The moment that I dread the most when I sign up for the competition is not the competition itself, or even the training that leads up to it. Instead, it’s the first day when you are back on the mats to train.
For me, I’ve lost more often than not at the purple belt level. I hope that with serious work with a sports psychologist, I’ll be able to have performance that more accurately represents my skill level as opposed to my anxiety levels. Until then, walking into the mats the first day post-comp is always going to be something that gives me nervous butterflies.
They say that no one really cares about how you do in competition, but when you’re at a small gym and one of a handful (but hopefully soon-to-grow!) of competitors, people are actually somewhat interested in what you have to reflect on your experience. And even if that wasn’t the case, I always feel a sense of awkwardness and shyness for the first few practices. Maybe it’s because I’m acutely aware of where my gaps were from competition, and the thought of being confronted with them again feels incredibly vulnerable. Or, perhaps it’s this partially imagined, partially real perception that people may train with me differently based on my performance. Not that this has happened yet, but I imagine my feelings towards someone would be different if they came back a Pans champion versus not.
But most of all, the feeling that I dread the most (but am trying to embrace) is the feeling of being unmoored. To me, when I have a plan and a goal to go towards, I feel generally good, even if the plan is messy and the goal seems daunting. When I come back from a competition, there’s a sense of freedom but also a sense of loss, a question of “what now?” that plagues me until I find my next goal. Yes, an obvious avenue would be to fix my mistakes from the competition. However, this path can’t be the only goal for me, or I would get depressed because I’m learning that jiu jitsu isn’t just about fixing your mistakes. Instead, jiu jitsu is much more fun and sustainable when I make it about experimentation and tinkering on topics that I find interesting.
I have a hard time feeling confident in what I want to work on in my jiu jitsu journey. The lack of confidence comes from my habit of focusing on what I “need” or “should” work on, even if it’s miles away from what I “want” to do. Throughout my life, in school and work, doing what “needs” or “should” be done has given me reward or praise. It feels good to do what others expect of you and to get validation that way.
My problem is that at times, I have de-valued my own desires or preferences to the point that I become unhappy at best and resentful at worst. Unhappy because I lose the sense of who I am and what makes me want to come to jiu jitsu. Resentful because I tell myself (unhelpfully) that I’m never going to have the chance to work on fun things because I don’t deserve to. This isn’t just limited to jiu jitsu, either — I’ve certainly fallen into troubled waters in my career choices and relationships, where I force myself to tread water at the expense of my well-being, instead of finding dry land to gain my footing.
I would say that the next key part of my development in jiu jitsu is to use training time to work on myself, instead of what I think others say I should work on. Of course, within reason, it’s still important to take into account the advice of my coach and other experts. But even from a technical perspective, I’m slowly coming around to the idea that I am the one executing technique during a fight, and — as terrifying as it sounds — am the most well-positioned to respond to the situation at hand. In working to accept this idea, I must also accept that this road will come with hilarious, and sometimes painful, mistakes. I often have a default reaction, at the first sign of messing up or effort, to return to old habitual ways. That’s natural, but not necessarily productive for long-term progress.
I once heard that the takeoff and landing are the most dangerous phases of air travel, with takeoffs accounting for the majority of fatal accidences. This article does a good job of explaining it to the average layperson, but the tl;dr of it is that when you’re trying to yeet off the ground and fighting against gravity, you just don’t have that much time or room for error:
When they're cruising at 36,000 feet, a pilot has the luxury of time and space to course correct. Even if both engines go out, the plane won't just fall out of the sky. It becomes a glider. In this state, a typical airliner loses about a mile in altitude for every 10 it moves forward, giving the pilot a little over eight minutes to find a place to land. But if something goes wrong on the ground, that window shrinks considerably. For a typical commercial jet, takeoff lasts only 30 to 35 seconds. If an engine fails or the landing gear jams, the pilot has almost no time at all to decide whether to take off anyway or to try and wrestle a 175,000-pound metal beast to the ground. Rejected takeoffs are rare.
This is what I’ve experienced too, in a somewhat less dramatic way, in jiu jitsu. Deciding to start or do something is incredibly hard. I always feel the most energized at the start of a new routine or plan, but as soon as I’m 20 minutes into it, I start to feel the first signs of fatigue or fear. Cruising in jiu jitsu would be nice, but we aren’t often there until we put a huge amount of energy into actually getting to that place. I feel that if I focus less on trying to cruise, and more on encouraging myself to get off the ground, then I may eventually find myself among the beautiful clouds.
My coaches would always tell me before/after a tournament that you're either winning or learning. Losing is merely a single result, and the focus should always be on the process; you have won your efforts. Taking the time to accept where you are, and then to be patient with yourself is always going to be the most difficult endeavor because you are with yourself, all the time, and your expectations are always in flux because that is the nature of emotions - energy is always changing forms.
Losing happens in weird phases for me. Similar to the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance
When I receive the final outcome, and my hand is not raised; I try to embrace myself with as much grace and dignity as possible. It is the key determinant in sportsmanship, a humble, inevitable, and very public external acknowledgement that I was beaten.
The first four stages of grief all seem to occur during a match. I give up a good top position and am in disbelief, now I'm upset, my mind starts to race, and I'm faced with a seemingly impossible challenge. But once I accept the mistakes that have gotten me there; it's almost as if I realize that I can still continue to fight and that's all that matters in the moment.
And then there's after the match. The long flight home. The sharing of the news. And the reflection. It's all a form of grief that happens in many unique and personal ways. It indicates that you care and you have an opportunity to share yourself with the world. Perhaps the take off and the landing is the most important part; but there are just as many mini scenarios that carry significance in between.
Victory in those scenarios may hold the key to the grand occasion we all enjoy day dreaming and fantasizing of.
Oss.