Consistency

Take a step every day to improve your Jiu-Jitsu, even if that step is small.

The key to continuous improvement in Jiu-Jitsu is consistency in your learning, not intensity.  Ensure that you do something every single day to improve your Jiu-Jitsu.

If you can't train every day (and most of us can't), do something smaller, such as:

• watching an instructional video
• studying competition footage
• meditative drilling
• writing a Jiu-Jitsu diary
• reviewing old diary entries or class notes
• reviewing old techniques using spaced repetition.

Your objective here is to ensure Jiu-Jitsu is always top of mind.  You want to make Jiu-Jitsu a daily routine, even on the days you're not training.

I've found that when Jiu-Jitsu takes up a permanent residence in my daily routine:

• I'm much less likely to lapse in my training
• I find it easier to memorize techniques
• my subconscious is better able to digest what I've learned.

It's especially important to remember that the longer you lapse in your training, the harder it is to get back into it.  Anyone who's had a long layoff knows what I'm talking about.  Taking small, consistent, daily steps in your training will help keep Jiu-Jitsu in your routine when you're not available to train.

Of course, in addition to these small and consistent activities, you also want to maximize your training time.  Anecdotally speaking, I've found it's hard to get better when you're only training twice a week.  I've always been more motivated, and learned faster, when training closer to 4-7 times a week.  In my opinion, the gains from a four-days-per-week training schedule are more than double that of a two-days-per-week schedule.

That said, this kind of training schedule is not a luxury everyone can afford.  So the take-away here is: if your training time is limited, prioritize consistency over total hours trained.