It’s tournament season, and with both the IBJJF New York Open and US Grappling’s Grapplemania in North Carolina just a few weeks away, I’m sure many of you will be competing — and some of you will be competing for the first time.

Since I did my first competition a little more than four years ago, I’ve learned a great deal. This includes a bunch of material I wish I’d known before my inaugural voyage into choking and being choked for medals. Hence, I wrote several posts designed to help my friends and the other students at the academy get ready.

We’re long overdue for lazy re-packaging of previous content some judicious aggregation and curation of past posts. Here are some of the posts that I think might be interesting if you’re relatively new to tournaments:

• People always ask me “How early should I start competing if I want to compete?” Here’s why I think there’s no reason not to get out there ASAP.
• Once you’ve made the decision to compete, you’ll probably start thinking about a million things. Here’s why you should cut that list of one million down to 10, and here’s how to think about those 10 things before your first tournament.
• Competing in a tournament isn’t like training in the gym, and many of us face the dreaded adrenaline dump. Here are some techniques for how to avoid that, as well as a story that details how I (mostly) stopped getting nervous before competing.
• You might win, or you might lose, and you will probably do some of both. Here’s why your win-loss record doesn’t matter so much, and why you should never apologize for losing.