I used to fall into the same mind trap a lot of guys who train in any sport do….The “I don’t have time to..” mentality.  I’d reason that I work too long, have too many responsibilities at home, I’m too tired , etc.. Then I read a small article online about the proper use of time management.

The most interesting aspect that stuck out in the article  was an exercise where the author asked you to think about the previous three days of your life and to come up with a rough estimate of the total hours of work , sleep , and necessary activities that you had conducted in that time period .  Things like watching tv, gaming, texting, idle chit chat on the phone and other useless activities were not to be added into the total hours estimated.

After I casually jotted down the prior three days of my life  without being overly accurate, I came to a  startling conclusion…I really had been wasting my time immensely .  Having already figured in the the hours that counted, work , sleep, and real activities, I was left with anywhere from 3 to 5 hrs of complete mind numbing activities that did absolutely nothing for me except distract me from improving my life …

Within that same week I had read the time management article I had also  read about a 45 year old brown belt who had won the California state championship.  When asked about how he managed his time for training  his response was “Everything I do is training for jiu jitsu”.

So what does this all mean to you?   Everything!  Especially if you’re looking for more time to train outside the mats..

Here are my five suggested exercises  for utilizing your wasted time .  I’ll  use your time watching tv as a barometer  mainly because , as Americans, this is what we mostly waste our grey matter on….

1) Hip escapes…..probably the one jiu jitsu drill you should do till you die..

2) Leg circles..not only massively important, but also a great abdominal  exercise…

3) Hip outs…basic wrestling move thats should be done to death.

4) Hip heist….for the uninitiated  this is the old school jiu jitsu drill of standing up if knocked down in an actual street fight…great drill for both street and sport jiu jitsu..

5) Butterfly guard arm drags…I like this drill for two reasons…one, it acts as a good side to to side mobility drill for the butterfly guard and two, it develops good reactionary skills for your arm drags…

Obviously these are just a few of the multitude of drills or exercises  you can utilize, these just happen to be my favorites and seem, for me at least, the ones that help my jiu jitsu game the most.

It all comes down to trying to utilize time in the most efficient manner you can to enhance your training.