Competing as a hobbyist is exhilarating. Doing your regular life routine but also preparing for a fight can be challenging but it’s worth it.
Here’s my training regime for my upcoming comp in October (month and a half away)…
Fitness Gym:
All upper body lifting. Chest press, bicep curls, back rows, and shoulder presses. I must look the part and when I walk onto the mat I will strike fear into hearts of my opponents. 2 days a week should be good. My cardio is not the greatest so I’m not really looking to improve that much in that area. Too much work.
Get those 10,000 steps in before bed.
BJJ Gym Frequency:
Open mat every Saturday. Roll all ten rounds. Pick white belts as my partners so I can build confidence from smashing them. No gi once or twice a week. Also go to fundamentals class once or twice a week with my wife because we always have a fun time goofing around.
BJJ Skills to Work On:
Gripping in gi and no gi. I get the grip fight in gi but my No gi gripping is shite. If my grip game is solid I can get to a good position and work to submit from there. Pretty confident with that part. Also a heavy focus on underhooks and open guard for No gi.
Nutrition:
I eat pretty well. Cook almost every night. Steak, pork, or ground beef with veggies and rice. But when I’m at work, that’s when I eat like crap. Gotta stay away from the fries and Tim Bits. Need to lose 2-3 pounds, is definitely doable.
Mindset:
I felt way more confident and comfortable at my last competition in January, when I didn’t care about the outcome of the match. It took pressure off me and my expectations were realistic and I had more fun. Also, a trick I do is not looking at the brackets and my opponents before hand, so I don’t look at their profiles on SmoothComp and then psych myself out. I have my wife tell me when my match is coming up. And only try to see my opponent right before I get on the mat.
What are some ways that YOU like to prepare for a BJJ competition?
You know what I mean. But for those that don’t…try not to stare, and instead use good eye contact. Stop fidgeting and slouching and instead stand up straight with your shoulders back and chest out like the popular sculpting position called ‘Contrapposto.’ Own your space with certainty.
Simply be cool. Be friendly, but not too much of a nice guy (read: No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover).
At the same time, don’t be a conceded, know-everything asshole. Blend a perfect mix of confident and relaxed with approachable and composed.
This makes people respect you and want to be around you. And most importantly it will make people more likely to want to partner up with you.
Becoming the type of person I just described above is beyond the scope of this post. And probably not attainable for most people. Believe me, I’ve been trying for over a decade. But just going to jiu jitsu class regularly, will help with those personality characteristics.
This sport has a way of changing people for the better (most of the time). Also, grappling tends to filter out the goofs. Usually but not always. Don’t be weird.
A note on creepy…if you get paired up with a woman from your class, don’t be creepy. If you don’t know what that means, you might be creepy.
Match Their Intensity
Have you ever rolled with a person that felt like they were fighting demons?
It’s as if you are being used as a stress ball. It’s as if the tension they’ve accumulated throughout the week is being released onto you. It’s as if their unresolved trauma and shock is your fault and you must pay.
We’ve all been there. We might even be that person. But If I had one piece of advice to new white belts, it would be: chill the f*** out.
We want to have a good experience sparring and rolling with our partners, and the best thing to do is to match their intensity while rolling.
Have you ever heard of ‘mirroring’? “Mirroring is the behaviour in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another.” They say that this can be a good way to build rapport with others.
When you’re trying to match someones intensity, think of mirroring.
If they go hard, you go hard. If they want to flow roll, you flow roll. And everything in between. This is based on FEEL. Yes you can roll how you want, but if you roll too hard, some folks will avoid rolling with you.
That being said, I believe it’s good to roll with as many different types of people and styles, so your bjj game can absorb the breadth that the sport has to offer. Just be careful.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you can roll with whoever you like and you can not roll with anyone you don’t like. It’s your journey, do what you want.
Allow Your Partner to Practice the Technique
This comes down to patience and giving your partner the appropriate amount of resistance.
The person you’ve partnered up with may be a clumsy new white belt (or a clumsy blue belt with one stripe, like me). Allow them the space to fail and fail and fail, and give advice when asked or when needed. Don’t get frustrated when they get frustrated, show some maturity. This is tough because a blue belt only knows what a blue belt knows. For example, if someone asks me a question regarding a technique we’re practising, I give them details that I recognize but I always tell them that the head instructor knows best and to call them over for more clarification.
My wife is very competitive. Board games, card games, anything that involves competition. When we are at BJJ and she isn’t understanding the technique right away, she sometimes gets frustrated. I do my best to use encouraging language “You got this” or “That’s almost right, but here’s a detail that might help…” or “Let’s get (so and so) over here to show us the correct movement.” Encouraging language makes people feel comfortable even when they are failing.
And trust me, when I don’t use encouraging language or if I get frustrated and annoyed, we both feel it and our energy shifts. Just be aware that your demeanor can affect your partner. Keep that in mind.
A note on humility…it’s okay if you don’t understand and perform the technique right away. Jiu jitsu is hard and it will take a long time to get good at it. Some people pick it up fast while others not so fast. “Learn to be where you’re at.”
The other aspect of allowing your partner to practice the technique, is giving appropriate resistance. That means not going 100% defence and not allowing them to go through the motions of the submission or guard passing or whatever you’re learning.
Some people even ask me to give more resistance if they want to feel what it’s like when someone is trying to defend themselves from the technique. Ask your partner, or tell your partner how much resistance they/you want when learning a technique.
Don’t be weird. Match your partners intensity.And allow your partner to actually practice the technique you’re learning.
I’m still trying to master all of those and expect to be working on them for many years to come. Because one of my biggest goals in jiu jitsu is to become a good partner. If we learn well together, we all get better together. And if we all get better together, we can fight each other using really cool moves and become modern day ninjas. Isn’t that what we all want?
Higher belts compliment your courage and adversity. Lower belts admire your dignity and grace. Your enemies would never dare to test your strength and ferociousness. And your friends and family don’t really understand why you go to a legal fight club every week but they like you anyway. You’re basically a modern-day samurai.
After getting my first stripe on my blue belt, I finally feel like a blue belt. What does that mean exactly, to ‘feel like a blue belt’?
It feels like I understand most basic positions
I might not know all the techniques in jiujitsu, I’m not sure anyone actually does. But I can understand what instructors are saying 90% of the time. However, if they start talking about K-Guard or leg entanglements then I’m pretty much lost.
It feels like I can submit and positionally dominate white belts
The difference between a three stripe white belt and a one stripe blue belt is patience. All the white belts I roll with (and some blue, but all white) are either tense, shaking, rushing themselves, or panicking. Nowadays, I’m cool as a cucumber even when someone takes my back and has a body triangle locked in real tight. As a result my defense is getting better with every open mat. When it comes to positional control, I can really get a sense of where and how I am supposed to be putting my body in certain positions and how I and my partner are most likely to react in those scenarios. Beating up white belts makes me better.
It feels like I’m not going anywhere
They say most people quit at blue belt. They think they know all they need to know. I actually agree with that. If everyone out there was a blue belt, street fights would be safer and there might not be as many. I want to do this as a life long activity. A hobbyist who competes sometimes. Maybe one day could teach others how to survive even when someone takes their back and has a body triangle locked in real tight.
Here are three skills that got me this far: 1. Taking my lumps 2. Knowing my body / recovery 3. Research
Taking Lumps
I get beat up at every class. Doesn’t matter who I was rolling with. Sure, I might get more subs then my training partner (doesn’t happen that often for me) or my defense will be solid, but none of it came easy. It was always a grind. But I kept showing up. There is this weird phenomenon that I will call the Fight Club Phenomenon (will henceforth be referred to as FCP). FCP is when you get beat up but keep coming back. There is a feeling of triumph even though you got smashed. You put your body through hell, and came out alive. You realize you can do a combat sport without quitting. You learned a lot about yourself. Fighting becomes a form of self-improvement and you want more!
Knowing your body / recovery
You want to know a little secret? Sometimes I choose not to go to bjj class. Not just because I have an injury or I am busy with something else. Sometimes I don’t go simply because I don’t want to. Don’t get me wrong, I still love rolling. But sometimes I need to listen to my body. And when my body says ‘hey maybe we should take a break and let that chronic shoulder injury you’ve had since high school recoup a bit’ I take its advice and don’t go for a few days or even a week. There’s nothing wrong with taking time off. As they say, the mats aren’t going anywhere. And the mats want your body to be at its best when you are there.
Research
I watch bjj comps and match videos often. I bought a yearly FloGrappling subscription a year ago and there is tournaments on all the time. Also, on Youtube, there are free livestreams of IBJJF comps all over the world. (side note: I cancelled my FloGrappling subscription and it won’t renew at the end of August, since I didn’t want to pay another $200+ again. Its a cool app, but not worth it for me when I can find competitions for free elsewhere.)
I also read about jiu jitsu often. Here’s a short list of books I’ve read or I’m reading or I plan on reading, that have helped with mindset and keeping interest in the sport: -Grappling 101: How to Avoid Being Bullied on the Mat by Bakari Akil II PhD -The Lazy Man’s Guide to Grappling by Bakari Akil II PhD -The Black Belt Blueprint: An Intelligent Approach to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Nicolas Gregoriades -The Jiu Jitsu Answer Man: Intriguing Questions, Thought-Provoking Responses, Informative Articles, and Fascinating Stories by Roy Harris -Becoming the Black Belt: One Man’s Journey in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Roy Dean -On Jiu Jitsu by Chris Matakas -Mastering the 21 Immutable Principles of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Paulo Guillobel -Jiu Jitsu 101: White Belt Survival Guide by Jiujitology -Jiu Jitsu 201: From Blue Belt to Black and Back to White by Jiujitology -Jiu Jitsu University by Saulo Ribeiro and Kevin Howell
To name just a few.
The power of osmosis has my brain soaking up all this knowledge unconsciously and then it swells up to my consciousness when I roll. I have no idea how it works, but it works.
With all that being said, sometimes I miss being a white belt. It was an amazing feeling.
Are you a blue belt? What have you enjoyed so far about that belt?
Are you a white belt? What are you looking forward to the most when it comes to getting your blue?
Keep showing up and you’ll get that stripe on your blue belt quicker than you think.
There and Back 