Maslow’s Learning Hierarchy in BJJ

A famous psychologist named Abraham Maslow identified four stages that a person goes through when they learn a skill.  Understanding this ladder is crucial to developing students as a BJJ coach.  The four stages that Maslow identified are (adapted to our purpose - BJJ or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) :

1. BJJ Unconscious Incompetence

Formally, this stage is defined as a person being unaware that they can’t perform a certain task.  In a BJJ setting, I think that this starts with YouTube.  Usually, a person will see a technique or a fight on the Internet and think to him or herself “Hey that looks pretty easy.”  So they go and enroll with a martial arts club.

2. BJJ Conscious Incompetence

The student enters the next stage during their first BJJ class when it comes down to actually executing a technique.  Most realize very quickly that though an arm bar or a triangle choke might look easy to execute, doing it actually takes a substantial amount of skill.  During drills they realize that they can’t do many of the movements.

This is commonly sited as the stage that people give up on learning the skill because it causes a considerable amount of frustration.  I think that this is one of the major reasons many people quit this sport early.  I feel that the best way to address this problem is to make it clear from the get go that BJJ can’t be learned in a couple of hours on the mat.  You will struggle and it will suck at times but if you stay with it you will get good.  One of my favorite quotes that helps me out after a crappy day on the mats is: “All a black belt is, is a white belt who never gave up.”

3. BJJ Conscious Competence

This is the stage where a person can actually execute a technique but they still need to think about all the steps involved.  They can apply it when they roll, but it still may be choppy.

4. BJJ Unconscious Competence

In order to move to the next stage, they need to simply keep drilling the technique until they don’t even need to think about what their doing.  Not all techniques a person is shown gets to this stage, but the few that do effectively make up a BJJ fighter’s game. The importance of developing a balanced game should be stressed to student.  This means that not all of the techniques at this stage should start from one position like half guard or mount.  One should aspire to have a solid response for every position in BJJ.

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