Continuums and Progressions

How you structure your practice often matters more than what you practice. This is where the distinction between a continuum and a progression becomes vital.

At first glance, they appear similar. Both involve repeated practice, and both can contain drilling, movement, and sparring. Yet they serve profoundly different purposes—and understanding that difference can transform your development.

A continuum is about maintenance and refinement. It’s a fluid set of movements or drills that keep your body and mind in contact with core mechanics—think hip escapes, grip pummeling, or positional retention. These movements are not necessarily designed to create something new, but rather to preserve fluency in essential actions. They maintain readiness. They are your scaffolding.

A progression, by contrast, is directional. It’s a curated series of tasks designed to build from simplicity to complexity, from theory to application. Progressions answer the question: What comes next? They are crafted with end goals in mind—technical mastery, strategic understanding, or performance under pressure.

Think of it as the difference between being vs. becoming. The continuum reflects where you are now—an experienced practitioner refining their movement, a beginner drilling basics. It keeps you grounded in reality. But a progression represents what you are becoming. It asks more of you. It challenges your assumptions, adds resistance, and introduces problems you must solve, not just movements you must repeat.

Both are essential. But confusion arises when we mistake one for the other—when we believe that repeating guard recovery drills (a continuum) is the same as developing a guard retention game against a standing passer (a progression). One preserves your current level. The other builds the next.

A complete approach requires both. The continuum keeps the system alive; the progression evolves it.

So ask yourself not just what you’re doing, but why. Are you maintaining fluency—or expanding your skill set? The best practitioners do both. The practitioner preserves movement. The architect builds toward mastery.