Preparing for the Winter IBJJF Season: A 10-Week Study and Drilling Plan

TL;DR. The winter IBJJF season rewards grapplers who plan backwards from competition day. Use a 10-week block: weeks 1–2 for game selection and film study, weeks 3–6 for focused drilling of a small A-game, weeks 7–8 for live pressure testing, and weeks 9–10 for taper, cutting weight safely and mental rehearsal. Study fewer techniques, revise them often, and drill the specific sequences you plan to hit. A structured library of notes beats scrolling YouTube the week before you compete.

Winter IBJJF opens the calendar for a lot of grapplers — Europeans, Pans qualifiers, and a wave of local opens leading into the season. Whether you're chasing points at a major or stepping onto the mat for the first time at a regional, the difference between showing up prepared and showing up hopeful is almost always structure. Not intensity. Not a magical new submission. Structure.

This is a practical 10-week study and drilling plan for the winter IBJJF season. It assumes you train 3–5 times a week at a legit academy, you have a coach, and you're serious enough about competing that you'll actually follow a schedule. It won't turn you into a world champion in ten weeks. It will get you on the mat with a clear game, a sharp gas tank, and techniques you can actually remember under stress.

Why the winter season deserves a real plan

Most hobbyists prep for tournaments the same way: they train a bit harder for two weeks, watch a lot of YouTube in the last week, and hope for the best. Then they gas out in match one, forget the sequence they "knew," and go home frustrated.

The problem isn't effort. It's that they treat prep as a vibe instead of a project. The winter IBJJF season is long enough that you can actually build something. Ten weeks is enough time to:

• Pick a narrow game and get genuinely competent in it.
• Fix one obvious hole (usually the guard pass or the escape you always get stuck in).
• Build a competition gas tank that survives a bracket, not just one round.
• Learn to compete — pace, referee awareness, points strategy — instead of just roll.

Ten weeks is also short enough that you can't afford to waste it. That's why the block below is broken into four phases, each with a different job.

The 10-week block at a glance

Weeks	Phase	Primary focus	Study load	Drilling load	Live load
1–2	Assessment & game selection	Choose your A-game, film-study your positions	High	Light–moderate	Moderate
3–6	Deep drilling block	Reps on your A-game sequences and one hole	Moderate	Heavy	Moderate
7–8	Pressure testing	Positional sparring, comp-simulation rounds	Light	Moderate	Heavy
9	Sharpen	Timing, clean reps, opening exchanges	Light	Moderate	Moderate
10	Taper & compete	Recovery, weight management, mental rehearsal	Very light	Light	Very light

Everything else in this article expands one of those rows.

Weeks 1–2: Assessment and game selection

Most people skip this phase because it feels like they're not "training." That's exactly why they don't improve.

Do this in week 1:

• Write down every position you actually spend time in during rolling. Not the ones you wish you played — the ones you actually end up in.
• Note which positions you win from, which you survive in, and which you leak points from.
• Pick a top game (usually one guard) and a bottom game escape you trust.
• Pick one obvious hole you'll fix (e.g., "I always get passed to knee-on-belly").

Do this in week 2:

• Watch competition footage — yours if you have any, otherwise IBJJF matches at your belt and weight. Look for the sequences that keep repeating.
• Build a small library of the specific techniques you plan to use. Not "the whole triangle system" — the two entries you'll actually try.
• Write short notes on each one. Steps, common mistakes, the detail that makes it work.

If you use a notes system (physical notebook, Notion, or an app like BJJ Memo), this is where it earns its keep. Turning YouTube instructionals into structured, revisable cards is the difference between "I watched it" and "I can find it again in ten seconds the night before training."

Remember. The goal of weeks 1–2 isn't to learn new things. It's to define what you're going to be good at on competition day. Narrow beats broad every single time.

Weeks 3–6: The deep drilling block

This is the meat of the prep. Four weeks is enough to make a technique feel automatic if you drill it correctly and often.

A weekly template

Adjust to your schedule, but a realistic training week during this block looks like:

• Session 1: Warm-up → 20–30 minutes of focused drilling on one A-game sequence → positional sparring from that position → light rolls.
• Session 2: Class technique (whatever your coach teaches) → drilling → normal rolls.
• Session 3: Drill your "hole" position → positional sparring from the bad spot → rolls.
• Session 4 (optional): Open mat. Free drilling with a training partner on your sequences.
• Session 5 (optional): Conditioning or extra rolling.

How to drill so it sticks

• Drill in short, focused sets. A dozen quality reps with a resisting partner is worth more than a hundred lazy ones.
• Increase resistance progressively across a session: no resistance → 25% → 50% → live from that position.
• End every drilling block by writing down what changed. One line: "Grip has to break before the leg swings." That one line is what you'll revise later.
• Revise your notes the night before training. Ten minutes. This is where retention lives.

If you're studying video during this block, be ruthless. One 20-minute instructional dissected into two clean cards is more useful than five hours of scrolling. See our guide on how to study BJJ instructionals for a workflow.

Remember. Drilling isn't cardio. If you're winded from your drilling reps, you're not drilling — you're sparring badly.

Weeks 7–8: Pressure testing

By week seven, your A-game should feel familiar. Now you find out if it actually works when someone is trying to smash you.

Shift the emphasis from drilling volume to live volume. Specifically:

• Positional sparring rounds starting from your A-game position and your one hole. 3–5 minute rounds, hard.
• Comp-simulation rounds at match length for your division (5 minutes for adult white belt, 6 for blue, 7 for purple, 8 for brown/black in IBJJF adult gi). Do them back-to-back with short rests to simulate a bracket.
• Different partners. Ideally including bigger, smaller, and fresher training partners than you.
• Score-aware rolling. Track advantages, sweeps, passes. Learn what your game scores.

Expect to feel worse before you feel better. The first week of hard pressure testing usually exposes the gap between "I know this" and "I can hit this on a fresh brown belt." That gap is why you started ten weeks out.

Week 9: Sharpen

One week out from the competition, you stop trying to build. You start trying to preserve.

• Keep drilling, but shorter and cleaner. No new techniques.
• Reduce live rounds. Two or three hard rolls per session is plenty.
• Rehearse first exchanges. What's your opening grip? Your first pull? Your first pass attempt? Have answers, not vibes.
• Watch a small amount of your own competition-simulation footage if you have it. Look for one thing to fix, not five.
• Sleep. Eat normally. Don't test anything new on your body — supplements, diets, or training methods.

Week 10: Taper and compete

The final week is about arriving fresh, on weight, and mentally clear.

Training

• Two light sessions early in the week: flow rolling, drilling reps, mobility.
• One optional very light session two days out.
• No hard rolls in the last 72 hours. This is not the week to prove anything in the gym.

Weight cut

• Aim to be within 1–2% of your division weight by the start of week 10. Anything more aggressive is a red flag.
• Cut water slowly and rehydrate immediately after weigh-ins if IBJJF rules allow at your event (check the specific event — many IBJJF opens weigh you in shortly before your division).
• Do not dehydrate hard for a gi tournament. Grip endurance is one of the first things to go, and gi jiu-jitsu is grip-heavy.

Mental rehearsal

• The night before, revise your short notes on your A-game and your first exchanges. Not new material. Familiar material.
• Visualize the first thirty seconds of your first match. Grip, pull, first attack. That's it.
• Pack your gi, backup gi, mouthguard, and IBJJF-legal rashguard/shorts the night before. Print your registration.

Study vs drilling vs rolling: what each is actually for

Grapplers mix these three up constantly. During a competition prep, it helps to be brutally clear about what each one is doing for you.

Activity	What it's for	What it's NOT for
Study (video + notes)	Choosing techniques, understanding details, revising before training	Building reflexes
Drilling	Building the motor pattern for a specific sequence	Testing whether it works
Positional sparring	Testing a sequence under resistance from a fixed start	Learning new techniques
Free rolling	General problem-solving, gas tank, chaos exposure	Building your A-game (too random)

If your prep is all rolling and no drilling, your A-game will never sharpen. If it's all drilling and no rolling, you'll gas out at the tournament. If it's all study and no mat time, none of it matters. You need all three, weighted differently in each phase.

Retention: the piece almost everyone skips

The honest reason most hobbyists don't have a real competition game is not that they don't train enough. It's that they forget almost everything they learn. A detail your coach gives you on a Tuesday is often gone by the following Tuesday, so you never build on it.

The fix is boring: short notes, revised often.

• After class, write two or three lines on what you learned. Not paragraphs — lines.
• Before your next session, spend five minutes re-reading last week's notes.
• Once a week, skim everything you've noted in the past month.

Doing this for the full ten weeks compounds. By week nine, you have a personal manual of your own game to review the night before competition. That's what BJJ Memo is built for — turning YouTube videos and class details into a library of technique cards you can actually find and revise, instead of a graveyard of "I'll remember this" thoughts.

Common mistakes in a winter comp prep

• Learning a brand-new submission in week 8. You will not hit it. Trust the game you built.
• Adding conditioning on top of a full training week. Jiu-jitsu is the conditioning. Extra cardio is a garnish, not the meal.
• Cutting weight aggressively for a local open. Not worth it. Compete a division up if it's close.
• Sparring hard in week 10. You gain nothing and risk everything.
• Skipping the study phase. Without it, you don't have a game — you have a wish list.

Remember. You compete with the game you built in weeks 1–8. Weeks 9–10 are for preserving it, not upgrading it.

Frequently asked questions

How many hours a week do I need to train for a winter IBJJF prep?

A realistic hobbyist prep is 3–5 sessions a week of jiu-jitsu, plus 20–30 minutes of study/notes on non-training days. More is fine if your body handles it; less is fine if your sessions are focused. Consistency across ten weeks matters more than heroic weeks.

Should I compete in a smaller tournament during my ten-week block?

If your target is a major, a smaller local open around week 6 or 7 is excellent stress-testing. Treat it as a rehearsal, not the goal. If your target IS the local open, don't add another one on top — you'll compete tired.

How do I pick my A-game if I'm still a white belt?

Pick the position you already end up in most often and enjoy the most. For most white belts that's closed guard on the bottom and some form of headquarters or knee-cut pass on top. Get good at what you're already doing before you chase new systems.

Is it okay to learn from YouTube instructionals during comp prep?

Yes — but selectively. In weeks 1–2, use video to sharpen the sequences you already chose. From week 3 onward, stop introducing new material and use video only to reinforce what you're drilling. Capturing those videos as structured notes (in a notebook or an app like BJJ Memo) keeps them useful instead of forgotten.

How do I taper without feeling flat on competition day?

Reduce volume, not movement. Keep drilling and flow rolling in the final week so your body stays sharp, but drop the hard live rounds. Most people feel a bit slow on the Friday before a Sunday competition and great by warm-up. That's normal.

What if I get injured during the ten weeks?

Talk to your coach and a medical professional immediately, and adjust the plan honestly. A minor tweak in week 4 usually means dropping intensity for a week; a real injury in week 8 might mean pulling out of this event and aiming at the next one. Competing hurt for a local open is rarely worth it.

Closing note

A structured winter IBJJF prep isn't glamorous. It's picking a small game, drilling it more than feels interesting, testing it under fatigue, and arriving healthy. Do that, and your competition day feels less like a lottery and more like a rehearsal.

For real feedback and safety, train the techniques in this plan at a legit academy with a qualified coach — this article helps you organize your prep, it doesn't replace mat time or coaching.

When you're studying instructionals or reviewing class notes for your prep, save each technique as a card in BJJ Memo so you can revise your game the night before training — and the night before you compete. Available on iOS and Android.

Last updated 2026-09-24.