Hard Lessons From Losing
You're not allowed to hate 50% of the game.
When I was a kid, I hated losing.
I still don’t particularly like it.
I remember playing wiffle ball with my friends and my dad in high school, and throwing complete fits when I couldn’t carry my team to victory to win the little plastic trophy that we competed for. Every year, a different fit of mine was thrown into the year-end highlight reel.
I was not a good loser. I am still not the best loser.
However, I have lost and failed many times in my life, and I’ve found that although it’s not as fun, you learn more from losing than you do from winning.
Yes — you can learn from both — but nothing forces you to confront yourself quite like being met with results that you don’t want.
Today, we’re talking about Rocky Balboa, failure, and how you can pull yourself together and keep moving forward.
A lesson from the Italian Stallion.
Rocky is one of the greatest sports movies ever made.
I rewatched it the other day because I was thinking about great combat sports movies, but I didn’t think much about the ending until we got there.
At the end of Rocky (sorry if you haven’t seen it, but I’m going to spoil this movie that turns 50 next year), Rocky loses his big fight with Apollo Creed.
If you love sports, the movie gets you amped to compete. I was doing my ugly, Jiu-Jitsu athlete shadow boxing around the kitchen afterward, dreaming about my competition next weekend in Las Vegas at CJI.
But hold on a second.
Rocky lost.
Why do we love him so much? How did we fall in love with this loser so much that they had to make 5 more movies about his career? Why does watching this guy lose to Apollo Creed make me want to go try to win?
It’s simple, really.
It’s because he took the risk. He answered the call of the hero’s journey.
He became the man in the arena.
We love Rocky not because he lost, but because he fought like a hero.
A lesson from me.
I’ve had a few Rocky moments in my grappling career thus far.
In 2024, I beat someone at the ADCC Trials who had beaten me 3 times and submitted me twice. At PGF last year, I fought my way through one of the most grueling tournaments in Jiu-Jitsu despite being undersized. I took second and won a lot of fans.
Again, I didn’t win the final match, but I won people over with how I performed. I earned belief in myself because of how I performed.
Here’s the weird part: even after losing at PGF in the finale, I still felt good about myself.
I didn’t cry like I did after getting armbarred in 20 seconds at AIGA, even though I made about 5 times more money there. I was proud.
Royce Gracie said he liked my Jiu-Jitsu. I liked my Jiu-Jitsu. My coach was proud of me. My fiancé was proud of me. My teammates were proud of me.
I lost, but it didn’t really hurt. Did I want to lose? No, but I moved on fast.
Losing doesn’t hurt as much if you perform well. If you leave it all on the line.
And so, how do you leave it all on the line?
To me, I believe that you must leave no stone unturned in preparation.
If you compete knowing that you prepared the absolute best that you could with the circumstances that you had, you will hold your head high regardless of the outcome.
Train the best you can. Don’t cut corners. Be honest with yourself.
This applies off the mat as well.
I’m not proud of all of the writing that I have released.
The same is true in my business, in my relationship, or in every other kind of endeavor in life. Sometimes, I do things half-assed. I hope I am not the only person to admit this.
However, I always feel better about myself and my work when I leave it all on the line.
When I train my hardest. When I do the extra research. When I plan a nice date with my fiancé.
I think this is my first time quoting Gandhi in this newsletter, but this quote explains it perfectly:
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”
Results are great. I’d rather win CJI than not next week. I wish I’d won ADCC instead of coming in fourth. I wish my EBI OT game were a little better.
But you cannot have the results without first having the performance that delivers the results, and you cannot have that performance without doing the work behind the scenes. You cannot do the work without surrendering yourself to the possibility of failure.
You cannot do without first simply trying.
Closing Thoughts
Confidence is so interesting to me.
Perhaps this is because I struggle with it sometimes.
The most confident people that I know will admit to you that they are lying to themselves. They’re making up stories that serve them so they can act the best that they can — without fear. They will never let the truth get in the way of what needs to be done.
This is the cool part, I think.
Truth is subjective. Whether you believe you can achieve something or that you can’t, you’re right.
But whether you get the result or not, excellence is about performing more than actually succeeding. About doing what you set out to do. We celebrate winners not because they win, but because they perform.
In Star Wars, when Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no try,” maybe he didn’t mean that failure was not an option. Maybe he just meant that no matter what happens, to live with yourself, you must leave it all out there.
Failure is always a possibility, but it doesn’t feel like failure if you give everything into the preparation and the performance.
You can’t regret giving everything you can.
The Grappler's Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models, the world's #1 Jiu-Jitsu education podcast!
This week's guest was "Doctor Kickass" Mike Piekarski, a physiotherapist, BJJ black belt, and head instructor. Here are 5 of his best ideas for injury prehab:
🛡️ Think mitigation, not prevention. Injuries can't be eliminated, but you can reduce risk by knowing the danger zones in Jiu-Jitsu and making smarter choices.
🙌 Tap early, tap often. Normalize tapping for any reason, including confusion, discomfort, or danger. Instructors should model tapping to set the culture.
🔄 Prep your joints, not just your lungs. Ten minutes of Controlled Articular Rotations (CARs) and low-intensity, skill-based warmups do more for safety than endless pushups.
🏋️ Strengthen tendons and ligaments. Use end-range isometrics and targeted loading in the exact positions where injuries happen, like kimura or heel hook ranges.
⏳ Adjust with age. Movement-heavy games demand more attributes. As you get older, emphasize pressure, control, and safer training habits to stay on the mats longer.
🎧 To hear the full conversation, listen to Dr. Mike Piekarski on the BJJ Mental Models podcast.
The Grappler’s Diary is also sponsored by Grapple Science!
I’ve been promoting their sister company, ATHLETHC, for the last few months, but today I want to tell you a little bit about Grapple Science.
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To give COGNITION a try, hit this link and use the code “DIARY” at checkout.
Also published this week:
Why Getting What You Want Doesn't Make You Feel Better
The life that I have today is much better compared to where I was a year ago.
Confession time:
I don’t know if I invented the “Woj Lock”.
I kind of think I just was in the right place at the right time. I was the first person to hit in the social media era, and I got to have it named after me.
I’m a lucky man.
But it’s not really about who does it first or does it best or even who gets it named after them. It’s about who can teach it to others, and one thing I do know is that I teach leg locks well.
Woj Lock the World on BJJ Fanatics officially has over 100 5-star reviews!
You won’t regret ankle locking literally everyone you train with.
Thank you for reading another edition of The Grappler’s Diary!
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Powerful post brother. A mindset like that makes a winner regardless of outcome but also increases likelihood of successful outcomes in the arena over time. Stoked for you and for next weekend