Taking notes: what separates people who improve from people who log hours
After a year of training you have seen hundreds of details and you remember a handful. That is not a flaw in you: it is how memory works when the volume is high.
BJJ Square · Updated on 08/11/2026
Careful ⚠️ No study has ever tested whether taking notes improves your jiu-jitsu. What follows is common practice and reasoning, not evidence. We say so because on this site we try to keep the two apart.
One indirect clue comes from injury research: when practitioners are asked what happened months earlier, recall accuracy at twelve months is estimated at around 61%. If we forget four injuries out of ten — memorable, painful events — it is reasonable to think technical details fade a good deal faster.
What is worth writing down
Not the technique step by step: that is in a thousand videos. What is worth writing down is what no video contains, which is what happened to you.
- The problem, not the solution. “They always pass my guard when I push with my right foot” is a note that stays useful for six months. “Knee cut” is a word.
- The detail that made the difference. It is almost always tiny: the angle of an elbow, where you are looking, which hand moves first.
- What you tried that did not work, with whom and why. That is half the value, and nobody writes it down.
- The questions to ask, which otherwise evaporate before the next class.
The format that lasts
The one you actually use. Three lines on your phone in the changing room beat a tidy notebook you fill in once and then never again. Consistency counts more than structure, and any system that takes twenty minutes will be abandoned within a month.
Note A minimal format that works: date, who with, what did not work, one thing to try next time. Four fields, two minutes.
What it is really for
Two things, both of them important at blue belt, when progress stops being visible. The first is seeing the progress: rereading a note from six months ago and realising you no longer have that problem is proof that something is moving. The second is having a goal when you walk in: somebody who arrives with a specific question uses their six minutes of sparring differently from somebody who just arrives.
It also gives you what you need to use the most efficient training method there is: drilling, rolling and positional sparring.
Frequently asked questions
- Is it worth taking notes in BJJ?
- There is no study that demonstrates it. It is common practice, though, and one indirect clue comes from injury research, where recall accuracy at twelve months is estimated at around 61%.
- What should you write in your jiu-jitsu notes?
- Mainly the problems you ran into and what did not work, plus the detail that made the difference and the questions you want to ask. The technique itself is available everywhere; what happened to you is not.
- What is the best format?
- The one you actually use: three lines on your phone straight after training are worth more than a tidy notebook filled in once. A minimal format: date, who with, what did not work, what to try next time.
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