Competition

The most important part of jiu-jitsu is the constant testing of ability in full resistance situations. The majority of this is done in sparring during training but competition also plays a big part.

I think, if nothing else, everyone should compete at least once. I, and many others, love competing, so if someone doesn't give it a try I think they could be missing out on something which will make jiu-jitsu even better for them. Now, like anything, lots of people won't like the experience. Competition is tough, can be stressful (if you get stressed I guess, I've never felt stressed about anything), you'll feel the effects of adrenaline, possibly nerves and if you lose everyone gets to see it. Personally, I don't really think these are reasons not to compete... they are problems to overcome and doing so will help to improve your jiu-jitsu. But hey, if you try it and don't enjoy it there is no reason to force yourself into it and maybe destroy your enjoyment of jiu-jitsu as a whole.

So, I don't think it's wrong that an individual doesn't compete... what I do think is pretty lame are entire clubs which don't compete, or have very few active competitors, or none of the instructors ever compete. Without students and instructors stepping outside the academy to compete, it's impossible to judge the club's overall level of ability... does each level of belt at your academy stand up to those from other academies? Can your academy compete against the rest? Are the students well rounded or is there an area where lots of people struggle? These are all questions which regular competition will answer. Also, without a large number of students competing regularly the sparring in training is likely to lose it's edge and become too far removed from a proper test of ability.

As an instructor I love watching students compete because it is the ultimate validation of everything I do. If they can use the jiu-jitsu I have taught them to beat people who are fighting 100% to stop them, what more can I ask for? It shows that not only can I pass on techniques from my instructors but I can develop people into actual fighters. This is why it's important for a club to have a large number of competitors too. Individuals can win fights and even whole competitions through athleticism or just toughness, but if a team produces multiple winners then they definitely have a high level of instruction.

Having said that, it's important to note that winning can't be seen as the only worthwhile goal of competing. When stepping up to fight, everyone should always believe they can win, but being realistic there are plenty of cases when it's highly unlikely. However, if you start to focus too much on gold being the only reason to fight it quickly makes people only want to fight if they can train every day, do extra strength & conditioning work and cut down to the lowest possible weight class... the real reason for competing should be to get out there and test your jiu-jitsu. You can do stuff in the academy, but can you do it under real pressure? It's easy to go for something in training knowing that if you fail and it goes wrong, it doesn't really matter, but in competition if you fail with one technique it could mean you lose the fight. That's where the real test is.

I wrote about excuses from people who say they are going to start training but never do... competition is probably the thing which produces the most excuses from those who do. Excuses not to compete; "I can't make the weight I want to fight at", "I haven't trained much the last few weeks", "I've only just been promoted" etc... I've heard them all and more numerous times. Simply put, competition isn't fair and it isn't meant to be. Even with the belt divisions in jiu-jitsu there are massive disparities in skill level within each belt, some people train once or twice a week whereas others train once or twice a day, some people have a lifetime of athletic training while others might have started jiu-jitsu totally out of shape... if you want a fair fight (and most people probably want a fight in their favour if they're honest) then competition is not the place to find it, but it's also not the point. Competition is facing the unknown and seeing how you fare. You put everything on the line and win or lose it's the most honest test of your skills possible.

The second part where excuses come in to competition are after losses. People say "I didn't get any sleep the night before", "I hurt my knee two days ago", "I didn't drink enough after my first fight", "The ref screwed me over" etc... and although things like that no doubt contribute to the result, it is the wrong thing to focus on afterwards. Everyone has those problems, including division winners and medallists. If you allow yourself to blame outside factors then it's easy to start not caring about winning or losing. All that matters is what happens during each fight and what you can learn from it.

So what can you learn from competition? Mainly, can you fight in a high pressure environment and use your skills against someone who is resisting to the maximum of their ability. But there is more than that... are you able to remain calm? Can you deal with the adrenaline which competition causes? Your cardio might be good in the academy but can it get you through multiple competition fights? Then there are smaller things; competition is a good place to find technical areas you struggle with. It's easy to not realise certain things you aren't good at in training. You might get caught in a submission you had never learnt an escape for, or you might find out you're not as good at escaping side control as you thought. All these are issues you can go back to your instructor and work on in order to improve your jiu-jitsu ability.

"It's not the winning that matters, it's taking part" is something I'll never tell anyone and never believe. Winning does matter, the point of competition is to try to win. It's just not the only thing which is important, and it doesn't mean that if you lose you shouldn't be able to enjoy the experience. If winning didn't matter, competition wouldn't matter. Fight to win but don't discount the experience if you lose...

...and there will be losses. If you compete then at some point you will lose. It might be a clear loss through being submitted, or by the closest of margins, or even a contested loss due to poor reffing, but regardless of why and how, you will lose. The fear of losing is probably the biggest reason that a lot of people don't ever compete but I think it's a silly reason not to. Just like tapping is part of training jiu-jitsu, losing is a part of competing, you just have to accept it. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't care about losing, I hate losing. But a loss isn't just an end to a competition, it's another experience which you can learn from and improve your jiu-jitsu... and sometimes even a loss where you get dominated can have positives; if you managed to not get tapped and escaped bad positions against a much superior competitor then it bodes well for future competitions.

So get out there and compete. Test the skills you spend so much time and effort on learning. If you really don't like it then don't force yourself, but please try it at least once!

Busy times

Still not much blogging action I'm afraid as the competition organisation has taken preference. Registration is closed now so divisions have been drawn up and then the usual messages to change divisions need to be dealt with. So that's basically everything done until Sunday, the day of the competition. My next job for it will be to referee all day... 10am until it finishes, no breaks, just a quick mouthful of food between fights. Hard job but worth doing it to run a competition.

I won't be competing but I still love any competition day. Seeing students fighting hard and representing the academy is one of my favourite things in jiu-jitsu. Some will lose, that's part of competition, but I know a lot will be taking medals home with them. I just can't wait to see people fighting and giving it their all, competition to me is the essence of jiu-jitsu.

Before that though, I have another full day of teaching tomorrow, so time for bed. I will be back for a full length, more focused blog shortly. In the meantime, train a lot!

Three rest days!

It's enough to send me crazy but I haven't rolled for three days now. I have long-term knee injuries which I'm awaiting surgery for so I have to take rests now and then and can rarely roll flat-out on consecutive days.

Last week I went four days rolling in a row though, ending on Sunday. So three days off was a safety to try to minimise any deterioration. What's most annoying is yesterday they felt great but now today I am having pain in one again... without having trained! Gutted. The good part is that one knee is feeling really good and I think the injury I had may even be fully healed, the bad one definitely requires surgery though... torn meniscus.

The point of this post though... for people who train regularly (i.e. every day or most days) it can be hard to take even one rest day, let alone multiple in a row... but it's a must. I've learnt the hard way that training through some injuries is a bad idea. I once trained with a fairly painful shoulder which led to me having 8 months off and numerous times I've had an injury which would probably have healed with a week off, but not taking time off led to a much longer healing time.

Unless you are sure it's ok to train with an injury, take time off and use ice. In the long run it will definitely be the best option.

But anyway, I'm mega excited now, full day of rolling tomorrow :)

Excuses

I had a conversation today with a student who runs one of the team's affiliate clubs. He told me that they are struggling to get big numbers in classes and thought that the location could be the problem as they are not situated in the middle of the town. Lots of people tell him they would come training but it's difficult for them to travel to the club.

The truth is that it's not a great distance at all, and it's not the travel which is the problem at all. The people who say that are simply too lazy or scared to actually go training. If it's not travel used as an excuse it's time, cost, or fitness, or something else. Very rarely as those things actual problems which prevent people training; I have students who regularly travel an hour each way, people say they don't have time to train yet they watch hours of TV each night, they spend more in one night out than monthly unlimited training would cost them etc...

People's reasons for saying these things must vary and I find it really tricky to understand the mindset at all. I guess for some they are trying to save face a bit; they want people to think they want to do, but they know they really don't have any interest for whatever reason. They probably think those who do train would think less of them for some reason, but the truth is nobody cares. I've come across some people in my time who want to pretend to be a part of the club without training, which I find really strange. They might do one class but often never train at all, then they message constantly saying why they couldn't turn up for training last night and updating you on when they will be there... repeating that cycle over and over. If anyone can tell me what's going on with these people, please do!

A good bet for why a lot of people make excuses is the ego issue again. They convince themselves they could do it, they probably even convince themselves they'd be really good at it, but they do everything they can to avoid actually getting involved and letting their fantasy world get destroyed. Some of these people probably even believe their own excuses are true. The same thing goes for people who are just lazy, they pretend they're not by making up excuses for themselves. They couldn't go training because it's too far to drive, yet they can sit at home doing nothing all night no problem.

These excuses aren't always from people who never start training but also from people who quit. This is something I find even stranger, because they used to train and not have those issues but all of a sudden they can't train any more? Ok, sometimes people do have a change to their life (job, kids etc) but nearly always they could still train even if it was less regularly. Again, these people are using excuses to lie to themselves so they can feel better.

But there is also another source of excuses from people who train, and that's competition losses. Every competition leads to someone saying "I lost because...".  Sometimes these things are self-critical and that's fine, but often it's some sort of attempt to somehow lessen the impact of the loss. This is something worth staying well away from. Yes, you can get screwed by a referee, you might have not slept the night before, you may have felt a bit sick... but if you lose you lose. The best thing to do is to accept it, learn from any mistakes you made or techniques which beat you and move on. Go back to training and work on the problems. Learning to accept loss is an important part of competing because it allows you to do those things... telling everyone the excuses for your loss will prevent that happening.

Now, none of this means there can't be legit reasons for things. Sometimes you really can't make training because you had to do something else, or you were ill... whatever, but if you've been too lazy to go training for a month don't say "I just haven't had any time", be honest, say you were being lazy and then do something about it.

This all applies to any other part of life; excuses are something to avoid. At best they are worthless, but they cause problems themselves; they will prevent you learning from mistakes because you will just be happy to make excuses again the next time something happens.

What are you doing tomorrow? I've got a day off teaching jiu-jitsu so I'll be in training!

The plateau myth

I haven't blogged for a few days as I've been busy with other stuff (I'm currently organising a competition and have been trying to advertise it online etc), but as always I've been training a lot.

Something which has recently been mentioned to me by a few people, and I regularly see spoken about on forums, is that they feel they are not improving and their skills are plateauing. Now, I'll tell you this straight, no such thing exists! If you are actually training and are training properly then you will be improving all the time. It might be slow, it might be hard to notice and you may not even realise or believe it, but trust me you are improving.

There are a few reasons people think they're not improving, with the biggest being that most people tend to judge themselves by their performance against others (which is natural but not always sensible). If someone is training more than you, they will usually be improving faster than you, so if you judge yourself by how you get on with them in rolling you will think you haven't improved but they have. The truth is you have both improved, just at different rates. Don't judge yourself directly against others, think about stuff like "Am I harder to submit now?", "Can I move my hips better?", "Do I hit techniques and transitions smoother?" etc...

Another big part of this, and I think I've mentioned it in a previous blog at some point, is that jiu-jitsu is based on your performance in the moment, and we all vary day-to-day on this. The higher level you get the more consistent you will be but there will always be minor variation every session, and when you're a novice the variation can be massive. What affects this even more is that it's not only your own performance which matters but that of your competition opponents or sparring partners. If you perform below your peak and they are at the top of their game, you're going to feel like you've just taken two steps back, but all you're really experiencing is normal random variation. If you roll with the same person again in two weeks time you might find things go very differently.

What you have to always remember is that jiu-jitsu is a long game. You shouldn't be too concerned with session-to-session variation, or whether you've improved since last month. Always look to the future and instead of worrying that you're not improving, just try to focus on any specific areas you struggle with (I used to have privates with my instructor to fix these when I was just starting out).

Plateaus don't exist, keep training and enjoy it.

Respect the tap

This has got to be the most important rule of training jiu-jitsu; you must respect the tap.

The reason jiu-jitsu works is that the training involves a large amount of full resistance training. This means you learn to use the techniques under proper pressure, not just in a sequence of pre-determined moves. But in order to do this, and to be able to apply submissions with proper intent, you have to have a way to signal you have been caught in a submission... and this is obviously the tap.

So as everyone who trains jiu-jitsu knows, the tap is normally the act of tapping your hand on your opponent multiple times to signal you can't escape and would either go unconscious or have a joint broken by the hold. But a tap can take other forms... most of the time you tap on your partner's body but sometimes it will be on the mat, sometimes you will have to use a foot if your hands and trapped, and sometimes you will have to verbally tap. To verbally tap you should always say "Tap" and nothing else unless you know your partner definitely understands what you mean.

What follows from this is that there are better and worse ways to tap. Personally I think verbally tapping is the best option; it allows for a much higher intensity of attack, especially between higher level fighters. After this is the most common method of tapping with your hand on your opponent's body; for this you should always tap multiple times and fairly hard. Then if you need to tap the mat (due to positioning) you should, again, tap multiple times and hard enough to make a loud sound. If you are using your foot, it will pretty much always be on the mat, so make sure it is repeated and loud otherwise your partner may think you are just trying to base.

Now, the most important part of tapping is that it has to stop the hold being applied. There is no excuse for not releasing something immediately in training. If you break this trust then the rules of sparring change and it is no longer a safe environment. This is obvious to pretty much everyone who trains. However, what some people may not consider is the other side of it... the person tapping also has to respect the tap; you should only tap if you have to. Just because you are stuck in a position it doesn't mean you can tap in order to restart. You also shouldn't tap before someone gets close to finishing a submission; they might not even want to submit you with it and could be waiting for you to escape so they can try countering it. If you tap too early you cheat your partner out of proper training experience and you also completely avoid learning to escape in a full resistance situation. So this means the respect between sparring partners is balanced... you know you have to stop when someone taps because they will only tap when they have to.

The last part of this should be obvious, but over the years I have seen most of these rules broken. There are no circumstances where it is ok to fake a tap. Making a hand movement seem a bit like a tap to try to get someone to release and then continuing to fight is not only cowardly but it will quickly turn a training environment sour. A tap is not a slap either, and should never be aimed at vulnerable parts of the body (although this could happen accidentally); you might be annoyed (sort your ego out!) but if you think you are getting some sort of petty revenge you should remember you could have been put unconscious or had a joint destroyed! Also, as I've already covered, you should only tap because you have to. This doesn't always mean a submission, you may feel like you're about to be sick or feint, or may have injured yourself during a movement, but never, ever tap because you're tired or unable to escape. Again, doing this will make your partner start to not respect your taps... everyone knows the story of the boy who cried wolf (if you don't, Google knows).

Spar hard, tap if you have to.

Everyone has bad training sessions

I often hear people moaning about having had a bad training session and not performing as well as they think they should. A lot of the time I think those people think it's because they are low level and aren't good at "getting" jiu-jitsu... as if they have some sort of problem understanding techniques. The simple fact is that at any level the same thing happens, everyone can have bad sessions.

I had one today, and it would be easy to reel off numerous reasons why or explain the things which I feel made me perform badly... but none of it matters. Fact is it's done and dusted, just gotta take the lessons I can from it and prepare for tomorrow's training.

So if you're feeling like it's pointless trying to get good at jiu-jitsu because you're a 4 stripe white belt and you just got tapped by someone without even 1 stripe, just remember that black belts have bad sessions too... but we've learnt that the only response is to keep going.

Use your disappoint to fuel your next session :-)