How to Pick a Game Plan as a Blue Belt Without Wasting Months
TL;DR. New blue belts often spend months drifting between guards and submissions, learning everything and retaining nothing. A real game plan starts with one top position, one bottom position, and two submissions you can chain. Spend 5–15 minutes daily revising those four pieces, drill them every class, and audit your choices at week four. The goal isn't a perfect plan — it's a plan you can actually run for 90 days.
Getting your blue belt feels like permission to finally have opinions about jiu-jitsu. The problem is that the opinions come at you from every direction: your favorite instructor swears by lasso, your coach drills pressure passing, your training partner just bought a leg lock course, and your YouTube feed is pushing wrestle-up systems. Most new blue belts respond by trying to learn all of it. Six months later, they've watched twenty hours of instructionals and their game feels exactly the same as it did at white belt — scattered.
This article is for the blue belt who's ready to pick a lane. Not forever. For 90 days. Long enough that something actually sticks.
Key takeaways
- A blue belt game plan should start with four anchors: one top game, one bottom guard, one guard-based submission, and one top-position submission.
- Pick positions based on what already works for you in rolling, not what looks impressive on Instagram.
- Five to fifteen minutes of daily revision beats a two-hour weekend study session you never repeat.
- The most common failure is swapping your game every two weeks — commit for 90 days before changing anchors.
- Drill your chosen positions every class, even when the class technique is unrelated, by using open mat and warm-ups.
- Track which positions you actually reach in live rolls — your real game is what shows up under pressure, not what you planned on paper.
- Your game plan at blue belt is a starting point, not a cage. Purple belt is when you expand it.
The specific constraint of being a new blue belt
White belts have a built-in excuse: survive. Purple belts have a game, even if they can't always articulate it. The blue belt sits in the middle, and that's where the drift happens. You know enough to try anything, but not enough to know what suits you. You've heard "build a game" repeated so often it's become a cliché, but no one tells you what that actually means on a Tuesday night when class is teaching knee cut and you wanted to work on butterfly guard.
Your constraint isn't technique knowledge — it's decision fatigue. Every roll presents fifty forks in the road, and at blue belt you can reason about all of them, which paralyzes you. The game plan is what collapses those forks into a handful of default moves that run on autopilot.
So the framework is deliberately small. Four anchors, not forty:
| Anchor | What it is | Example choices |
|---|---|---|
| Top game | How you pass or stay on top | Toreando, leg drag, knee cut, pressure passing |
| Bottom guard | Your default when on your back | Closed guard, half guard, butterfly, de la Riva |
| Guard submission | Your go-to tap from the bottom | Triangle, armbar, kimura, guillotine |
| Top submission | Your go-to tap from top or back | Rear naked choke, cross collar from mount, armbar from mount |
Four anchors. That's it. Everything else is bonus. If someone asks you "what's your game?" you should be able to say "I play half guard, I pass with the leg drag, I chase kimuras from the bottom and rear naked chokes from the back." That's a game plan.
How to actually pick each anchor
Don't pick based on what's trending. Pick based on data you already have — your own rolls over the past three months. Ask yourself:
- Which guard do I end up in by accident when I'm tired? That's a candidate.
- Which pass has actually worked for me, even once, against a resisting training partner? Build on that.
- Which submission have I tapped someone with more than three times? That's your real submission, not the one you want it to be.
If the honest answer is "none of them really work," then pick positions that fit your body. Long-limbed grapplers often thrive in open guards and chokes using length. Shorter, stockier players usually do better with half guard and close-contact passing. Don't fight your frame.
Remember. Your game plan isn't aspirational. It's a commitment to invest your mat time in positions you'll actually reach. Picking the "coolest" guard you never play is how blue belts waste a year.
A daily 5–15 minute structure
Most blue belts fail at this stage because they imagine "building a game" means sitting down for two hours on Sunday to watch instructionals. That almost never happens, and when it does, you forget most of it by Tuesday. The alternative is boring and effective: a tiny daily ritual.
Here's a structure that fits in the gaps of a normal week:
5-minute version (minimum effective dose). Open your notes or technique library. Read one card about one of your four anchors. Visualize the move once, slowly. Close the app. Done.
10-minute version. Same as above, then watch 2–3 minutes of one specific detail from an instructional or YouTube clip related to that anchor. Write one sentence about what you want to try next class.
15-minute version. All of the above, plus 3–5 minutes of solo movement — shrimping, bridging, hip escapes, or the specific footwork of your pass. On weekends, swap this for 15 minutes of rewatching one of your rolls (phone propped on the mat during open mat is enough).
The key is the cadence, not the length. Daily beats weekly. Short beats thorough. If you miss a day, you resume the next day — you don't try to "catch up" with a monster session.
Where to anchor the ritual
Attach it to something you already do. Morning coffee, the train ride home, the five minutes before you put your gi on in the changing room. The goal is that you don't have to "find time" for it — the time is already there, you're just filling it with revision instead of scrolling.
The common failure pattern (and the fix)
Here's the pattern that kills more blue belt game plans than anything else: you pick your four anchors, you commit, you drill them for two weeks, and then you get smashed in a roll by someone using a completely different system. You go home, watch a YouTube video about their system, and now you want to switch.
Two weeks later, same thing happens. New smash, new system, new fascination.
This is the shiny new guard problem, and it's the single biggest waste of time at blue belt. You never give any system long enough to stress-test it against live resistance. You confuse "this didn't work tonight" with "this doesn't work." Those are completely different claims.
The fix: the 90-day commitment rule
Once you pick your four anchors, write a date 90 days from now. Until that date, you don't change them. You can add details, you can refine your grips, you can learn a new entry — but the anchors are fixed. No new guards. No new submission obsessions.
When the 90 days end, you audit. Honestly:
- Did I reach this position in live rolls at least once a session? If not, why — is it my choice, or is my game not actually funneling me there?
- Did I finish my submission on a resisting partner at least a few times? If not, is it a mechanics issue or a setup issue?
- Am I getting smashed in a position my anchors should cover? What's the gap?
After the audit, you can swap one anchor — not all four. This forces you to actually reason about your game rather than chase novelty. For a deeper version of this process, our New Year audit framework walks through a similar annual reset, and it's worth adapting to your 90-day cycle.
Remember. Boredom is a sign the plan is working. If your game plan feels exciting every week, you're probably switching it too often. Deep players run the same moves for years and keep finding new layers.
The BJJ Memo feature that actually helps here
The single thing that breaks most game plans isn't motivation — it's memory. You decide you're going to play half guard, you learn three details, and by the next class you've forgotten the grip sequence. The next time you remember is when you lose a roll in half guard and go "oh right, I was supposed to work on that."
BJJ Memo's Technique Card library organized by position is the feature built for exactly this. You paste a BJJ YouTube video into the app, it turns the instructional into a structured card with the key steps, details, and tappable timestamps, and you file it under the position it belongs to — say, "Half Guard — Bottom." Over a few weeks, each of your four anchors becomes a small folder of cards you actually built, not a Chrome bookmark folder you'll never reopen.
Then, during your 5–15 minute daily ritual, you don't have to decide what to revise. You open your "Half Guard — Bottom" folder, pick the top card, and read it. The friction is gone. That's the entire point.
If you want to see how this compares to other formats, we've written honestly about BJJ Memo vs a paper notebook vs phone notes — none of them are magic, but the one you actually open is the one that works.
A sample 7-day plan
This is a template, not a prescription. Assume someone who trains three times a week (Monday / Wednesday / Friday) and has picked: leg drag (top), half guard knee shield (bottom), kimura from half guard (guard sub), rear naked choke (top sub).
| Day | What to do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Class. In warm-up, drill knee shield re-pummel 10x. In rolling, try to reach half guard every time you're on bottom. | Class + 5 min |
| Tuesday | Open your half guard card folder. Read the top card. Visualize the kimura setup once. | 5 min |
| Wednesday | Class. In open mat after class, drill the leg drag entry on a willing partner. Film 30 seconds if possible. | Class + 10 min |
| Thursday | Rewatch the clip from Wednesday. Compare to the card. Write one sentence about what to fix. | 10 min |
| Friday | Class. Specifically chase the rear naked choke whenever you reach the back. Count successes and failures. | Class + 5 min |
| Saturday | Longer session: watch 10 minutes of a focused instructional on one anchor. Add one new detail card. | 15 min |
| Sunday | Rest or light movement. Read through the four anchor folders — just a glance. Reset for the week. | 5 min |
Total non-mat time: well under an hour across the week. That's the budget. If you can't commit to that, your game plan isn't going to hold together — not because of jiu-jitsu, but because of math.
What to do at class when the technique doesn't fit your plan
You still learn it. You don't ignore class. But in rolling and in free drilling, you funnel toward your anchors. When side control is the class technique and your bottom game is half guard, you learn the side control escape, drill it, and then during rolling you work to reach half guard from wherever the roll starts. The class content becomes a bonus, not a replacement for your plan.
For more on getting the most out of each class even when the content doesn't align with your game, our guide on what to do after every BJJ class covers the post-training capture habit that makes everything above easier.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I stick with my first blue belt game plan?
Commit for at least 90 days before changing any anchor. Blue belts routinely abandon systems after two bad rolls, which is far too little data. Ninety days is enough time to see whether the problem is the system or the execution — and in most cases, it's the execution.
What if I pick a position and realize I hate it?
That's useful information — but "hate" after a week of resistance is normal. If you still genuinely dislike the position after a full month of honest effort, swap that one anchor at your next 90-day audit. Don't swap mid-cycle; it trains the habit of quitting at the first discomfort.
Should I pick a guard based on my favorite competitor?
Only if your body and your natural rolling tendencies already lean that way. Copying a top competitor's game wholesale rarely works — they built that game around their specific attributes, training partners, and years of refinement. Pick positions that fit you, then study how your favorite competitor plays them.
Can I have more than one top game or one bottom game at blue belt?
You can, but you probably shouldn't. The whole point of the four-anchor framework is to reduce decision fatigue. Once each anchor feels automatic — usually a year or more — you can add a secondary option. Trying to run two bottom guards at blue belt means you run neither well.
What if my academy doesn't teach the position I picked?
Most academies rotate through fundamentals, so eventually your position will come up. In the meantime, you can work your anchor in open mat, in positional sparring, and in your 5–15 minute daily ritual. If a position is genuinely never covered, consider whether another anchor in a similar family might be a better fit — for example, if de la Riva isn't taught but open guard variations are, start from what's accessible.
How is this different from just picking submissions to focus on?
Submissions without positions are lottery tickets. If you pick "I want to focus on triangles" but don't pick the guard that funnels you there, you'll hit triangles by accident at best. Our article on picking one submission to focus on is a great complement to this one — use it alongside the position-first framework here, not instead of it.
Before your next class
Pick your four anchors tonight. Write them in a note or a card. Mark 90 days on your calendar. Then, next time you watch a BJJ video, save it to the folder for the anchor it belongs to — BJJ Memo will turn it into a structured technique card you can revise in the five minutes before class. That's the whole system: pick, commit, revise, audit. Boring. Repeatable. Blue-belt-proof.
For real feedback and safety, train the technique at a legit academy with a qualified coach — BJJ Memo helps you remember and revise, it doesn't replace mat time.
Last updated 2026-11-04.