jiu-jitsu tournament

Work is good, creation is good, and rest is good also

This Saturday, my daughter competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament in Pennsylvania, about two and a half hours away from where we live. She had some really tough matches, but came away with a silver medal in one division and a bronze medal in the other. It was a submission-only tournament, so there was no way to win by points. Someone has to tap. 

In this particular tournament, if no one submitted in regulation time, the match goes into an overtime cycle. The overtime cycle consists of several positions intended to put one competitor in an advantageous position from which to submit the other. For the kids, if no one wins in the overtime positional rounds, the match goes to a sudden-death takedown round where the first takedown to a pin wins. 

Of the four matches my daughter had, two in the gi and two in nogi, all four matches went into overtime. Her and her opponents truly battled it out and showed immense amounts of heart. Their grit and determination was so impressive that there were multiple spectators unrelated to either child watching their matches and cheering on the kids. 

After a long day of competing about two and a half hours away from home, we drove back and stopped for dinner. We let our daughter choose where she wanted to eat and she chose Ethiopian food. So we stopped at our favorite Ethiopian spot in Baltimore, had dinner, and then went home to unpack, shower, and go to bed. 

This morning, before church, we went to the jiu-jitsu academy so that my daughter could work with a couple of the coaches and one of her friends on the weaknesses the tournament exposed in her game. This was her choice. She wanted to go and, with the help of a good training partner and several generous coaches, she got a lot done in the hour and a half we were there while still having fun. 

After church, we went to my wife’s sister’s house to have lunch and relax for a while. On the way home, my daughter asked if we could go for a bike ride when we got back to the house. Even though my wife and I both agreed it was better to rest, my daughter continued to ask if we could go for a bike ride and told us, in spite of her physically, mentally, and emotionally draining Saturday, she wasn’t tired. 

I explained to her that, even if she doesn’t feel tired, it’s important to rest. “But resting is boring,” she said. 

“Maybe,” I replied, “but resting is necessary and resting is good for you. Do you know what God did after creating the heavens and the earth?”

“He rested,” she said begrudgingly. 

“That’s right,” I said. “From the creation story in Genesis, God teaches us three things: work is good, creation is good, and rest is good. Yesterday and even this morning, you worked really hard and that is good. You also got to enjoy creation by doing jiu-jitsu and using the body and mind God gave you, and that is also good. But now it’s time to rest because God tells us that rest is good as well, and it is good for you. God willing, there will be other days to ride our bikes.” “Okay, daddy,” she replied. 

After this, we went home to curl up on the couch, hang out, and watch a movie as a family. Moments like these are as important for her as they are for me. Through her, I learn how to do better because I want the best for her and have a bad habit of accepting less than the best for myself. Together and with the help of God, we make each other better. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

There is no secret ingredient

There are no secret jiu-jitsu techniques. Well, maybe there are, but as soon as someone uses them against another person, they are no longer secret. They become part of the collective conscious of jiu-jitsu. There are, however, techniques you may have not yet encountered or details you have not yet been shown, but there really are no secrets. 

Once you have a solid foundation of fundamental principles and techniques, jiu-jitsu is mostly about strategy, execution, and timing. With rare exception, the best jiu-jitsu competitors are not doing anything different than day-to-day practitioners. They are just doing it with more experience, confidence, and refinement. 

This lesson came up recently at a jiu-jitsu tournament my daughter competed in. There were two other kids in her gi (the woven cloth uniform worn in jiu-jitsu, judo, etc.) division and she beat both of them, one by points and one by bow-and-arrow choke. These same two kids were in her nogi division, but there was also a third boy who was only there to compete without the gi. 

In her nogi matches against the kids she had defeated in the gi, she won in a similar fashion as earlier. She beat one by points and one by rear naked strangle. But the third child, the boy who was only there to compete in the nogi division, defeated her in under a minute with an armlock. In fact, he beat all three of the other kids in his division in under a minute. 

After her losing match against this boy, my daughter was upset. I tried to comfort her, explaining that there is no shame in losing to someone who is clearly better than you, which he was, as long as you try your best, which she did. Her other matches went very well and she showed more confidence and assertiveness than she ever has before. I was very proud of her. 

When the boy who defeated her was competing against the other kids in the bracket, I watched his matches and I made my daughter watch as well. It was important, I told her, to see how and why he was winning. It wasn’t just size, age, or athleticism, even though he seemed to have advantages in these areas as well. Something else was going on. 

As we watched, I pointed out to her that this boy was not doing anything special or unusual. He wasn’t using any secret techniques. In fact, he was using all of her favorite techniques, knee-cut passes, armbars, and triangle chokes, techniques she is quite familiar with. The difference, however, was that he was doing these techniques with more confidence, assertiveness, and refinement than her. I explained to her that he wasn’t better than everyone else in the division because of any special, unattainable trait or characteristic. Everything he did to win, I explained, was in her toolkit and within her reach. Like Po’s father says to Po in Kung Fu Panda, “The secret ingredient is… nothing. There is no secret ingredient.” This boy didn’t beat anyone with secret jiu-jitsu. He beat them with confidence in his plain old ordinary jiu-jitsu. 

I went on to explain to her that she has the skills and the power to win. She need only believe in herself, and train and compete like she can win. It’s not a matter of more tools, but of honing and sharpening the tools she already has, and then using those tools with confidence and assertiveness. Like Po said to Tai Lung, I told her, “There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.

Don’t leave all of your ego at the door

Armlocks hurt. This is one of the first lessons a person learns in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right after they learn how to tap. Tapping is the pressure relief valve of the practice that, for the most part, keeps people safe. 

As long as the armlock is not applied too quickly, the person on the receiving end of it taps, and the person applying it respects the tap and lets go, the pain of an armlock is temporary. It goes a way relatively quickly once the submission is let go of. 

That is to say, if practiced safely, armlocks rarely lead to injuries. A person can get arm-locked hundreds of times over years of practice and competition without taking serious damage. This can cause practitioners to develop a false sense of security when it comes to submissions. There is a tendency, especially in practice, to simply accept the loss and move on. 

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this attitude, as it helps a person to not take training so seriously as to get upset about the many losses they will experience in practice. It also helps a person to continue training for a long time through all of the inevitable ups and downs that come with jiu-jitsu. 

Taking these losses too lightly, however, can become a problem. A person might grow so accustomed to losing that losing itself becomes a habit. It stops meaning anything and, therefore, offers no real motivation to improve. 

If it doesn’t bother a person at all to get submitted, they are likely to make the same mistakes again and again without being driven to change the behavior that is causing them to get put into this compromising position in the first place. For this reason, the idea that a person should “leave their ego at the door” before stepping on the jiu-jitsu mats is neither practical nor useful advice. Without some degree of ego, or at least a healthy amount of pride, a person will have no reason to improve. 

This is why, in my opinion, jiu-jitsu competitions are so important for skill development. On the mats in the academy, a person can roll, tap, and start over against the same person or group of people over and over again without any real sense of consequence. Being able to try again takes a lot of the sting off of the little losses experienced in the academy. 

In a tournament, however, a person really only gets one shot. If they tap, there are no do-overs. Add to this the money and time it takes to go to a tournament, and there are real consequences not doing one’s best. No matter what anyone says, losing in a competition match matters more than losing in practice, and it should.

The pain of a tournament loss lasts much longer than the pain of an armlock. This pain, really the effect of pride and the ego’s desire to win, is the motivational fuel for improvement. Channeled in the right way, it is a powerful tool for growth, as well as skill and mindset development. 

Of course, having too much pride, being overly sensitive about losses, and allowing this to affect one’s attitude and performance isn’t healthy either. The ideal is somewhere in the middle, where a person has just enough pride and ego to want to learn from mistakes and to improve, but not so much that one gets upset over losses. Armlocks hurt, but ultimately jiu-jitsu should be fun and something a person is able to do for a lifetime. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.