Photo by IBJJF
I registered for my first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competition just a few months after I began training. It was a stressful experience, to say the least, and I ended up losing both of my matches seemingly as quickly as the referee could exclaim “combate”.
Five years have quickly passed, and I realized that I’ve been competing year-round (x5) at local, national, and international competitions without too many serious breaks in between. There doesn’t really seem to be an off-season in this sport.
A local tournament popped up recently, and I decided to take a day off from competing and chose to coach my teammates and students instead (wait, why did I compete in the first place?!).
A physical education undergraduate degree had been occupying my time outside of BJJ for the past four years, so this presented itself as an ideal opportunity to apply some things I learned in the classroom in a more practical, relevant environment.
Being on the other side of the barriers and looking onto the mats from a different point of view made me rethink life as a competitor, and gave me new perspective on what it means to have the opportunity to compete.
Here are my three biggest takeaways from a day as a coach.
1. For the most part, nobody cares if you win or lose.
I had heard this before, but it never really clicked until now.
Your teammates, friends, family, and coaches want you to be happy and for you to enjoy what you are doing.
The people in your life who truly value you do so because of who you are as a person, not because you practice a certain martial art or play a specific sport.
Being authentic and true to yourself is what is important, and that may or may not include being a competitor.
I’m a big believer that almost everyone who trains BJJ (barring injury or some other legitimate reason) should compete at least once in their lives. But after that, I don’t care if you compete every weekend or if you never step onto the mats again – as long as you are doing what you want to.
A lot of the competition-stress disappears when a competitor realizes that the people watching from the sidelines or in the stands are there to see exciting matches – not judge people based on wins and losses.
2. Competing is a privilege, but sometimes the stress of winning and losing gets in the way of being appreciative.
It was only when I was standing outside of the warm-up area, watching my teammates prepare for their matches, that I second-guessed my decision not to compete.
I would get so nervous on my own competition days that I would secretly hope that something – anything – would go wrong so I didn’t have to compete.
Why was it that now, as I was standing just ten feet away from the very mats that gave me such anxiety in the past, was I itching to be out there myself?
How would I feel if I never had the opportunity to compete again?
The life of an athlete is never guaranteed, and every game or match you participate in could be your last. Yes, it’s somewhat of a dark thought to acknowledge, but it is a reality that must be accepted.
Realizing the finite-nature of a competitive career is essential for truly appreciating the opportunity to compete.
Sometimes, this appreciation can only appear when we are forced to see things in a different way – for me, that was helping my teammates warm-up instead of warming-up myself.
3. Everyone looks like an enemy when you’re a competitor, and everyone looks like a student when you’re coaching.
As a competitor, I would enter the venue and immediately begin to size-up my potential opponents.
“Does that guy weigh more than two-hundred pounds? Maybe he’s in my division? Man, he looks scary. I wonder if he thinks I look scary too?”
Chest puffed out, shoulders pulled back – I would do everything in my power to show the world that I was confident and that I meant business (whatever that meant). The only problem was that I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, I was just pretending and hoping that nobody would call me on my disguised anxiety.
The first thing I picked up on when I entered the venue as a coach was the nervous energy from the athletes. Now that I wasn’t focused on myself and my own image of confidence, I could clearly see that most of the competitors appeared to be going through the same cycles of self-doubt and second-guessing that I did.
I saw the tears post-match that I missed in the past, the encouragement from parents, girlfriends/boyfriends, and teammates, the hugs of consolation after a difficult loss, etc.
Maybe I was building up my opponents to be more intimidating than they really were?
The truth is, most competitors go through a similar range of emotions around the time of competition.
Acknowledging that you’re not different just because you get nervous can do a lot for one’s confidence – and one’s desire to compete.
Caught Up in Competition
It’s easy to get caught up in competition – before you know it, the sport that initially made you happy could become one of your major sources of stress.
Taking a step back allows an athlete to gain a new perspective on their athletic career, and sometimes this can be helpful for making a shift towards a different, healthier, more sustainable approach to competing.
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