subs, and entries. Leglocks are not my forte, though, so it might be a bit lacklustre.

A few of my previous students have said this has helped them set directions in their own training, particularly when they get to around blue belt and are unsure where to go next. For them, I direct them to look at anything that is 3 or below in the self-assessment and try to push it to a 4, or even perhaps a 5. So rather than focussing on accumulating yet more different submissions and passes, starting to go in depth on the techniques. I've added a note in the document for blue belts to add a table or similar for them to assess fluidity of chaining techniques together. Since there are practically infinite combinations, I didn't bother trying to include them. I think it is incredibly important for practitioners, once they reach a certain level of foundational skills, to begin assessing themselves as honestly as they can and start setting directions for themselves with input from their coach(es).

As before, and as always, this document is free for anyone to use and adapt how they see fit. I've got no ego about it whatsoever and I'm happy for people to use it for any purpose they like as I enjoy sharing tools that help people direct their learning. In my day job, I work at a university designing university degrees, so I thought I could put that knowledge to use for BJJ in a small way.

Thanks Professor. I believe this will be a great addition or replacement to my current system of reflection already in place. Do you have something similar for tracking comp matches? In my current spreadsheet there are columns for how the match ended (points or submission type), school, competitor name, notes, etc. but I could see merits of tracking what happens in matches in greater detail.

Not yet, it's something I can give some time and thought to and will post here. I think it's a good idea!

Hi everyone, I've updated the above based on feedback - I've added in a section on transitions (e.g. side control to mount), as well as a section on takedowns. As always, please feel free to use this doc / adapt it how you like and so on. I've also written a beginners BJJ curriculum as well that ties in with this.