#68 Entering Your First BJJ Competition: What you can expect on the day and how competing improves your game.
Do you want a Bulletproof For BJJ Seminar? JT will be in Poland & Germany in July, The UK in August and USA & Canada in September. Email us and let’s help your whole gym become better prepared for BJJ: jt@bulletproofforbjj.com
Have you competed before? Feeling nervous because you are not sure what to expect? JT & Joey take you through all the steps you will need to take in order to be ready and what is involved on the day. Overcome your anxiety by being prepared and know that regardless of outcome it is worthwhile doing.
Making weight
Dealing with Fear of Failure
Staying fuelled on the day
Get to Know your Marshal
How to manage your energy on the day
Competing is a right of passage for any Jiu-jitsu devotee, even if you do not consider yourself a competitor. There are incredible lessons in the experience of BJJ competition and you may also make a new best friend.
Speaker 1: 0:00
Hey, it’s JT and I’m excited because I’ve just booked my flights and I’m coming to a city near you . I will be in Poland and Germany in July. Then I’ll be in the UK and Scotland in August. Then I’ll be making the trip over to United States and Canada for September. If you would like a Bulletproof of BJ J seminar, contact us, email JT, Bulletproof for bjj.com and book your seminar today
Speaker 2: 0:30
Better listen. Very careful.
Speaker 3: 0:34
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready,
Speaker 4: 0:39
Essentially at this point, the fight is over .
Speaker 5: 0:44
So you pretty much flow with the goal
Speaker 2: 0:48
Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limit this power.
Speaker 6: 0:54
I’m ready,
Speaker 1: 0:55
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for B J podcast. I am J T hi guys. I’m Joey. And today we will be discussing, entering your first comp what you can expect, because a lot of people out there they say, no, no, no, I’m not a competitor. Oh , I don’t wanna go there. And I think there’s a lot of fear involved. And really, if you’ve never competed, no matter what your belt, whether you’ve just come to jujitsu , you’re a fresh white belt or you’re a purple belt. Who’s been put it off for for years. I believe that Joe, we are in consensus when we say you should compete. Yeah. Your coach also understands that you don’t want to compete. They say, man , totally get it. I totally get it. So when you’re signing off for the conference , <laugh>, it’s brutal. It’s tough . Is it real unrelenting ? I get nervous. Just thinking about talking, competing, like to be completely honest. Yeah. I look, I think we do all of us as humans put pressure on ourselves, but let’s bring some clarity to the mysticism of a comp. Like let’s actually break it down for you today. That’s what I want to do because I actually , uh , my sister who doesn’t do Brazil jujitsu , but did of TaeKwonDo many moons ago came to her first jujitsu comp to help me out , um , at a Jugo store . And she’s like, wow, this is going on. And she got really fascinated by the whole thing and had all these questions. I’m like, go away, just go watch the comp and find out for yourself. But she’s like, I’m an outsider I don’t get like, why is that a person doing that? And why is that going on? And, and she said, because she’s got friends who are interested in jujitsu, that looks like missionary. Yeah. What <laugh>, why is that guy humping that guy’s leg <laugh> um, what can I tell them? Yeah . And she said, please, can you provide some clarity around what could a person expect? They’ve never ever done a comp let’s talk about the necessary factors you need to nail and everything aside in terms of their challenging and their heart. We do see them as essential. Yes . Within the jujitsu journey, aren’t they? Yeah . It’s learning. It’s , it’s a huge learning thing guys. And that’s why I would spook it and push it. Not because I think everybody has to try and be a world champion, but at the heart of jujitsu is learning and nothing will really give you , uh , clear feedback, more so than a comp. Yeah . Kind of like jujitsu is a bit of an analogy for seeking in your day to day life. Particularly for those of us who are living lives, whether that are a bit devoid of challenge. Yeah. Uh , at least in the physical and kind of ego sort of way. We have plenty of other challenges, financial and health and whatnot . But if we see ju to training as that, and I think everyone can agree. Yeah, it does that, you know, and that , that helps to you as an individual competition is like another level or two of that, where it’s like heightened challenge , heightened stress vol you voluntarily going into the fire in order to come out and go, wow, that’s made me a stronger character and you learn more about yourself. And it also removes kind of my , like , what is it? It’s so scary. You do it. You go, oh, actually, well , that was really intense, but I survived. It’s fine. And maybe you did better than you expected. That’s another amazing thing that can come from it, which will strengthen your self-belief. But let’s start. Like, I feel the first thing we need to talk about is making weight, because this is something which is different to some other sports, really with Brazilian jujitsu , you are weighing in on the day. So you may have heard all kinds of crazy stories about, you know, MMA people, cutting weight and sweating out kilos and all this stuff they weigh in the day before you’re coming to a comp, you are weigh in probably only minutes before, if not, maybe only an hour before you get on the mat . So if you’re severely dehydrated, your performance is gonna suffer. So my general advice relevant to, oh, what weight category should I go in? It’s important for you to work out either you keep your weight closer to what you are prepared to compete at, or you just picked the category that that’s your weight, you know, like don’t , don’t try and do some go into your weight category. Yeah . Don’t try and game the system. No, no, no , no. I I’ve seen some disasters with that. Yeah. And you hear maybe more advanced students at your gym. Most gyms will have like those couple of people that compete all the time, been in the game for a while , or maybe to that 20 year old blue belt, that’s just a Savage and lives for competition. And you know, maybe those individuals do some around weight, cutting mom , man . You know, I just eat salad sandwiches for two weeks before, get as light as I can. And, and it’s very easy to be influenced by that. And I’ve had coaches in the past kind of, you know, give me advice and, and try and just, almost, just kind of , uh , promote the idea of weight of cutting going down because you’re stronger. I did it myself. I remember doing loads of cardio. Yes . And restricting what I was eating. Yep . And I got into the lower weight division. It was before the Asian championships at blue belt and I got absolutely destroyed. Um , oh no . Yeah. I got totally wrecked. I think I told you about that one guy threw me on my head twice. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah . Point of the story is it didn’t change my performance. And actually it detracted from my whole performance because I was so stressed out up about the comp compounded with the stress of not being able to eat in a comfortable manner that leading up to it was just really taxing on me. Yeah . Whereas other comps in the past, I just choose the division that suits where I’m at, you can eat a normal diet and , and food is a huge way to provide comfort. Yes . As we know. So if you are like, kind of in starvation mode and trying deal with the stress competition parts compounded too much. Yep . So keep it easy. Shout out to Justin Cash . Our B from New Jersey. Yes. Just got his blue belt think at the end of last year. Yep . He asked the other day, he’s like bro competition coming up. It’s in like two weeks. What do I do? Do I like go easy on the food. And, and he’s like my first blue belt comp and I was like, bro, eat what you want and compete at the he’s a strong guy. And he was like, thank you, man. That’s taking so much pressure off my mind. And then he sent a photo of like some , uh , fried chicken wings and ice cream. Oh yeah. <laugh> but it’s like, that is, that is a great way to go about it. My guy. And look, I’m gonna talk about two disaster stories relevant to the weight cut because here’s things that can happen. Guys. If you are going your local tournament, your local area, it could be IB, JG , F maybe it’s just like a local gyms having a 20 or it’s a grappling industries, whatever it is, the scale may be off <laugh>. So , uh , female student mind , they , they got those Brazilian scales mate . Just think of the worst bathroom scale . Not even digital. Think of those bathroom scales with the sliding orange needle, like analog. Yeah . And it’s so old that it has divots where a larger human than you have been standing on it. Right? Like your grandma’s bathroom scales, female student of mine from Victoria. Won’t name her anyway, cut three kilos. She’s already a very light human. We get to the comp set of scales, steps on them. And she, it weighs her as six kilos under the weight. Oh. Because it was so busted. Oh . Like if she hadn’t cut, she would’ve made the weight, but that’s just because it wasn’t professional. She performed quite well, but she was tired. She had no carbohydrates them . She was dehydrated. All of that crap. Right. Then another student of mine, white belt, trying to avoid the heavy weights. He’s an older guy. He’s like masters two , whatever. But he’s like, man, I don’t want to get stuck under some, you know, like I’m only doing my weight category, you know, I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll and he was very conscientious. He , he took time, he brought the weight down and then I dunno what happened. But then it just turned out the day before he was two kilos over. So he had to , he is like, what do I do? And I’m like, all right , gonna have to sweat a little bit here, you know? And it wasn’t dramatic, but it compounded that stress of comp. Yeah. Because he had that in his head. He’s very conscientious. He gets there the next day two, one guy from his category is pulled out. Someone else is pulled out. They merged three categories. He’s fighting heavyweight doesn’t matter. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. So it’s just like all this work, all this hard work and stress we put on ourselves, guys, understand if you’re your first tournament and you , you know, even if you compete regularly, it can happen. I would still advise don’t around with cutting weight. Like, no, unless it’s weighing the day before. And it’s like Abu Dhabi pro, or it’s an international competition where your chances of , of winning a significantly higher and maybe you’ve had some practice for your first comp, do not do that. Yeah. And the other caveat to that is particularly if you listen to the comp that I did , uh , last year at brown belt, I dropped weight in the lead up to that competition. And that I did, I started doing that three months before the comp. Yeah. It was very methodical. Yeah. So it was, I wasn’t starving myself. I just had a structured eating plan that I was following. And so by the time I got to a couple of weeks before comp, I was comfortably sitting at a wait . That’s great. Like, if you wanna do it like that, it’s , that’s a great way to do it. But this radical, extreme weight cut that , you know, the week before is not good. Do not. The next thing is bracket timing. So depending on what tournament have a schedule <laugh> I thought it was just some guy deciding what they wanted to do or whatever time some random dude picks up the mic , Joel , wedging to <laugh> . Yeah . Met . Uh , but that’s the thing like essentially good to know when you’re on, but also know it could be an hour late. I mean, you don’t want to be late, but also don’t be like, I’m definitely on it . 1130, because invariably every time mom , dad make sure you’re there at 1130 , be there with the camera. Okay. Every tournament I’ve been to, including worlds, you know, and worlds is like the IB JF world championship is very regimented gold standard. If you’re not there, they just scratch you. Right. They’re running a schedule. They’re trying to get it done. They’re very efficient. They run late. They can. Yeah . And you , you know, there’s a lot of time spent waiting around so important for you be there on time, but don’t like get psyched up and warm up and do your big G up to be warmed up on time for the bracket. Go and talk to the Marshall for the mat . Like that’s an important thing. Let them know, Hey, I’m here. Don’t scratch me. Yeah . For I’m your guy. This is who I am. And just let me know. And oh , that guy’s not even here, bro. Don’t warm up . You know, like generally the , the marshals are cool. Sometimes the marshals, the ref , hopefully not for you, but basically know you should be at the right time, but don’t psych yourself out because also you might wait hours. Yeah. It can be ages. You get there at 10 o’clock in the morning and then you’re not on until after lunch. Yeah . That’s exactly right. You got , and you gotta manage like your mental energy and also your physical energy. So like getting all worked up and then having to simmer down and then try and get worked up again. It’s it ? It’s taxing. It’s exhausting. Yeah. So that’s a really good piece of advice is to like connect with the officials and be like, man, I’m here, I’m here. If you need me, I’ll just be there. And like, you know, like that way you hopefully get the nod when it’s like, Hey, you’re up next? Or you got one more match and then you’re on. So you’re like, okay, I got like five or 10 minutes to start my I warm up now. Definitely. And look, if fingers crossed, your coach will be there. Sometimes you’re there solo, you know, if it works out that way, so then you gotta kind of keep your finger on the pulse. But the great thing is if you have a coach and they’re there, they’ll usually go into bat for you in that respect, they’ll have a check and they’ll , they’ll let you know, okay. It’s time to warm up. We got one more match or two more matches, whatever it might be . Yeah . Um , and having that routine just further point to that, it does help to have some basic Portuguese <laugh> true. Or to be able to decipher Portugal, English. Yeah . Portuguese, because you’re gonna get, what did the guy just say to me? You know, you need to be able to read between the lines . True. And look that said, we are very lucky here in Australia to have a large Brazilian population. So we have lots of great ju to teachers , but then we have lots of just Aussie guys who coach, but there is some terminology that is good to know. So whether or not your coach is of Brazilian origin or not , uh , it’s good to do a bit of research before we hit the mats on certain terminology. But , uh , the next thing that comes in into the timing factor is nutrition on the day, because I’ve seen, I’ve seen some disasters on the mat. Oh yeah. Oh, people going in with a full stomach, more than a full stomach, 2, 2, 2 cases. Let’s let’s talk. What’s helpful. And then let’s talk entertainment. <laugh> okay. Well, I mean, yeah, we have touched on this in the past for me. I don’t like to eat a lot. I’m usually, you know, kind of nervous on the day, so appetite’s not high. Keep it lighter. Yeah. But as far as back as I can remember, I’ve never competed earlier than like 10:30 AM. It’s always been then or onwards and it’s usually later, so I’ll get up my normal time, whatever that is. 7:00 AM and I’ll, I’ll kind of force into my regular breakfast and then take plenty of snacks and I’ll just sort of eat , eat the snacks throughout the day. Even though I might not want them snacks, water, some hydro light . That’s my go-to. Yeah. I agreed. And look, I’m probably a little bit more carbohydrate heavy in the morning. I try not to have too much protein and I prefer to be probably on the empty side until I know. So if you’re doing more than one category, so this is another option you might think, oh yeah, I’m keen. I’ll do my weight category in GE and no GE . And usually if the competition is well organized, they’ll have them apart, but I’ve also seen it where a guy’s just finished fighting his like last GE match. And it’s like, Hey bro, they’re calling you over on Matt too for no gee . And you’re like what <laugh> but generally, if it’s well organize , that won’t be the case. But what that may mean is that you have a , a decent break, like an hour or maybe three hours between when your first category finishes and your second category starts and it’s good to have some decent nutrition on you. And that’s where I would say, it’s good to have some little snacks in between like, you know, Muley bar or whatever it might be , be banana, banana dates , few lollies dates, nuts. But then maybe for me, what I love is a, like a nut butter type sandwich. Now I know Joe doesn’t love the nut butter, but yeah. Like something which is not heavy, I’m not having beef brisket for lunch, even though that’s like one of my favorite meals of all time. But uh, you know, something which is digestible inside of two hours keeps me going. So I know I’m gonna have energy for the rest of the day. I think that’s, that’s a key thing to factor in that you need to take a bit of a, like a food pack. Don’t just go with one Gatorade and you know, and just think it’s like a training session because this is the truth guys . It’s an all day thing. Yeah . Even though the matches are short, it’s a , it’s a full day event. I remember at the last com feeding , um , the really, really Savage blue belt, new blue belt at Alliance with the kind of long hair to buy , to buy Toby. Yeah , yeah , yeah . Animal. And he’s just such a nice guy. And he was there at the comp and I , I brought a bunch of snacks and it was the end of the day and he’d done two divisions. I think he won one and he had a bunch of heavy matches. And uh , I was like, is zero anyone hungry? And like, I was trying to get rid of my cuz I was about to leave. Yeah . And uh , I had, you know , more stuff than I needed, which is a great tip. And uh , he’s like, oh man, I haven’t . Yeah . Can I have that? I have that in . But he was just like taking whatever I give him scratching it . Yeah. Like please, man, I haven’t eaten. And that’s the reality. Don’t leave it to on your way to the comp to pick stuff up. No, go the day before, go to the supermarket, grab a bunch of things, have it ready to go the next day because it’s gonna be a busy morning. You’re probably not gonna be running. You’re probably gonna be running late and you just don’t wanna have the stress of thinking about snacks and . You wanna have that stuff taken care of. Yeah. And you can’t depend on the venue having food. Absolutely not . Because if, if it , depending on the day, Saturday, Sunday, whenever you’re doing it, if it’s at like a basketball stadium or a leisure center , sometimes the canteen is shut. Yeah. You’re like, oh , I thought I could get a drink here. Uh , no you can’t. What are you, what do you do now? So being prepared guys, that’s a really important thing because, okay, so I’m gonna speak to nutrition disasters. Two good friend of mine. I won’t name him. If you know me, you know who this guy is. I think it was at possibly at purple belt. This footage of this he’s rolling quite hard. He’s wearing a white GE performs a very large kind of bridge and roll sweep. The camera footage is behind him and you can see a spreading brown patch occurring across the back of the pants. Oh God , the rolling is continuing and the pants are getting darker. Oh . And a critical point. <laugh> critical point that the opponents like , oh what ? And the referee’s like, oh man, like, dude , that’s not cool. No, we gotta stop this. And I , I can , I can’t remember. I don’t wanna say wrongly. I don’t think there was a DQ, but like the match had to be stopped. I can’t remember the result. I just remember that footage in people . Oh wow. God, you know, make sure before you get on that mat , you, you know, you’ve gone to the toilet. You’ve had your nervous moments. <laugh> somewhere else. Oh . And then another one, which is quite funny, which actually did get deed . A guy was getting triangled . The footage is quite clear. I finish eating a banana and something just before he gets on the mat , he has a full stomach. Now I’m not saying if he didn’t have a full stomach, this wouldn’t happen. He gets TRID really quickly. But the guy’s triangling him FARs . And he gags and he is like, no stop , stop. And he has to run off and just spew up everything. He, he just ate, oh , the fight triggered it. And he gets to DEQ because he ran off the mat . Yeah. And, and yeah, he lucky there’s a bin nearby. He just literally everything. He just ate comes straight back up with everything else. Oh , that’s. It’s brutal. And so what I’d advise to you is, and , and we’ve spoke, we’ve touched on this before, so we don’t go too hard into it. You wanna give your at least 45 minutes between when you eat something to when you’re up even an hour, maybe. Yeah. So if you get to the stadium where you are competing and you’ve only got half an hour to your racket , probably best to just stay hydrated, don’t don’t eat anything significant. If you really only have a short period of time, like maybe a bite of a banana or short , you know , is this something to, to kind of take that edge off the appetite, but yeah. You don’t wanna be stuffing like food mass into your gut at that stage. No, not at all. Now the other thing which, you know, I guess it’s something that gets talked about a bit, but people don’t really talk about the practicalities of how this affects us, which is our mindset coming into. Cause I believe part of the reason why people don’t compete or people hold off is they’re like, oh , I’m not ready. Oh , what if I fail? Like, there’s a lot of psychological aspects. And like you were saying, Joe , uh , even if you say to your coach, oh I’m not a competitor. Coach is like there’s tournament two weeks. Yeah . We’re all going. You’re coming. Right. Yeah. We’ll see you there. Right. <laugh> it’s just before the grading. <laugh> here’s the form. Yeah . Um, don’t be a . <laugh> the , the mindset is, is a definite thing and managing your mindset on the day that that’s a , that’s quite a challenge because some moments you can feel like, okay, I’m warm, I’m loose . I’m good. And then your, your friend comes over to you and goes, I’ve seen your opponent. They’re huge. <laugh> I don’t even know how they made your weight. And you’re like, shut up. <laugh> stop talking. He’s kicking the pillar . And the platform is falling down. <laugh> Tom PO has started jujitsu . Talk to me about the mindset thing. I’m no nervous at every comp . I that’s just a given. It’s just how my body prepares for competition, but who could know show the natural part of my , part of what I do exterior . Now I go down and smile, high five , everyone, particularly who I’m gonna compete with. Like , I’m always like blown out, but everyone’s different. And the thing to bring yourself back to is that your body and your mind and your nervous system essentially has a way of preparing you for, for stressful challenges. And that is for you to feel nervous. It is just your body’s way of preparing. So it’s really important to like accept those feelings and then like check in with them and go, all right , this is a part of competition. This is what my buddy does to an interesting thing that I learned some time ago. I remember speaking with a gentleman by the name of Craig Weller , who was a , uh , he was a mercenary. Um , he was a military guy from the us had become like a, you know, gut security. Yeah. Private security kind of dude. He was in Iraq at the time will . And I, I had a chat with him, strange occurrence , uh , over the internet. It was before zoom existed. So it must have been Skype. And I asked him about people getting nervous before , before competing, before combat. And he said to me, it’s really important to realize is that every single person, even the most hardened warriors will get nervous before combat situation. He said there perhaps was once a time when there was a proportion of the population that didn’t get nervous. But he said, though , that line of our DNA has been weeded out because all of those people ran head on into Spears. Wow. He’s like , or a broad sword is like, so everyone that’s left now comes from this lineage of yeah . You get nervous. It’s a protectionist thing. I thought that was very fascinating. And I actually like to remember that when you go into comp , you’re like, no, this is how I’m supposed to feel. And I know that everyone else here feels like that. And you can look at the higher belts. They feel like that, you know? And you can think to yourself, well, look at all the people that didn’t compete. Look at my friends who I trained with, who aren’t doing this comp again . Yeah . And you’re like, well, that all automatically puts you. I , I believe at it just you’ve gone and done something that’s hard. Hard . Yeah. And so it’s like in a way, and this is not speaking to the , the extreme competitors who are listening to this, but for the general jujitsu practitioners, like I’m just doing comp to get , make me a bit better. And I know it’s good for me. And my coach wants me to, and all that , having a crack, you’re just having a crack . You’re doing it. And that is that’s the win, you know ? So let the nerves be, but know that it’s a part of it. And then just go with it. The interesting thing to me is say a guy like Keenan, Cornelius , uh , for those of you who are not across Keenan, just Google him, he has competed his name sounds fake. It does doesn’t sound. It sounds like cartoon character. Yeah. He sounds like a , a captain from a , like a , you know, I’m captain Keenan, Cornelius, but legitimately, possibly one of the best ever American competitors where, you know, at blue belt purple belt , brown belt, you know, the only thing he hasn’t won at black is a world title, but he’s been on the podium and this guy competes more than anyone. He has said that even when he was the favorite and everyone was scared against him, he would be vomiting in the toilet before he would go out based on how nervous he was, even though that guy trains fight out. And he, is he just one of the best competitors going around. Yeah . And I , I’ve never been on that level of nerves cuz I’m a little bit, I’m a bit of a hype beast. You kind of go the other way. It don’t you, I , I want you up . But once I’ve hit my first role , I don’t, you know, I find that if you can get past the first round that gives you a certain level of release and adrenaline, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna win your next match. That kind of evens out. Yeah . And as long as you can manage that going forward, you’re pretty good. And getting a win is kind of like, cool. We’re good. Yeah. Even if I lose now, I , it wasn’t a total failure. Yeah. And, and there’s that first match for most of you out there is super intense. If you’ve never been on the match, you’re like, oh my God, like, you know, am I gonna get choked out? Or you know, your friends and family are there, you know, and this is something you kind of, we were speaking about this beforehand. Anyone who’s not competing. If you know them, they’re from your gym or just say, it’s just some random person comes up. Oh , good luck today. But then they wanna give you their 2 cents. Yeah . And everybody’s coaching you like, look, man, I try not to look your a in the eye other person’s like stare him in the eye till I look away, you know, like , it’s bro, you gotta blitz him . When the mound starts get the first points . You know? And I , I got a theory on that. There’s people like everyone wants to help. And people love to be, you know, supportive in that whole thing. But there’s always a lot of people at the comp, right. Not competing who are not competing and because they’re not competing, their own vulnerabilities are being kind of , uh , like exposed. And so the way of dealing with that for them is to come up to the competitors and like get in , oh man, you did awesome. I love that. Like yeah . You know, like just be a part of it cuz secretly every Jitsu practitioner and I can and say this, you know, since I’ve been a haven’t competed, I competed once at brown belt, haven’t competed at black . If I’m at a comp, there’s a part of me. That’s like, I should be out there. Yeah . I should be doing, oh there’s there’s my friend. Oh , there’s someone . Oh he’s competing. Oh that , oh look, she’s doing the comp. I should do the comp. So like this wanting to impart and help get involved. Yeah. Is it comes from good place , but it’s also some of their own. That’s getting projected onto you. If you are new to the game, you can be hearing all this. And you’re like, oh I gotta blitz him . Oh I gotta shoot a double leg . Even though I don’t even do double legs , double legs . You know like you , you think that you have to embody all of , or take all this information on board and uh , it’s just important to recognize that . No, you’re good. Like you’ve , you’ve done like listen to listen to your close teammates, but you’ve done the work. Yeah . Now it’s about just getting out there and having fun and , and doing your best. That’s right. And it’s distraction. I generally will have my earphones in blasting way too loud, giving myself industrial deafness. Cuz I don’t want external inputs at that time. Like I guess I was quite practiced before I came to jujitsu cuz I had 10 years of compete eating in TaeKwonDo and I , I don’t wanna talk to my opponents even. I don’t want anything of them to have anything to do with me until we’re kicking the hell out of each other or jujitsu strangling each other because I really want to be in my own head. This is me strategically. Everyone’s different. I want to be at my peak level of ready to go and knowing what I need to do. And I don’t want anything else in that zone. That’s me. I know , you know, Joe’s different. He, you know, he wants to have a chat. He wants to psych out. He wants to shake hands. You know, like feel their grip strength. <laugh> make them feel how his hand is. Probably seen this video of me on the rings, check out, hug , hug them , hug them so he can feel how thick he’s LA . And he is like, wow, this guy’s imposing. That is so not me. <laugh> I see , just get the arm around the side, squeeze their trap a little bit and be like, oh there’s not much there. I’m the guy that going into car . I’m like, I’m probably gonna lose this match. Oh I don’t , I don’t probably lose it , but , but a part of me that once we get in there, I just do my best. No, no, no I don’t . This is true . I think Joe is , this is a false tale . I , I think Joe believes in any situation he can make the best of it. And he’s gonna come out on top. Yes. Yes I do . I don’t disagree, but making the best of it is not always winning for me. And I’m usually, and this is just to be completely transparent with our listeners. There was periods at blue and purple belt where I prepared very specifically for competitions. Right. So when I got to those comps, I’m like, I’m gonna, I dunno if I’m gonna win this. Yep . But I’m gonna make it real hard for my opponents and I’m gonna , I’m gonna get to the podium. However, for the last many years I just gotta comps. I’m like I train a few times a week. Like sure . I’m just happy to be here. Yeah. You know, don’t go in thinking I’m gonna win. Well , the win is being there. No that. My competitive mindset is I’m coming to wreck everyone’s day. If you showed up, you up, I’m here to take arms or break hearts. And if you are not scared of me, you’re in big trouble. If you don’t know me, if you never seen my face before, you don’t know my rep, I’m gonna , I’m gonna make you remember, like that is my intensity. That is my mindset. But this comes from years and years of lots of things guys. So everybody’s different. Like some people, well , if I took that approach, I , but I wouldn’t be able to compete cuz I don’t train enough to equal that. Okay. Sure. You know , it’s gotta match where you’re at, but let’s think this because I have witnessed feats of amazing like chillness and then extraordinary jujitsu, two cases in point. Uh , my old coach, Dan Sheban shouted out DC jujitsu down in uh , south Jolong hello fam y’all . He was just chilling, listening to like probably reggae or surf music. Cuz he is real chill guy, like kind of catching a nap and just kind of listening to music and wasn’t really warmed up. It’d been a long day, you know, it was black belt, absolute finals. It’s like 6:00 PM, pan packs , seven PMs a long day. And then someone goes, oh Dan , Dan you’re up. Someone goes and you like shakes him. And he just takes his earphones off and they’re like, oh Dan , he’s you going up against big. Who’s also a good friend of mine. Shout out big. Um , what are you gonna do? And Dan’s like, I’m just gonna do jujitsu man. <laugh> and just I out there like actually like did some amazing jujitsu. It just didn’t didn’t even, I mean, obviously he’d been tra he’d been competing all day, but he just, just , he trusted himself. Yeah . And then also Marcella Garcia the last year, Marcella Garcia competed at worlds. I think it was 2012. It could be wrong. It , you can fact that he was asleep next to the barrier. So it’s finals day, right? At worlds. They reduce it to two mats and there’s a more solo go like big announcement everybody’s watching. He was literally keeping next to the barrier FIO . Gelle had to lean over bang on the like barrier. Oh , Mo solo , like Marc BA bam . And he was just like, oh , what runs on the mat ? Win six or eight Neil against Lucas. H pulls God , sweeps him . Just blitzers him game over his fifth world championship or whatever, like of just sleeping right now. That guy is one of the greatest of all time. But if you understand yourself and you know, you’re more of a chill person, don’t try and do what I do in the same way. Like, you know? Yeah, you gotta, you are , you’ve gotta understand yourself. So ingesting enough caffeine to like give you a heart attack will not help your performance at all. If you’re more on the chill side, like learn that and learn how that integrates with comp because it’s very different for everyone. And you know, I’ve spent a long time working on what I do so I know it works for me. Yeah. But then that comes to this other thing, which is if you’re listening to this and you’ve never competed in a jujitsu com Joe and I both wanna encourage you to get amongst it, but, and this may not be your reason for not competing, but essentially whether you train full time or you just train twice a week or whatever you do, I feel that the fear of failure is what’s holding people back from entering their first comp . Would you agree with that Joe ? I would. And so, yeah , we all have it. Yeah, of course, of course. And truth be told when you’ve never done something before you can’t realistically expect to do a great job, but that said there’s a lot of unknowns. You may very well surprise yourself in every exchange in jujitsu, one person has to lose. It’s just the odds, 50% someone’s gonna lose. It might be really close. It might be, you know, a one sided flogging, someone will lose. Someone will win. There’s far more value in the loss because what I have seen, which is very in thing are grappling industries, competition series, it’s worldwide. You’ve probably heard of it. They have a round Robin effect, which is great because for the longest time, the kind of international , uh , Brazilian judicial Federation, if you paid your money, you lost first round, you were done. Yeah . That was your day. Unless you entered multiple categories. So that kind of sucks a like you pay your 70 bucks or whatever it is and then you lose and that’s it. Yeah . But what’s great with grabbing it. And I’m not saying this to promote them. I’m just saying as an experience, as a referee and a coach, I’ve seen someone in that round Robin format lose their first match, like ah mm . And then like learn from it, come back and win the next two. Yeah. Right on . Because if there’s only two people in the category, they get them to fight best of three. Wow. And so I don’t think losing a match necessarily means that your jives that much worse, maybe you just weren’t like awaken our or whatever it is. So I , I think if you can enter a tournament where there is a round Robin element that, you know, guaranteed, you’ll get more than one match. It’s accruing the experience and, and putting it off for fear of failure, guarantees failure long term , because in the gym, you’re gonna roll a competitor and guaranteed, they’re gonna kick your . We all know that difference between somebody who’s always competing. You see ’em all the time. And I personally feel, and this is actually told to me, by someone better than me, that competition speeds up learning because you learn your weak points . You learn what works, what doesn’t. And that just, it’s in the name of learning, not even in the name of the being a champion, does it really help you? And that if you want to get better at jujitsu, obviously there’s always some awkwardness and things we have to overcome. But if you could have the courage to walk into an academy or an MMA gym and do jujitsu the step to take, to go to competition, even though it feels like a big step, isn’t as big as it seems. And you shouldn’t be so scared, a hundred percent, the fear of failure is built in for all of us. And I guess you gotta try and think when you , when you feel that you’re like, oh , but what if it’s like, well , try to articulate what the actual problem is there. And when you boil it down, it’s like, well, I might lose. And then you look at , well, someone has to lose, like, you know, two people fighting and one person’s gonna win. One’s gonna lose. You’re like, oh , okay. Someone’s gotta lose. So it’s no big deal to lose. Yeah . Versus I never expose myself to that kind of challenge. I don’t have to deal with the emotions. Dealing with the emotions is probably where the , what the greatest strength is, isn’t it? Mm . In competing. So yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s really natural to feel that way. But no one gives a. No , no one remembers your first comp white belt or no, they don’t, you’ll project your feelings about it onto things that other people say, you know, your coach might say to you, Hey man, we gotta work on your clothes guard . I throw in that competition, you know, and you’ll be like, oh , coach things . My guard sucks. Yeah . But no, they just saw that objectively. You weren’t doing something that you normally do quite well and they want you to work on it, you know? So it’s just, it’s just feedback. And it’s just like, keep it cool. It’s a really good experience to have. And you will look back on the experiences. Very fondly. Yes. I think now, you know, having , um , having had years of not a huge amount of competition experience, but a long time, so there’s been quite a bit spread out. It’s cool to have relationships with a lot of the people I’ve competed against. Yeah . You know, got ke comes into the gym. Exactly . I used to com we used to compete against him. Yeah. He choked me out that time. Like that. Yeah . Between friends. That’s a very interesting, like, it’s a kind of cool thing to have dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s , it is a , it is a fun way to enrich your experience of jujitsu and like, you know, like we’ve been pointing out speed up your development and in truth, some of the people who’ve been my fiercest rivals are now some of my closest friends, like we understand, we understand a cultural , uh , experience that no one else does. And the fact that we work so hard against each other, no one really knows what that’s like. So even though now we are not necessarily competitors. We are just, we have, I think in common, no one else does. So really does make us closer than a lot of people. It doesn’t mean you become best friends with your rivals, but I think over time you see the same people and it becomes more social over time. Oh yeah. And so I think it, it’s actually a great coming together of the community when you go to a comp. Absolutely. So I think to get deeper in the ju to community, you should compete, do it, do it guys, if you want to get your question featured on the show, go to the website, Bulletproof of bjj.com and then click podcast, leave us a voicemail, ask us any question about your strength, your mobility, or even your jujitsu journey. We’ll feature it on the show . And we’ll, we’ll answer the question really cool way for us to share what really are some common sort of thoughts or things that people want to know amongst the community. So go to the website, do that, just to call out to our academy subscribers. We love you guys. There’s too many dimension , but there’s a bunch of awesome academies around the world who are signed up to the Bulletproof of BJJ academy subscription and what that does. It allows all their students to access the program, the covers, the cost. It’s a great way for the academy to support their members, to be on the mats more and be in greater health. It’s also a great way to value, add as a gym owner. So if you’re an academy owner and you want information about that, we’d love to talk to you about it. Get in touch with us info@bulletproofofbjj.com . And , uh , we’ll tell you more. Definitely legends. Thanks James . Thanks . Cheer . Go .