My palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there’s vomit on my gi already, mom’s spaghetti. I’m nervous, but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs, but I keep on forgetting what I planned out, the whole crowd goes so loud. I reach to make grips, but the technique won’t come out. I’m choking. And everybody’s joking now. The clocks run out, times up, over, BOW!
This pretty sums up all my competition experience. Some competitions I did well, and others I’ve felt like a different person on the mat, but all share that common feeling of haze and disorientation. On the day before competing, my blood pressure is elevated and my stomach churns. On competition day, my mouth gets dry and my shoulders are typical sore from being tense. Worst feeling is in the bullpen. My head spins, I begin blinking a lot due to my eyes feeling dry. Only after all my matches are done do I feel a wave of enormous relief.
So why do I put myself through this torture?
First, I immensely enjoy training leading up to the competition. Having a goal and a sense of purpose makes every training session satisfying. I take this time to critique and improve my techniques. By video recording my rolls, I can analyze my efficiency and also identify missed opportunities. You can also take snippets of the video to ask your coach when troubleshooting. Often people will ask their coaches regarding a position and fail to include details that gave them problems. As a result, your coach may respond with a general answer or concept about that position and may add little improvement to your game until you’ve understood the nuances that had made it problematic for you in the first place. But if you were to provide a clip of the position, your coach can identify these details and provide specific corrections. When I first began recording my rolls, I was very reluctant since I didn’t want to appear vain, but once you see yourself in action and can become critical about your own performance, you’ll quickly see how powerful this tool can be for your training. Everyone believes they have a plan, but how are you able to identify and measure your objectives if you don’t have a basis to assess?
So after all this time studying and training, I want to test my abilities. It’s difficult to make that assessment in the academy since you get accustom to all your training partners’ strategies and there’s a comfort level of being “home”. Competing adds levels of stress that simply cannot be replicated in your gym.
So I reflect and ask myself, why does competing get me distressed? I mean, I love Jiu Jitsu and enjoy rolling with visitors that come to our academy. Is it the fear of losing? Perhaps. When I first started Jiu Jitsu, I knew I was going to get my butt whooped. I’m not a big guy so I pretty much expected it. However, the professor at my academy is my size, and after witnessing him roll with others much bigger and heavier than him, it was clear my small stature can also be effective with this skill. I believe being one of the smaller guys, sped my progression because I had to heavily rely on the science and techniques with little margin for error. But as you get a trend of success, it’s natural to want to keep that momentum going. As a white belt, I had no expectations. I’d roll with everyone assuming I’d get submitted or dominated. When I was promoted to blue belt, something happened. At first, losing was starting to matter to me and after watching my recorded rolls, I’ve started to see a pattern that the fear of losing impacted my performance. I was afraid to go for opportunities in the event it didn’t work and I’d be in a worse situation or get tapped. During that period, I was selective with whom I’d roll because I wanted to get back to that trend of success since to me correlated progression. It eventually dawned on me that I was sabotaging my own Jiu Jitsu enjoyment. I realized that I’d avoid someone because I was afraid to lose. In your mind you may think you don’t want your teammates to think less of you. However, whenever you see an upper belt get submitted by a lower belt, do you think less of the upper belt? It’s reversed. I applaud how much the lower belt is improving. After I arrived to this epiphany, anytime I was reluctant to roll with someone, I’d shake it off. One way of overcoming it was I simply waiting in the middle of the mat when a round was about to start. Therefore, I don’t choose. Granted, I’m still selective when nursing an injury, but since I’ve returned to that mindset when I first started, it just further intensified my passion for Jiu Jitsu.
I suppose some people don’t want their coaches to see them lose since it may affect their chances for promotion. If you are worried about this, that stress will be amplified with the next belt rank. Before I was promoted to purple belt, I was thoroughly enjoying my blue belt. With my last blue belt competition, I placed gold and silvered in the no-gi advance division. After I lost in no-gi, I didn’t fear losing in the gi division since in my mind, I lost already…and some of the anxiety ebbed when I started the gi division. And as a result of less stress, I’ve performed closer to my capabilities.
I was extremely surprised with my purple belt promotion, and with my first competition at purple, the anxiety was the worst I’ve ever felt. My professor wouldn’t have promoted me if he felt my skills were not capable to compete at this level. Was my anxiety competing due to the fear of losing? Perhaps. Hence my desire to do what I hate. It’s not hating the competition itself, but the anxiety I get from it. And the only way to overcome that is to face it…again and again. And ultimately represent my academy and my Jiu Jitsu untethered without the negative mental baggage.