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Life is one long training session

Why does it matter if you win or lose?

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.

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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.
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."
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.

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A Case Study In Fudoshin

In martial arts and in Zen Buddhism, we talk about fudoshin. Roughly translated as “immovable mind,” fudoshin can be described as a state of emotional balance. This type of composure is of particular value in times of crisis, which is one reason it was a virtue prized by the samurai.

This can be a struggle for all of us. Fortunately, we have some good examples to follow.

Murilo Bustamante is one of the best and most well-respected jiu-jitsu fighters ever. We were fortunate enough to bring him in for a seminar last year. Wherever I visit to train, no matter what the school’s affiliation or focus, I find deep respect for Bustamante.

He even choked me, and how many people can say that? ... OK, a lot of people.
He even choked me, and how many people can say that? … OK, a lot of people.

I was stuck home sick all day today, and I decided to spend some time watching several of the dozen or so Bustamante fights available on UFC Fight Pass, After watching some of his later bouts — and by the way, the next time I’m tempted to make excuses based on my age, I’m going to remember watching a 39-year-old Bustamante in Pride — I moved on to a fight I’d seen before.

That famous fight is his UFC 37 clash with Matt Lindland.

I first learned about this fight from Royce Gracie black belt Jake Whitfield. When I first watched the fight, I considered it part of my education in jiu-jitsu history. Since then, I’ve watched it several times, and taken something new from it with each watching.

This time, I took this from it: this fight is an object lesson in fudoshin.

You can pretty much feel safe if any one of these guys is with you, nevermind five of them.
You can pretty much feel safe if any one of these guys is with you, never mind five of them.

To understand why, you have to understand the context. Bustamante was the UFC’s middleweight champion, having taken the belt from Dave Menne.

Despite being the defending champ, though, he was the betting underdog. Oddsmakers and observers of MMA favored Lindland, who had earned an Olympic silver medal in wrestling. He was also younger and undefeated in seven fights. That is to say, despite Bustamante’s achievements, most people were expecting Lindland to win.

It didn’t go that way. Using fundamental jiu-jitsu, Bustamante took down the Olympic wrestler with just over a minute gone in the first round. Two minutes later, Bustamante secured a tight armbar and Lindland was tapping.

But Lindland claimed he hadn’t tapped, and in what he would later call his biggest mistake, referee John McCarthy informed the combatants that he would let the fight continue.

Commentator Jeff Osborne said immediately after the first tap was disallowed: “That may have cost Murilo this fight.”

Imagine that: you’re the champion. People expect you to lose, which you have to see as a slight. Then you execute perfectly, surprise the critics by taking down a Greco-Roman wrestling expert, get the submission, the referee stops the match …

… and then tells you you have to do it all over again? Now that the opponent has seen what you want to do? How would you react? To say that this would throw most people off would be an understatement of epic proportions.

Would you be able to shake that off and perform immediately? Would you be able to calmly go about your business and secure another submission?

Because that’s exactly what Murilo Bustamante did, hurting Lindland with punches in the third round and securing a fight-ending guillotine.

It’s not just responding with grace under pressure and continuing to fight well that impressed me. Frank Mir, another commentator on the broadcast, pointed out that if you deny tapping the first time, you might not get a chance to tap the second time. More than one black belt I’ve talked to about the fight has said the same.

Not Bustamante. He briefly protested the mistaken decision to re-start the fight, but shortly thereafter put his mouthpiece in and went to work. He used his technique to dominate and finish the match. And when McCarthy stopped the fight a second time, he let go and celebrated with an admirable level of restraint, respect and dignity.

Ignoring the understandable frustration — even anger — that Bustamante must have felt at the time takes incredible emotional control. That’s fudoshin.

Murilo Bustamante should be universally acknowledged as one of the greatest representatives of jiu-jitsu. When you remember his fighting skills, don’t forget his immovable mind.