What to Write in Your BJJ Notes After Class

Good BJJ class notes are short, specific and written soon after training. The question is what to put in them. This guide goes through each part of a single note, what to write in it and what to leave out, and ends with a worked example.

If you are still deciding whether to keep a journal at all, start with how to keep a BJJ journal. This guide assumes you have decided to write and want your notes to be worth rereading.

Aim to write within an hour of class if you can, and otherwise later that day. A few lines are enough.

Session context

Start with the facts that make the rest of the note readable later: the date, gi or no-gi, who taught, and what kind of class it was (fundamentals, advanced, open mat, competition prep).

This takes ten seconds and saves confusion. A grip detail from a gi class may not apply in no-gi. A technique from a fundamentals class may have been taught at a different pace than one from an advanced class. When you search your notes later, this line tells you what you are looking at.

The technique, as a sequence

Write the steps in the order you do them, in your own words. Short steps are better than a polished description.

For a knee cut pass, that might be:

1. Get an underhook or a crossface.
2. Slide your knee across their thigh.
3. Settle your chest and hips down.

Keep to the main steps. If you find yourself writing eight or nine, you are probably recording the whole class rather than the technique. Pick the one or two techniques you want to keep and skip the rest.

Writing the sequence from memory, rather than copying it from a video or a classmate, is useful in its own right. The gaps show you which steps you did not take in. If you cannot remember what comes after the second step, write that down instead of guessing. It is a question for your coach.

The details that made it work

This is the most valuable part of the note. The sequence tells you what to do; the details help you remember what made it work.

Pick the two or three that mattered. Examples:

• Scissor sweep. Pull them forward with your sleeve and collar grips. Put your top shin across their torso. Chop their base with your bottom leg as you turn.
• Cross collar choke. Get a deep first grip on the collar. Then secure the opposite collar with your second hand before you finish.
• Knee cut pass. Keep the crossface tight so they cannot turn in towards you, and keep your back leg posted wide for base as the knee slides.

Good details are things you can check: where a grip goes, which leg does what, when your weight moves. "Be tight" is hard to act on. "Second grip in before I finish" is easy to act on.

If your instructor said something that made the technique click, write it in your own words. You do not need the exact phrasing, only what it changed for you.

What happened in rolling

Note what you tried from the class, what you tried that was not from the class, what worked and what went wrong.

Include the failures. "Got passed whenever they got a knee between my legs" tells you more than "rolled okay". Include the specific position where it went wrong, if you can name it: "stuck in side control, could not get my elbow back inside".

Two or three lines are plenty. If you did not roll, leave this out. If you did, try to include at least one attempt at the technique from class and what happened when you did. That connects the lesson to resistance, which is where you find out whether you understand it. For more on testing techniques against a live partner, see how to remember BJJ techniques.

Questions for your coach

Write down anything you could not do, did not understand or want to see again. Make the question as specific as you can.

• Vague: "Guard passing?"
• Specific: "When I settle my chest down on the knee cut, they keep recovering their knee. Where should my hips be?"

A specific question is easier for your coach to answer in thirty seconds before or after class. It also helps you notice the problem again, because you have already described it.

If you have no questions, leave the field empty. Do not invent one.

One thing to try next time

End every note with a single, concrete goal for your next session. One, not three.

Good goals are small and checkable:

• Get the second collar grip in before finishing the cross collar choke.
• Try the scissor sweep once in each round of positional sparring.
• Frame earlier when they start to pass.

Avoid goals like "get better at guard", which you cannot check afterwards. A good test is whether you could tell, at the end of next class, if you did it or not.

This line is also what you read before your next session. A two-minute look at your last note's goal gives you a plan for the class. Every few weeks, look across notes for repeats: the same question, the same position where you get stuck, the same goal you keep setting.

If typing after class is the part you skip, you can say these fields out loud instead. Jitsu Notes lets you talk through your class by voice on your iPhone and structures it into a note you can search on the web. A notebook or notes app works just as well if you will use it.

An example note

This is an illustrative example of one note, not a record of a real session. It follows the fields above and takes a few minutes to write.

Date: 14 March
Gi
Instructor: Coach A
Class type: advanced
Topic: guard passing

Technique: knee cut pass
1. Underhook or crossface
2. Slide knee across their thigh
3. Settle chest and hips down

Details that worked:
- Crossface tight so they
  can't turn in
- Back leg posted wide for base

Rolling:
- Tried the knee cut twice
- Got it once, from the crossface
- Second time lost the grip
  and they recovered guard
- Got swept when I rushed
  the knee slide

Questions for coach:
- When I settle down, they keep
  recovering their knee.
  Where should my hips be?

Next time:
- Get the crossface in
  before moving my knee

Notice what the example leaves out: the warm-up, the drills and a play-by-play of every round. It records the technique, the details, an honest account of rolling, one question and one goal.