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There’s a certain satisfaction in figuring out what kind of jiu jitsu you like.

You have positions you look for, techniques you trust, and a few things you can regularly catch people with. If someone asks what your game is, you can give them an answer.

Then someone shows you something that makes you reconsider your game.

We started this arc by asking when you’re supposed to have a game. I don’t think there’s a particular belt where the answer becomes official. But even when you have a pretty good idea, it helps to leave yourself room to give a different answer later.

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What you call your game comes from the jiu jitsu you’ve experienced so far. Some things worked early. Others took a while. You found positions that suited you, made adjustments, and spent more time on the things you enjoyed.

Those are good reasons to have preferences. They’re also reasons those preferences might change as you learn more.

One of my students didn’t like deep half when he was a white belt. By purple belt, it had become one of his favorite guards. We talked about him at the beginning of this arc, but I think there’s something worth coming back to here.

As his understanding of jiu jitsu grew, he started seeing how deep half fit with other things he knew. He had more options there and understood more of what was happening. The position hadn’t changed, but what he could do with it had.

You might have a few opinions like that yourself. Something you thought was useless starts solving a problem you didn’t know you had. A position you didn’t pay much attention to starts becoming slightly interesting when you discover how it connects to something else.

It can be a little awkward when you have to explain why you get excited about a move after spending any amount of time telling people how much you disliked it before. Fortunately, your training partners will probably be very mature about that. Especially at 608JJ, we’re totally and completely adult about everything we do and talk about.

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Of course, being open to something doesn’t mean you have to keep all of it.

You can spend time learning a technique, understand why it works, and still prefer another option. You might appreciate what someone else does without wanting to build your own jiu jitsu around it.

We just spent a whole blog talking about the things we exclude because they’re “not our game.” That doesn’t mean every move you encounter now needs a permanent place in your game.

There’s a difference between giving something enough attention to make a useful decision and deciding against it halfway through the demonstration.

Sometimes the useful decision is that you need more time to understand it. Sometimes you find one detail worth keeping. You might never use that particular sweep regularly, but the way it controls someone’s balance helps you understand a sweep you already like.

You can also learn enough about a position to deal with the person who keeps putting you there. They’ve made their decision, and now it’s become your problem.

Learning something gives you options. You can decide how much attention to give it without declaring that decision permanent.

Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements

Your game can change without looking entirely different.

You might keep the same favorite submission for years. But the way you reach it, the reactions you anticipate, and the options you have when it doesn’t work can keep developing.

Your partners probably help with that. Eventually, someone figures out how to stop the thing you’ve been doing to them over and over again, and you have to learn a little more.

You could ask them to stop defending it so well, but I haven’t found much success with that.

Sometimes a bigger change happens. You discover a position you want to spend more time in. Something you relied on becomes less comfortable. Your interests shift, or you find a way of moving that makes more sense for you now.

The work you put into your previous preferences still counts. I prefer the top position these days, but the time I spent learning to be a problem in bad positions still helps me. I don’t need to keep choosing bottom to prove that it was worth learning.

And preferring top now doesn’t mean I’ve committed to spending the rest of my jiu jitsu career there.

Making your jiu jitsu your own takes a lot of small decisions. What you practice, what you ask about, what you come back to, and what you’re willing to reconsider and rediscover all have a part in it.

You can decide what you want to work on now without deciding what you’ll want to work on forever.

So if someone asks what your game is, tell them. You don’t need to wait until you’ve tried everything, and you certainly don’t need to apologize if the answer changes.

For now, that’s your game... further updates may be required.

See you on the mats.

Joshua is the owner and head coach at 608 Jiu Jitsu in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. He writes about learning, problem solving, and becoming a better training partner through jiu jitsu.