Well, that’s easy. To WIN, of course! So, remember this secret to always winning: find weaker opponents! Then you will win…
But that doesn’t sound right, does it? Your sense of accomplishment comes from defeating a worthy opponent, not a weak one. So let’s ask a different question. Why is winning fun? You feel good about yourself. You impress others (or at least you think they are impressed). In order for you to feel good about yourself, your opponents must have been worthy, or else it is an empty victory. If your opponents are all worthy, then it stands to reason that you will not always win. So if your reason to compete is simply to “win”, and you always seek worthy opponents, you are going to have some disappointments. While there is nothing wrong with disappointment per se, let’s look a little closer at what you might be assured of always getting from competition.
Consider the process of competition, not just the outcome. The process of competition has many facets. Having a tournament approaching causes you to train hard with a specific deadline. That can improve your focus, your skills and your strength and endurance for grappling. You will get those benefits even if, on the day of the competition, the event is canceled. So, improving your focus and skills can be achieved by preparing for a competition regardless of the outcome of the match, and in fact regardless of whether the match takes place at all!
Competition can also expose weaknesses in your skills. The process of exposing weaknesses and deficiencies has another name – it’s called learning. If you never see weaknesses or areas that need improvement, then by definition, you are not learning. You are practicing today the same successful moves as you did yesterday. But if the moves you are practicing are successful they really don’t need practicing, do they? Think about it.
What part of your game then, needs practice and improvement? The weaknesses of course. Having those weaknesses exposed gives you a chance to remove them and learn. So one of the most important outcomes of competition is exposing weaknesses through your losses, and learning from them.
Competition also gives you a personal challenge that can yield a great sense of confidence and accomplishment — a benefit that can extend into all areas of your life. And it comes at a fairly low cost, since unless you are a professional athlete who must maintain his or her standing, losing has very little consequence, while winning can be extremely rewarding.
Competition also gives a unique opportunity for you to deal with fear and stress in what is usually a somewhat safe environment of the sport. Even in submission grappling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu matches, competitors are rarely permanently injured because the rules and referees protect them. But anyone who has competed will tell you that competition can be very stressful and give rise to great fears. Interestingly, even those who compete in non-violent sports, like tennis, still experience great stress and even fear surrounding competition. So learning to cope with these feelings can prove to be very valuable in all areas of life.
Let’s explore this all a bit deeper, again asking ourselves, why compete?
As I said, it is the exposing of weaknesses and flaws in one’s game that provides a chance to learn and improve. Another way to say this is “losing is learning”.
Winning can be learning to, but to a much lesser extent. Rarely does the average competitor criticize his/her performance after a victory. There will surely be a re-living of the experience, but it will be a re-living of the emotional high, not a serious dissection of the actual blow-by-blow moments of the match with a desire to improve.
Losing, on the other hand, often results in a serious reflection on what went wrong. This can be aided by reviewing a videotape if there is one. In fact, the worse the loss, the more the learning. Falling victim to a particular move by your competitor can often lead to you taking a close look at that move and making it your own. Some of my favorite Brazilian Jiu Jitsu techniques, for example, are techniques I fell victim to in competition. There’s nothing like being caught by a move in front of a big crowd of spectators to ingrain the experience in your mind and bring all your mental powers to bear to make that move your own! Now I use those moves on other people all the time.
Many people seek out sumbissin grappling and BJJ competitions to simply challenge themselves, i.e. to feel alive. Like Sir Edmund Hillary and his sherpa who climbed Mount Everest “because it was there”, many of us are seeking challenges in our life to add spice and meaning to it.
Certainly, practicing any sport, whether it is swimming or running, tennis or golf, or sparring at your local gym with your friends and teammates can be challenging. But stepping into the competition arena for a hand ot hand fight against someone you have never met, in front of people you may want to impress, takes you to a very different level of challenge. One where the stakes are higher, but I assure you, so are the benefits.
Competition is also a chance to push yourself beyond the limits you normally set for yourself in your training. Unless you have a coach pushing you, most people don’t train their hardest. If you do train your hardest, that’s good for you. Just be sure you are training hard to learn, and not making every training session a “competition”. Training every day as if you are in a competition not only increases your chances of injury and injuring your partners, but also deprives you of the crucial aspect of practice– slowing down, watching mistakes you and others make, and experimenting with new techniques.
In your normal training, the mat is your laboratory and the more people you train with, the more the chemicals you have to experiment with to create new moves and new ideas. Training is your chance to try new things and experiment. Competition is the time to excel at what you know and NOT to try new techniques. Therefore it is very important to train when you are training, and compete when you are competing.
If you are pushed to your limits in a competition, which incidentally tends to happen when you are losing (another benefit of losing over winning), it is your chance to extend those limits and truly become a better fighter.
Make friends with fear, adrenaline and stress.
The biggest difference between the training and sparring done in a martial arts school or gym, and what happens in a real fight is fear. Of course there are other differences as well, such as unpredictable and hard environmental surfaces, unpredictable number of opponents, weapons, sucker punches, etc. But the single factor that can render years of martial arts experience absolutely ineffective in a fight is blind fear, and the effect it has.
When someone is truly scared, an entire series of complex physiological reactions occur. Adrenaline is released, their heart rate rises, they experience tunnel vision and a sense of the world moving slowly, and even experience something called “reptile brain” where complex speech and physical dexterity give way to only short hardwired movements and words. If you have ever been in a serious street fight, you know what I am talking about.
If you consider your martial arts training to at all be applicable in a true life-threatening streetfight situation, then you must – and I repeat must – find ways to experience and train with fear, adrenaline and stress.
Competition offers you one relatively safe way to do just that. The fear and adrenaline you fear leading up to and during a competition, while much less severe than a true life-threatening situation, are nonetheless useful in helping you learn to cope with and operate under adrenal stress.
By learning to direct adrenaline so that it works for you and not against you, so that it powers and not depletes your muscles, so that it sharpens but doesn’t narrow your attention, you are using competition as a crucial training tool for a real-world self-defense situation.
Adrenaline release, like any chemical reaction your body, can be adjusted to and tempered through repetition. You might begin your competition career fighting like a crazed person, thrashing at anything that moves, unnecessarily tiring yourself out and missing all kinds of opportunities, but you should end your career fighting like a jet pilot – calm and clear minded, unshakable emotionally, and focused on the task at hand.
OK, let’s face it, winning is fun! It is a great rush to stand on the victory podium, have your hand held high by the referee, or hold that trophy or medal. Victory in competition, especially if it is a difficult competition, is very rewarding and a big ego boost. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that, and having that as a goal is itself very motivating in competition. It is a great way to create memories that you will cherish and share with friends and family.
Today, while there is breath on your lips, remember well that one day you will be forever but a memory of one who walked this earth in a blink of history’s eye. As you look around you, see today’s champions. See the coaches who have knowledge but whose fires burn weak at the twilight of their visit here. See the young who stand at the edge of a clearing, waiting to fill it with their potential. And look to the future to see that sooner than you know, you will be just a memory whose best achievements and actions will be little more than ripples at the edge of the universe.
So, while you still can, fan the flames inside you and take your machine for a ride. See what it can do. Make some noise. Enter the ring and let the world know you were here. Step boldly into the place champions are made and take your best shot. So that one day, when your medals sit dusty in you grandchild’s garage, and the cheers are just echoes of the past, there will be a ripple in the universe however far away that says to all it meets, “I was here. I fought. Maybe I won, maybe lost, but I was noticed. Now tell me, what have YOU done lately?”
-David Meyer