A week or so ago flo grappling hosted Keenan Cornelius on their podcast. Their interview was a great opportunity to get some insight into the mind and thoughts of a great grappler. Their next episode featured Gordon Ryan and it was another gem. He shared many different topics from structuring an adcc style practice, personal adaptation, pre match rituals, and more.

I really identified with the idea that the best grappler develops as a result of knowing and understanding technique and positions. I think this is one of the most important skills to develop. However, I like to think of jiujitsu as a cumulation of several different skills.

It’s important to understand that there are different silos of skill involved in jiujitsu and grappling competition. Here are a few main ones:

• Technique
• Strength
• Conditioning
• Mobility / Flexibility
• Adaptability
• Mental toughness
• Focus
• Hustle

Each silo is a gauge and your cumulative score is a reflection of your overall potential. That’s why you see people who are technically better lose to someone stronger sometimes. But that’s also why you’ll see someone way stronger lose to a person with great technique.

The difficulty in all of this is in understanding how much time and energy should be spent in developing and perfecting the different silos of skill. I believe the most important skill to develop is the technical skill. Here is one experience I saw when you don’t know what silo needs to be developed.

I remember watching a wrestler lose a match based on one position, untrained in a very specific defensive skill. His coach insisted on being tough, as the answer to the problem. Sure enough, he lost in the finals to the same wrestler with the same technique. I was surprised to see this relatively high level wrestler thinking that toughness was the solution to the problem. He was already tough, that silo was plenty full and adding to it was, in a way, diminishing returns.

Instead, he needed to work on adding to his technique silo to beat that specific opponent. If you’re a competitor you should be assessing your skill silos and improving them as needed. Competition is feedback. How did you perform in each of these silos? Consciously making improvements in different areas will give you an opportunity to catch up or distance the gap between you and others.