First of all, thank you to anyone that read the first post and has come back for more - the support I have received so far means a great deal and really makes me want to keep this up - obrigado!!
This blog will not address techniques particularly as I doubt I have anything to really add that you can't find better said somewhere on the internet or, at your local, friendly BJJ gym (get off the couch and get over there!). Instead, I will just talk about what comes to mind when I think about BJJ - I hope this will be interesting to at least a couple of people!
Recently, in a conversation with someone at the gym, he was equating life to jiu jitsu - something he does a lot - trouble at work? It's like BJJ. Trouble with your relationship? It's like BJJ. Meteor hit the earth? It's like BJJ! I THINK HE'S RIGHT!! However, I don't think it's just limited to BJJ, but actually to all combat sports with live sparring. I say live sparring rather than point sparring for a reason, which I will explain below.
There are a number of obvious reasons to take up a sport - health and fitness, scratching the competitive urge, hanging out with like-minded people, etc. etc. However, why take up a combat sport like boxing or BJJ, one where you can get seriously hurt if you're not careful? For me, there are a number of reasons, like testing my limits and training against other people to see just how good I am on my own, without a team to take credit for wins or blame for losses, but I also think there is more to it than that.
To start with, I would like to talk about what I mean by 'live' sparring. In sports such as BJJ and boxing, sparring is conducted under as realistic conditions as possible, which means no stopping when a punch is landed, like in point-sparring sports such as karate. This is crucial when considering how combat sports can apply to life. In life, just like in BJJ (the sport this blog centres on), there is no giving up when times get hard. Whether you are struggling desperately to protect an arm, or facing the end of a relationship, you are under pressure and having to deal with it and the pressure. Pressure is a big part of what I think about when I think of live sparring, learning to keep your composure when leather is flying at your face or when someone is sitting on top of or behind you trying to choke you or rip off an arm and this can transfer into doing the same when your life takes a turn for the worse. Being cool under fire is one definite life skill that martial arts can teach us - how to get your ass kicked and still keep going!
Hard work pays off is another crucial lesson. Every time I tap in BJJ or get dominated during a roll I have to rethink my strategy, go back to the drawing board and train harder. Sometimes it's a little correction, like hiding my arm better during a triangle choke, sometimes it's a lot bigger, like not allowing someone to get side control but every time I have to think again and use that to inspire my training. Only by working at BJJ can you get better at it and I believe it's the same in life. Work, relationships, even play are things that we have to work at to get better at and, with each setback we have to think about what we're doing and make sure we work and train harder to get through it.
Martial arts can not only teach us how to lose and not give up, they can also teach us how to win. When your next defeat can literally be a minute away it's hard to over-savour our victories. We learn to enjoy them but not be 'bad winners' and let them go to our heads too much. Enjoy the ride up, it can be a long way to fall - similarly though, we learn we can turn things around in a heartbeat, so sometimes the losses don't sting too much either.
The final lesson I want to talk about (and thanks for making it this far, if you did!) is that sometimes no matter what you do, it doesn't come right. Talking about competition, Prof. Marcos once said that the best feeling is to come home with a medal in your pocket, but that coming home without one, knowing you did every possible thing you could to win is still not as painful as it could be. In life as well, we can sometimes do everything right and still not come away with the result we want. We can know though, that if we worked hard and prepared hard and it didn't come off right that time then we have no-one to blame, we just weren't good enough on the night - not a great feeling, but we can still try and take satisfaction in the contest itself - a lesson that I really think can transfer to life. We all want to be Anderson Silva, standing in the Octagon with Dana White wrapping the belt around our waists. Sometimes though, we're Chael Sonnen, who did everything right in the fight, but got caught at the last minute. BJJ especially can prepare us for this.
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