What you can expect when you join BJJ Haarlem is a team that understands that getting better at BJJ is something you do together. It is an active process that is geared towards creating active problem solvers. Our members learn to take ownership of their process and organise their learning around goals.

We have experienced coaches to create the right learning conditions, but instruction doesn’t just flow from the coaches to the students. We want everyone to learn from each other in a dynamic process. One way in which we try to achieve that is by emphasising the importance of giving each other feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

Rather than trying to win, we try to build skill. Our members learn to focus on acquisition of skill through active drills. We believe that learning movements happens in a dynamic setting, that is tailored towards achieving goals while resembling performance conditions as closely as possible. Failure is an indispensable part of this process. Members should want to fail and learn from feedback until they succeed.

Ideally an experienced member enters the mats with their own goals in mind and a clear idea of how to achieve those goals. But when you join a BJJ class for the first time you will soon find yourself lost in a seemingly endless sea of possibilities, which makes that ideal seem very far away.

We understand that BJJ can be overwhelming at first, and that new members need help in navigating the fast waters. To that end we employ drills that teach you to get comfortable in the most common positions relatively fast. We also employ methods in our classes  that allow you to self organise your learning, Rather than ask you to memorise dozens of techniques, we give teach you a handful of specific goals that allow your body to find its own way through a match. This way you learn the fundamentals of the sport in a playful manner.

Depending on how your body moves, certain techniques will suit you better than others. We want people to have a lot of freedom in how they ‘game plan’ (i.e. organise their techniques into a complete strategy). However, we don’t expect you to automatically be able to sort through the large amount of techniques that are available nowadays. To help you take ownership of your game plan we regularly organise special classes dedicated to building a game plan. What you learn in those classes can help you structure your training all the way up to black belt.

In our school we believe that acquiring skill is best achieved under circumstances that resemble performance as closely as possible. Rather than longwinded explanations our classes involve a lot of live drilling.

Ultimately BJJ is a sport in which you try to find efficient ways to impose your will on a resisting training partner. We try to create conditions under which members can find their own ways to do so, without the necessity of memorizing a lot of steps. The result of these choices is that members get a lot of live practice and improve faster.