What I want to talk about is what competitions actually do for your game. Just recently I competed in the Pan American Jiu-Jitsu Championships, and boy was it a major disappointment. The reason being is because I lost, that was obvious huh?
With that being said, I learned more during this competition than I ever have before, and I have competed a total of 12x now. What I learned is super important, but I will save that for another post. What's more important is what this particular competition did for me and how I think about competitions in general now.
No matter if you win or lose, you always get something out of competing. I used to get this bad taste in my mouth after losing a competition that would make me not want to compete ever again. After skipping a few local tourneys, I would finally muster up the courage to compete again. I had this mentality when I first started to compete, and I can tell you now it is the main reason why I have not had much success. A lot of times when we start competing in jiu-jitsu, we think that the mat fairy is going to come down from above and sprinkle magical world champ dust on us while we sleep. A few hours later when we wake up, we hope to be 10x better than before. Doesn't work that way.
You have to change your mentality first. Win or lose. If you win, you have to see the mistakes in the all the good things you did. This keeps complacency at bay. If you lose, you have to look at both the good and the bad, and figure out how to accentuate your strong points and fill in the gaps where you are weak. Getting out there means nothing if you are not going home with a laundry list of things to work on. This is hard for some, because when they win they feel as if they are untouchable. For others the agony of defeat is just too much to handle, and it takes awhile for them to resurface again.
My biggest hurdle I had to get over was not getting back out there as frequently as possible. Competitions should ignite a flame so large in your belly that you are literally burning up to get back on the horse. I always thought people were crazy when something bad happened to them in their sport, and two years later they were back out there. I used to say to myself I was tired of losing and being choked out, but now all I can think of is what can I do to get better, how can I become a more complete jiu-jitsu practitioner.
Every competition you get one step closer to being the best you can be. All you have to do is keep moving forward and always thinking about ways to improve. I'm so close to being where I want to be as a blue belt, I can smell it. It is right down the road. I don't know about you, but I am going to continue pounding the pavement, so I can get back to pursuing my goal. One day I will be on top!
