If You Get Anxiety About Competing in Jiu-Jitsu, Open This

On the hesitancy in pursuing hard things.

Photo via Rachel Lamb

After I wrote about competing with friends, I got this message:

Can you write about hesitancy to compete? I signed up to compete and now I’m second guessing myself. I guess it’s my pride, I don’t want to get up there and lose. These super fights up on a stage with walk out music and lights seem to hold more weight and produce more nerves.

I’ve been competing in jiu-jitsu for half my life, and in the meantime have picked up what I think is a good mentality for pursuing hard things, including jiu-jitsu competition. Here are five things that frame my pursuit of hard challenges, with some jiu-jitsu-specific points:

A life devoid of hard challenges is a mediocre one.

My favorite people are those that live with the absolute intent and control over their life. Being a passenger in your own story is careless at best and irresponsible and reckless at worst. Regardless of what your decisions are, make them purposefully and analyze them meticulously. No one ends up in a sanctioned fight by accident, that’s a good thing.

It will make your future hard things easier.

Your life will not change. But you might.

Things that will actually change your life can be counted on one hand. Random acts of god, having children, love, death, illness, etc. Jiu-jitsu will never change any of those things. Reducing the pressure you are putting on one event by knowing the outcome, good or bad, won’t truly change your life. You will still have dinner with your wife, and you will still be who you are when it’s over in their eyes.

You may however cause some personal change, which leads me to:

Hesitancy is caused by your commitment to change.

A jiu-jitsu competition is a challenge boiled down into a set time limit within a ruleset. When you agree to compete you are making a commitment to prepare for that challenge, and to change yourself enough to obtain a positive outcome.

All true personal change is the accumulation of a series of small decisions over a period of time. You don’t start competing when you shake hands with your opponent, you start competing when you agree to it, and continue competing daily until you step on the mats. It’s the accumulation of every decision that prepares you for competition that is the battle. The more prepared you feel the less anxiety you will experience when it’s time to do the thing.

In deciding to compete, you are hesitant because you are afraid to commit to all the decisions required for change that you will have to make. Turning down desserts, arguments over date night cancelations, hard rounds when you’re exhausted, etc. The decisions required to remove the nerves you feel now, unprepared.

When I agree to compete, I am the most nervous I will be right at that moment. Every day that passes I am more prepared, and the anxiety and nerves decrease proportionally. Peaking in absolute confidence before I step on the mats, if I’ve done it right.

This also makes accepting short-notice matches easy in my opinion. You will have to make fewer decisions until it’s time to step on the mat. There’s no time to make decisions that generate change.

So in agreeing to compete, think that the closer you get to the competition the fewer hard decisions there are left to make, and the more prepared you will feel. Once you shake hands, it’s all gone because the only thing left is the fun part.

On the day, just be normal.

The easiest way to curb anxiety and nerves on the day of the competition is to not do anything outside of the ordinary. I don’t listen to music, wear extra layers to stay warm, slap myself, thank a deity, etc. I drive to the place where the jiu-jitsu is scheduled to take place, warm up as I normally would, wearing the same stuff I always wear. I put my mouthpiece in, drink some water, and do jiu-jitsu. Rinse and repeat until you win or lose.

It’s just theater.

Regardless of what surrounds it, the competition space will be familiar. Lights, banners, music, yelling fans, family in the stands, pyrotechnics, all of it doesn’t change the competition surface. Two-inch thick foam measuring something around 15 x 15. Remind yourself of that every time you get caught looking at the lights.

If you enjoy the lights, revel in them.

Hope this helps. Get out there, you will only be better for it.

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This article was written by Ernesto Rivera. Ernesto is a BJJ black belt based out of Atlanta and an active competitor all over the world. You can follow him on Instagram or on his blog on Medium dot com.

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