Have you ever seen the spy comedy “Sneakers,” starring Robert Redford and a stellar ensemble cast?
I won’t entirely spoil it for you, but the good guys win, and as part of their victory, they are able to extract certain promises from an agent of the US government, played ably by James Earl Jones. Some ask for favors for themselves, small or large. One member of the protagonist team, the blind Whistler, asks for something different. He asks for “peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men.”
It’s a great phrase, despite its use of “men” as a generic for “people.” The phrase is drawn from the King James Version of the Bible, and is used in Christmas Carol. I’m a secular person, but it’s tough to deny the power of ritual and symbol, especially when it’s supposed be used to build togetherness. When the holidays work right, whatever your faith tradition, they make you happier than you were before, remind you of your connection to your fellow humans, and make you grateful for all you have in your life.
Yet the holidays can be a tough time for people, religious and secular alike. Not everyone has a family experience that resembles a heartwarming film. Not everyone has the capacity to celebrate. And while religious texts are supposed to be preaching unity, it seems like all we see in headlines is division. During these holy days, this seems wrong.
I have a charity project or two that I’m not quite ready to announce yet. But it’s Christmas Eve, and the project might be thematically related to this, so I want to say something about it. Also, I want to do my part in reminding you that while people are capable of doing great harm, we’re also capable of incredible acts of compassion, self-sacrifice, and love.
All I can say about the project at this time of year is this: When I think about the world’s religions — and, in fact, the world’s people — here’s what I want to be thinking about.
These stories have a common thread: at enormous personal risk, human beings stood up to protect others who were ostensibly not like them. That’s powerful. Like I said, I’m an avowed secularist, but these examples weren’t hard to find, either. Human history is replete with stories like this, of those truly courageous souls who welcomed the stranger and chanced losing their lives — in many cases, to save someone they didn’t know.
Look in all the holy books, too. You’ll find it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Whoever kills an innocent will be regarded as a murderer of all humanity. What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow human.
That’s not about the specific religion, of course. It’s about the people, and the way we interpret text. If you’re looking for excuses to hurt people, you’ll find them. (Truth be told, I wish you wouldn’t). If you’re looking for reasons to see the better angels of our nature, I hope you find that, too — whatever your faith or lack thereof.
One of the things I love most about jiu-jitsu is that it, too, can be a unifying force. I believe that, or I wouldn’t be doing it. That’s a hint about the project, too. We should find more items of significance that unify us.
Everyone has difficulties that come into their lives, and this time of year can amplify those feelings in the same way that it can amplify good feelings. You might not be in a war zone at this time of year, and I hope you aren’t, but you don’t have to be in order to make a real difference in someone’s life. That same King James Bible, I recall, has some passages about giving gentle answers, turning the other cheek and loving those who might consider themselves your enemy.
My New Year’s Resolution is to respond to hard things by getting kinder, and by thinking about new ways to help the world. This is easy to say. Harder to do. Like most hard things, it’s worth doing. Jiu-jitsu is like life: it’s a constant struggle between what’s right and what’s easy.
I want peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. I want us to do that and I believe that we can.
If you did hear, then you must have also heard from all the people who knew she would lose, who say she was overrated the whole time, and who believe that her lack of humility led to her fall from grace (as opposed to a well-prepared opponent who created matchup problems).
This shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does. It’s the way humans think. The fact is, though, it did surprise me to see the narrative snap back so fast from “Ronda will just armbar her, obviously” to “I knew Ronda was overrated, and she got a big head from becoming a big star, and her moral failings led to her doom.”
There is a pithy modern reaction to this, which is: haters have a job, and that job is to hate.
There is also a deeper, less modern reaction, one that I think about often.
When I was a child, all I wanted was my own rap theme song. Like John Slade said, every hero needs some theme music.
Turns out all I had to do to realize this dream was host a community radio show. Starting this Sunday, I’ll be hosting the Cageside ConcussionCast on WHUP FM 104.7 in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
The name is a little tongue-in-cheek, but me and my co-host Trevor Hayes will be talking about jiujitsu, MMA and the martial arts in the Carolinas and beyond. You can check it out live on Sundays from 10 a.m.-11 a.m. Eastern time if you’re local, or you can listen to the livestream at WHUPfm.org. The shows will automatically become podcasts an hour after airing, so you can download them for free. We’ll have them up on iTunes soon.
Beyond any question, the ConcussionCast will the best combat sports show hosted by a vegan pajama wrestler. Come listen to us preview local tournaments and fights and interview the best martial arts personalities you’ll ever want to hear from. We’ll let these experts explain how North Carolina became a jiu-jitsu hotbed, what fights to watch and when, how to execute techniques and what walkout music you should pick for your fight. Occasionally we’ll talk to our expert guests about Dungeons & Dragons and heel hooks:
We also promise fun and vegan recipes with a minimum of blunt trauma, but a maximum of entertainment. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Chat with us using the hashtag #CagesideWHUP or email us at cagesideWHUP at gmail dot com. And let me know who you want us to interview.
Oh, and about that theme music: how awesome is this track created for the show by Toon & The Real Laww?
The first thing I did when I got up this morning was watch Mackenzie Dern’s match against Gabi Garcia at ADCC. The second thing I did was send messages to several of my friends along the lines of “Wow, Dern beat Gabi?” with multiple interrobangs.
If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, 80 percent of the jiujitsu people you know seem to be reacting roughly the same way.
Many will say that the response to this match proves that Ralek Gracie has been wrong about saying Metamoris can’t afford to bring in women for matches, and those people will be right. But I want to take a different slant on that, partially because I try to look forward instead of backward, and partially because I do public relations for a living.
Practically everyone is talking about Gabi-Dern right now. With the world’s attention on this match, Metamoris has a serious opportunity to capitalize on that attention — and to earn back some goodwill from grappling fans.
If I were the Metamoris PR guy, I would tell Ralek that the world had given him a tremendous gift. I’d tell him to get on the phone with both Garcia and Dern right now and offer them a rematch at Metamoris in May.
For one thing, it would be a great match with a great story. Now that Gabi’s aura of invincibility has been punctured, people are more interested in her matches than ever; it’s extension of the great underdog story, where now the question becomes “can she do it again?”; they’re both in shape; Dern has nothing to lose, and Gabi probably wants redemption.
Finally, this gives Ralek Gracie himself a chance at a graceful withdrawal from his earlier comments. Ralek could give a statement that says “Wow, was I wrong: people are interested in women’s matches, and that’s why we’re bringing in these two great athletes.” Everybody wins. Remember when Dana White said women would never, ever fight in the UFC — and then he met Ronda Rousey? This could be that moment for Metamoris.
People are interested in matchups when they have great stories behind them. Right now, the world is thrilled because a dynamic underdog pulled on upset against a dominant force: imagine if we could see a repeat of that under submission-focused rules next month.
I’m interested in how the next chapter of the story ends: aren’t you?
Who is more successful, the single guy who has a billion dollars or the married guy with three great kids who just scrapes by?
I sometimes use this analogy to get across a principle: what success looks like depends upon the criteria you use. If we define success as happiness, which I do, we don’t have enough information to answer the question. Maybe the rich bachelor has only ever really wanted to fall in love and have children; maybe the married guy’s financial stresses blind him to how wonderful his offspring are. Or maybe the single guy is thrilled to have no commitments and enough money to fly in Rickson Gracie for constant private lessons (which is what I would do) and maybe the family man has just what he’s always wanted.
Jiu-jitsu is like life: how you define success depends upon your goals. I think about my own goals a lot, and yet my happiest moment in jiu-jitsu came as a real surprise when I tried to figure out what it was.
If I had a billion dollars …
What was that happiest moment, and why was it a surprise? Well, I’ll get to that in a second. We all know jiu-jitsu can make you happier (and that post I just linked has great strategies for doing so). But the manner in which it does this varies from person to person.
Some highlights are common, obvious even. After I decided I was going to devote a lot of time to jiu-jitsu, competition became a priority for me. At white and blue belt, I entered a ton of tournaments, trying both to get wins and improve as fast as I could. I’ve lost a lot of jiu-jitsu matches, which means I’ve also won a fair amount of jiu-jitsu matches, and some of those wins tasted pretty sweet.
I’ve never been overly focused on belt promotion — I’m a huge believer in “keep your head down and train hard, and that stuff will take care of itself” — but when I got promoted to blue and especially purple, those were great days as well.
Those are common highlight-reel moments for just about everyone, I think. If you’re at the right gym, you probably also have some great memories of camaraderie on road trips or during post-training bonding sessions.
When I read Andrew Smith’s article about happiness in BJJ and thought about the singular moment that made me happiest, though, I didn’t think about any medal or even the day I got my purple belt. I flashed on an otherwise banal moment.
That morning, I’d been teaching the 6 a.m. fundamentals class. A white belt expressed to me that he’d never been able to hit the basic hip bump sweep I was showing, so I offered details on a setup that had helped me out.
During the night class, he showed up again. I was watching him roll with another white belt, and he saw the chance to use the setup. I swear his eyes got as big as dinner plates. The guy actually looked over and said my name as he set the technique up, like he was whispering “watch this!”
He hit for the first time and I have never seen a person smile so big. But that might only be true because there wasn’t a mirror in the room.
It was a super-basic technique and an inconsequential gym roll, but that moment stands out to me for some reason. I finally got some small version of what my instructor must feel regularly.
Why is this? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Some combination of the sheer joy on his face, the direct line between teaching the setup and seeing it work in a few short hours, perhaps. Also, I’ve achieved a lot of my competition goals, which means I generally compete for fun and view those tournaments as an extension of my training. The more I teach, the more I improve at it and the more fun I have.
I started training when I was 36, so long-term I always knew that teaching was a more sustainable path for me than competing full-time. Competition is still something I enjoy a lot, and I still train as hard for competition as I ever have.
Maybe this is part of a mental transition where other “wins” are becoming as important to me — or even more so. Roy Marsh once told me that, in his view, a purple belt absolutely should be able to teach. I’m finding that this is certainly part of the growth curve for me.
There’s something deeply gratifying to me about helping somebody else achieve their goals. Being useful to others in that way, I’m coming to understand, is a critical part of my own goals, too.
How about you? What are your happiest moments in jiu-jitsu?
One of my most beloved gis is my first Toro. It fits great, is comfortable, has just the right amount of wear so I look like neither a first-day guy nor a slob, and it has my team and affiliation patches on it. It was my regular competition gi for a long time, and some of my favorite tournament memories happened in that gi. I still train in it regularly.
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when it finally got the funky gi smell. I know because one of my training partners informed me of this in the manner of De La Soul:
Granted, this dude has scent powers comparable to Daredevil or Willy the Nose from the McGurk Mysteries. Still, the lesson was clear. If I wanted to keep using this righteous gi, I had to be a considerate training partner.
I’m a pound-for-pound sweating champion, so I try super-hard to stay on top of the standard BJJ hygiene practices — deodorant, regular showers, nails clipped, teeth brushed, etc. — but my “body as a temple” attitude had to extend to my gi, too. So I returned to a tactic that I’d used for months but gotten away from after I ran out of it. I want to tell y’all about it.
This embarrassing incident caused me to go back to Odoban, which is a product you can get for $10 at various home improvement retailers. They use it in fire restoration, so you know it’s powerful. Throw a little bit of it into the load of laundry and your old gi comes out smelling fresh. I’d used it before (for similar reasons), but had slacked off until being duly chastised.
I am not sponsored by Odoban and have not received any compensation for this unsolicited endorsement, although if y’all want to ship a case to the Dirty White Belt Mansion in historic Durham, NC, I promise it’ll get used.
We all know who That Guy is. None of us want to be him. I was him for a session. Don’t let this happen to you!
People love stories. Whether it’s a great book, movie, or TV show, humans love to get caught up in a gripping narrative. That’s why people watch sports: the best contests feature rising action, a climax and satisfying resolution.
This applies to jiujitsu competitions, too. I’ve watched an absurd amount of jiujitsu matches, but there will always be a few that stand out to me, and I understand them the same way I understand any good story.
I want to talk today about one of the two best matches I’ve seen in person, a match featuring a legendary multiple-time world champion facing a newer, up-and-coming competitor.
Time was running short. With the world championship on the line, the six-time black belt world champion was down on points against the young upstart. There was just over a minute to go.
Then, from guard, the champ caught the challenger in a dangerous armlock: this elicited a fierce battle, with both competitors fully aware that the outcome of this submission hold would decide the match — and the Mundial championship. The champ was fighting to finish, with the challenger trying to hold on and win that first black belt Mundial gold.
Then the shoulder went. The challenger’s arm was suddenly at an angle that seemed all wrong.
But there was no tap. Arm hanging loosely in the air, the challenger refused to submit.
This was at the 2014 Mundials. I was a few rows back, watching this match live next to a tough purple belt friend of mine. “Why isn’t she tapping, Mary?” I asked. Mary has way more technical knowledge than I do, so I assumed she had an explanation. “I … I don’t know,” Mary said.
You might have figured this out from the headline or the match description, but the pronoun should give it away: this was Michelle Nicolini against Tammi Musumeci in the 2014 black belt final. Ultimately, an unbelievably tough but one-armed Musumeci gave up the sweep, yielding points — and a seventh world title — for Nicolini.
Speaking as a fan, this match doesn’t just represent why I watch jiujitsu, this is why I watch sports itself.
It has every element you need for a dramatic viewing experience: a great story, top-level skills, athletic prowess and a tremendous act of will. It features rising action, dramatic tension, and a last-minute comeback by a legendary competitor to defend her crown against the next generation.
It’s a great match and a great story. Here, watch it for yourself:
From the beginning, I want to say that there are many non-economic reasons to ensure some women’s matches make it onto PPV cards. The women I’m most interested in watching — Nicolini, Leticia Ribeiro, Beatriz Mesquita, Ana Laura Cordeiro, Gezary Matuda and Luiza Monteiro to name a few — have simply earned the right to compete in high-profile events. With six matches on every card, surely simple respect dictates that we get more than one match every six events.
But since basically every argument in defense of Metamoris starts with “the women’s matches won’t sell,” that’s the only argument I’m going to be addressing in this post. Simply put, I think that putting at least one women’s match (and ideally more) on each card makes economic sense.
Gracie admits the bout between Dern and Nicolini was successful enough in terms of box office drawing power and even match complexion, but suggests the dynamic between the two isn’t replicable at scale.
“We had that one match and it was cool, but that was more of, ‘That’s cool and that was interesting and I want to see that again if the girls are cute.’
Leaving aside Ralek Gracie’s offensive ‘if the girls are cute’ comment (and leaving aside what he must therefore think of Jeff Monson’s looks), this is an argument that is on its face absurd. So, the Nicolini-Dern matchup drew well at the box office and everybody liked the match — but that can’t be repeated? Really? We tried it, and it worked, and so we can’t try it again?
It is also an argument we hear with every iteration of women’s sports. Sometimes it winds up looking like a true argument, and sometimes (as with women’s tennis, which is more popular and a better game than men’s tennis) it looks silly. And Ralek’s comments just show the double-bind that this attitude causes: if you try it and it fails, you were right. If you try it and it works, well, clearly, you can’t replicate that success.
My capsule summary: every sporting event must be sold, and every sales pitch starts with a story. Generally speaking, the sports that have succeeded have taken the time to tell the stories of their athletes to give the audience some investment in the final product.
Who wouldn’t buy this card? I would buy this.
This should actually be easier with jiujitsu than with many other sports, because the core audience — grapplers — already has an investment in the product, and they know good jiujitsu when they see it.Every new product faces this challenge, but the barrier to entry here is much smaller.
Explain who people like Michelle Nicolini and Leticia Ribeiro are, for example, and you’ve got a ready-made marketing strategy. Let me explain why this makes economic sense in both the short- and long-term.
WHY IT MAKES SENSE IN THE SHORT TERM
There are three reasons putting at least one women’s match on each Metamoris card makes economic sense: match quality, targeted audience marketing, and opportunity cost. Let’s start with the first because it’s the simplest.
The Metamoris audience is composed of people who want to watch exciting submission grappling, and women’s matches deliver. Plus, many of the best women in the world have expressed interest in competing. Do we really think the average fan would rather see Jeff Monson, Chael Sonnen (who gets two matches) and Babalu than the some of the greatest women ever?
If you see matches with one of these women and don’t like it, you might not actually like jiujitsu.
Even if you buy that, though, consider that there are 6 matches on each card, and people buy cards for different reasons. As I’ll discuss in a moment, Metamoris has UFC fighters on the card to try to draw fans from mixed martial arts.
Having a variety of matches enables you to tell a variety of stories — and women’s matches are particular stories that would appeal to particular demographics. Think of a blue and a purple belt sitting 10 rows up for Nicolini-Musumeci: even if those people aren’t interested in, say, Chael-Babalu, having a match featuring one or both of those women draws them in even if you wouldn’t otherwise get them to buy the event.
Finally, consider return on investment. When the Metamoris Needs Women images started circulating widely, I honestly thought there was a good chance Metamoris would add a women’s match to the card. This would have been a way to signal that they heard fans’ concerns, and given that a lot of the top competitors train in California anyway, would have been a relatively small economic investment.
Now more than ever.
Instead, the Metamoris brass chose not just to forego a women’s match, but to give an interview saying they might get to it eventually if the women were deemed sufficiently attractive.
Which would have been a wiser economic strategy: to invest a few thousand dollars into adding a women’s match to the card, or to alienate a healthy portion of your core audience?
Let’s say I’m wrong about this economic calculus, though. Let’s say it would have increased Metamoris’ costs in the short term. It still would have been a wiser economic decision in the long run. Here’s why:
WHY IT MAKES SENSE IN THE LONG TERM
I don’t buy that women’s matches wouldn’t draw, and Metamoris’ lone experience with a women’s match supports my thoughts. But even if they wouldn’t draw now, adding some matches would be a great chance for Metamoris to retain core fans and to expand its audience.
The primary audience for Metamoris is always going to be people who enjoy grappling — and that audience is composed largely of grapplers. It’s smart to both recognize that this is the core audience and to attempt to expand that audience.
This, I believe, is what Metamoris is trying to do by bringing in prominent MMA fighters: people who have seen Brendan Schaub, Joe Lauzon and Chael Sonnen in the UFC may check out a Metamoris PPV even if they aren’t fans of submission grappling per se.
That’s the theory, anyway. If this is the perspective we’re adopting, however, this is just another reason why it makes more economic sense to have women’s matches at Metamoris: fan retention.
Who is more likely to stick around and buy multiple events, the MMA fan who likes Brendan Schaub or the fan of women’s jiujitsu who likes Michelle Nicolini? Chances are that without MMA guys on the card, the fight fan is just going to go back and watch the UFC. Unless every Metamoris card contains the likes of Schaub — a move which risks alienating the core audience — the people who are only fans of mixed martial arts are likely to be one-and-done buyers.
Conversely, if you’re a fan of great jiujitsu, you’re probably going to love watching Nicolini, Mesquita, Ana Laura Cordeiro, etc. Some of the most exciting matches these days are women’s matches, and if you’re reading this post, you probably saw the Brendan Schaub match. Enough said there.
A tournament is a story. A career is a story.
Again, I dispute the notion that putting on women’s matches would cost Metamoris money. If so, though, one match on each card could function as a “loss leader” — to get new fans in the door and create further demand.
Every great new product in the market transforms that market. If you’re a guy grappler who has never seen a women’s match, watching a terrific contest of this nature is likely to leave you wanting more. That’s one reason it’s a long-term winner to have women’s matches at Metamoris.
But there is another, broader reason. Currently, fewer women train jiujitsu than men. This is sometimes used as a reason not to put women’s matches on PPVs. First, that’s based on the faulty assumption that men will not watch women’s sports.
Additionally, though, Metamoris should think about this as an untapped market: the more women who train, the more potential grappling fans there are. And how do we get more women to train and keep training without showcasing the best women athletes?
With more visible women’s matches, more women train and get the benefits of jiujitsu. That means more people training, and more people watching. That makes us all better.
IN CONCLUSION
Here’s the sad part: with Ralek’s most recent comments, it might honestly be too late for Metamoris.
There’s a window of opportunity for everything, and the last few days may have slammed that window shut. An opportunity to tell fans “yeah, we heard you” turned into a monumental blunder that sent the message “yeah, we don’t care about you.” It will take considerable effort and will to come back from that.
I’m an optimist by nature, so I’ll finish by noting two things: first, that Metamoris competitor Polaris has pledged to have at least one women’s match on each card; and second, that the fundamental principles I’ve written about above remain in place.
There is still a market out there, ready to be served and expanded. Some company, maybe Polaris, is going to take advantage.
At the end of the day, I want everyone to train. I want everyone who trains to feel like there is a place for them in jiujitsu. And I want to see more matches like Nicolini-Musumeci.
Making sure that more great women get the chance to compete on pay per view cards would serve all three goals. Let’s make this happen.
Jiu-jitsu, my instructor says, is about survival. This is one of the things he says that resonates most with me.
Since I’ve started training I’ve said that my philosophy on yoga, jiu-jitsu and life is that as long as I’m breathing, nothing can have gone that wrong. This is an aspirational thing to say, too: it reminds me of how good I have it. Even when times are darkest, I’m surrounded with hope and possibility.
Let me come right out and say that I’ve always had friends who struggled with depression. If you’ve ever been in that particular mud, you know how hard it can be to see the world from the perspective I’ve just described.
What I am trying to stay here is that it matters very much to me that you stay alive.
I’m not trying to make a grand proposition of this statement — it matters very much to me that you stay alive — I’m just trying to state a fact. And it’s true basically whoever you are. Maybe you’re a close friend of mine and you know this already.
[I thought about walking out to this song tonight, because the Mountain Goats are from Durham, and because the song is great, and because this stuff has been on my mind lately.]
Maybe we’re not even close friends. Maybe you’re an acquaintance, and there are dozens of people who know you better than I do. Maybe I don’t even know you. It still matters very much to me that you stay in the world. And think of all the other people who know far better than I do what unique contribution you make to our human experiment.
When I’ve lost people to depression and the self-destructive behavior it engenders, I’m always struck at how the people who felt most alone were always surrounded by people who really cared. It can be hard to see, just like you can’t always see the shore when you’re in a boat. The shore is always there.
Jiu-jitsu is about survival. Jiu-jitsu is life, and life is jiu-jitsu, and sometimes your life has to be about focusing on survival. That’s your jiu-jitsu for the day.
If you do nothing else today — including coming to my match tonight, although you should do that too — read this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Nye describes a scene where a father is crossing a rainy street carefully, holding his son on his shoulder as he crosses the wide expanse.
She intricately describes the care he takes protecting his cargo — until the end of the poem, when you realize she’s not just talking about one father and one son.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling. We’re not going to be able to live in this world without taking care of each other.
Jiu-jitsu is about survival. How you do in jiu-jitsu matters very much to me, and probably to a bunch of other people you don’t even know. Think about it.
This is a semi-rhetorical question. I want to acknowledge right up front that I am a competitive person, and so it matters very much to me whether I win or lose. By offering up the question I hope to provoke a thought experiment rather than to imply that it doesn’t matter.
For most of us, the answer is that competition is a measuring stick. It matters whether we win or lose because we are testing ourselves. This is, incidentally, why it’s important that we take on opponents for whom we have respect: if we win over competition that is sorely lacking, we have failed to challenge ourselves. Our achievement, such as it is, is much less valuable against lesser competition.
Simply put, we want to win because it means we’re on the right track, and we want to beat good competition because it means more than beating easy competition.
But let’s go a level deeper. Let’s say you achieve a primary goal, whether it be to take gold at a US Grappling tournament or beat a specific opponent. You’re not going to retire from jiu-jitsu. Presumably you’ll set new goals: you will ask yourself, “What now?” This is exactly what you should do. You’re also not going to quit after a disappointing loss. You’re going to analyze where you need to improve and aim at another goal.
The best I’ve ever prepared for a tournament was for last year’s worlds. I lost in the first round.
When I was playing poker regularly, the best players all advised me to treat your poker experience as one long playing session.
The bad players chase losses during single sessions: if they have a bad run of cards, they’ll stay at the table all night trying to get even. This is a terrible idea, since your sharpness will suffer and you’ll play worse than you would have otherwise. The good players realize that over the long run, the cards even out. The better players will get more money over the long run, and the worse players will lose it.
Instead of pushing to get even if you’re down money, you should play for as long as you planned on, stop, and start fresh during the next session. That way you’ll play your best, and if you really have an edge against your opponents, that will come out the longer you play. The bigger sample size will show you the way. Instead of viewing Saturday as one session and Monday as another, the best viewed all their time spent at the poker table as one long session.
Life is like that. Life is one long training session.
A win doesn’t matter if I stop training. A loss doesn’t matter if I keep training. My answer to the semi-rhetorical question “Why does it matter if I win or lose?” is this: my goal is to have the best possible jiu-jitsu I can have over the long term. I’m less concerned with one big win or one big loss that I am with constantly working to improve and refine my skills. I want to keep my focus on the Jeff of 2025, not the Jeff of Wednesday, March 25.
Getting triangled as a no-stripe white belt in 2011. Experience is the best teacher: if you get frustrated after losing, you don’t learn as well.
It matters if I win or lose because if I keep training, I keep improving, and if I keep improving, the wins will come more than they would have otherwise. Again, I believe strongly in the value of competition: competition is a system that we use to provide motivation and focus, and by and large it works. I know it works to motivate me.
I’m thinking about this lately because I have a gi match against Ze Grapplez at this Friday’s Bull City Brawl. I’m looking forward to it for many reasons: he’s a great competitor, it’ll be a good, tough test for me, and it’s a cool opportunity to compete in the cage in front of an audience. Tim’s someone I respect a lot for his approach — he trains all the time, competes regularly, and whatever outcome happens, he’s back on the grind the next day. (I also share his antipathy for the term “superfight” as applied to jiu-jitsu matches, by the way).
This is a terrific opportunity for me, and I’m training hard to take advantage of it. Generally speaking, I train like crazy for tournaments. I’ll never cop out and tell you I wasn’t giving it my all. If you’ve beaten me in a tournament, you got the best I had to offer on that day, so congratulations. I’m always glad I put myself out there, win or lose.
Winning is affirmation and losing is information, as my instructor likes to say, so both competitors get something out of the experience. Ideally, you win and learn, but no matter what happens, you’re better off than the timid souls.
Won a gi division at no-stripe white belt. Was never tempted to “retire undefeated.” Also, yes, I am as tired as I look.
Jiu-jitsu is like life. It’s one long session. However important one day is to us, to focus too much on the results of any one competition is a mistake. If your goal is to win the worlds and you fall short, of course you’ll be disappointed. That’s normal. Such luminaries as Saulo Ribeiro, Felipe Costa and Caio Terra had far less success early in their careers at lower belts. All became black belt world champions.
It’s not the short-term disappointment. It’s what you do with it over the length of the long session. You can win every competition you enter, but if you’re not challenging yourself, you’re losing the long session.
The Bull City Brawl match with me and Ze Grapplez is this Friday. One of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. And we’re both going to be back in the gym the next day training, because we’re both going to be better in 2025 than we were in 2015.
I knew it was stupid a few short minutes after I’d asked it, as the patient upper belt’s explanation kept going over things that I really should have known or at least guessed.
We’ve all done this, I imagine: had an unexplored thought, blurted it out in the form of an ignorant query, and quickly felt the hot red blush of embarrassment
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t regret it.
I don’t regret asking any of the litany of dumb, addled, ridiculous and flatly absurd questions that I’ve asked Seth Shamp, Jake Whitfield and Roy Marsh over the years. (Those guys might regret it, I don’t know: I haven’t asked them, since I don’t really want to know the answer). I’ve probably asked two or three dumb questions today already, and I plan on asking more tomorrow.
Seth and Detroit aren’t reacting to the fight decision, they’re reacting to a dumb question I asked.
Questions — and the answering of questions — are among our most powerful tools for learning.
If questions come from a place of ignorance, then answers help dispel that ignorance. (“Hey, why do I need an underhook when I do that guard pass?” “Well, you don’t, if you enjoy having your back taken”). If questions come from a place of some knowledge, then answers and dialogue can help flesh out our understanding. (“If I want to improve my self defense, how should I approach tournaments?” “… well, let’s talk about that.”)
The learning doesn’t just go one way, either. I’ve learned a lot from having to explain seemingly basic concepts and techniques.
Magic Johnson was a legendary basketball player, but a terrible coach. I believe this was because he never really had to think about basketball strategy: it was just so deeply embedded in him that shockingly perfect passes happened whenever he had the ball. I’m sure you can think of an incredible jiujitsu practitioner whose idea of technical instruction is “the arm is right there: just take it. … OK, let’s drill it, guys.”
When someone asks you about a fundamental technique, it forces you to go back to that original position and see it from their perspective. Drilling reinforces the right movements, helping our bodies learn how to react correctly. Answering questions does something similar for our minds.
Having to answer “why do you do this when you’re in guard?” makes me think “… yeah, why *do* I do that?” I might have a good reason or I might not. Thinking about it helps me figure that out. Because of conversations like this, I’ve fixed some of my mistakes and also deepened my understanding of why the correct things I do are correct.
This impulse is as understandable as it is counterproductive. Nobody likes to embarrass themselves in public. Even if putting yourself out there is the best way to improve your skills, it can be difficult. Which just makes it more important.
One of the great things about being a nerdy guy who was on the debate team is that I’m used to both public speaking and getting ritually mocked. Due to this early conditioning, it’s easier for me to laugh at myself. There’s an Amanda Palmer song with the line “I still get laughed at, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m just so glad to hear laughter around me.” That’s basically how I feel.
Or, as pop-punk band Jawbreaker said in a different context, there are times for being dumb.
The people I ask the most questions are the people I respect the most. Because their time is valuable, I always try to be conscious of not overstaying that welcome. But I know I gain a lot from it, and that courtesy is something I want to pay forward.
So I never want to discourage people from asking me questions. I love talking about jiujitsu and I love helping people who I have the ability to help. Questions, discussions and even disagreements are productive, as long as we keep an eye on the outcome we want — which is deepening our knowledge base. As the philosopher Karl Popper said of debates, “I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth.”
There’s a reason this blog is named what it is: it’s important for me to keep that white belt mind. We need to keep learning and re-learning to develop a full understanding of anything, but especially something as vast as jiujitsu.
When Dave Camarillo signed Roy Marsh‘s copy of “Submit Everyone,” he added an inscription that I thought was revealing: “To Roy: Never Stop Learning.”
Dave is a legend, and both he and Roy have done far more in martial arts than I ever expect to. But after 30-plus years of training, this is the message Dave chose to convey to another accomplished black belt.
Think about that. And maybe even ask somebody you respect a question about it.
