The competition game tends to drive the attention of our community. Despite the fact that 95% of students don’t compete (this is my anecdotal number), competition is what is in social media, BJJ news, and blogs. What happens at competition, certainly doesn’t stay at competition. As a coach, whether you run a highly competitive school or not, competitions are a community event, and drive lots of attention. This is an opportunity to focus on the your Jiu Jitsu community, develop connections, and represent the art. In fact, you are doing all those things whether you like it or not, so do them well.
Respect This Game
Competitions can be heated. Rivalries can form. A lot of work has been invested into these moments, and its time to reap the rewards. The only thing in the way is the other player on the mats. These moments can bring out the best of us, and sometimes the worst. In a room full of competition and ego, you must decide. Poor behavior and disrespect from the coaches and athletes (typically, one precedes the other) is an insult to the art.
By and large people choose wisely, but you will see the art disrespected. In fact, this writing was inspired by a head coach who publicly diminished the win/loss records of local kids teams. Who does this? To build your team, your athletes, and to contribute to the community, the foundation of your work must be to respect this game. When you do this, your team follows suite.
Lets frame the experience and turn competitions into a community building event.
Defining Competitive Spirit
There are lots of emotions wrapped up in competition. Before the match, athletes can experience anxiety, fear, frustration, and self doubt. Post match they can become disappointed and discouraged. These emotions are of course balanced with excitement and positive confirmation. No matter what, there is a lot swirling around the heart and mind of the competitor. To make the decision to step up and compete takes courage. The willingness to endure the challenges and possible to defeat to test oneself is the nature of the competitive spirit. Everyone on the mat has chosen this path, and it should be respected. It doesn’t matter if they are your athletes or not. You are standing amongst the competitive spirit.
Defining The Opponents
Competition is certainly not required to progress in your skill, but it adds an element of disruption to your expectations that forces growth. In the gym, you and your partners develop movement patterns. You fall into routines of positions and moves, and generally move at a commonly, although unspoken, agreed upon pace and intensity. There is value in this. As you keep traveling down the same paths, you become comfortable in the intricacies of the exchange. The areas of opportunity, the positions of strength, the varying decision trees available, are all components of understanding Jiu Jitsu at a high level.
There is a drawback to this experience. Your assessment of these movement patterns begin to experience diminishing marginal returns. Unless someone in the room starts to make significant movement pattern changes, you can fall into a trap. Your movement patterns are not longer serving your development, but they continue to fall into place round after round. There is a sidebar conversation here about how to break this pattern in the gym, but this is where a forced disruption becomes valuable.
The competitor from another gym is going to bring a new movement pattern and level of intensity. They will respond in ways you have not experienced, and pose problems you have never had to solve. This is your disruptive experience. Your norms are challenged and this will force adaptions and increased understanding.
Every time your athlete steps into a match this is the process they will undergo. First, you must frame this for them. This experience will provide them a level of heightened feedback about their game. Win or lose, this will disrupt their comfort zone. As a coach, it will also disrupt your comfort zone. After all, your own teaching and coaching is being put to the test through the performance of your team. You must frame this for yourself. Your athletes will walk away with a world of feedback about their performance, but you should walk away with a list of things you need to address in your team.
This is the value of your opponents. You and your students are about to see your collective Jiu Jitsu experience differently. Without them, your lens is limited. You need your opponents to help break the norms of your team and propel them forward. This opportunity demands respect. You should be thankful to the other teams that come out and perform this service for you and your students.
Competition Pitfalls
Competitions can help build a strong team and broader Jiu Jitsu community. They can also tear everything apart. I’m sure with just a little competition experience you have observed this happening to some degree. I’ll keep this brief, don’t do these things:
Yell at your students, refs, or anyone else
Express disappointment and displeasure with the athletes
Denigrate the opponent. They are there to help you
Denigrate the other coaches
Do any of the above on social media
These are simple rules, but are often broken. Remember the focus here is competition through the context that it is a community event.
Represent This Game
You have a responsibility to represent Jiu Jitsu with integrity and respect. This is more important than the outcomes of the day. Your athletes are watching you. The parents of your young martial artists are watching you. Coaches and students from other gyms are watching you. You are on stage.
Maybe that seems a little extra. You are in a crowd with hundreds of people. They all aren’t actually staring at you, but they don’t need to be. All it takes is one person. Show this one person how to represent the art with integrity and respect.
Network
A sense of community sounds great, but its tough. There are gyms all over town. We are all busy, and just getting time in at our own gyms can feel like a delicate balance of obsession and sanity. Stopping in at other gyms and encouraging your students to do so helps build relationships in the community. It also happens fairly rarely. It’s an idealistic idea that needs more time commitment than most of us have.
But here we are, standing in a competition with people from every gym in the area. How convenient! This is the time to make your move. Introduce yourself to the other coaches in the room. Thank them on social media. Emphasize the opportunity to compete with them (rather than boast about your victories). This is the most convenient time to make connections and contribute to a sense of community.
Lead The Way
No community? No problem. Truth be told, Jiu Jitsu has a history of rivalries and drama. If you find your tentative community a bit icy, that is more of an opportunity than a roadblock. Your job as a coach is to lead the way. You will find that people want connections.
Change This Game
Building a community takes time. It takes a lot of people. It sees some ups and downs. It sees good people go bad, and bad people go good. Ultimately, the act of building a community is an extension and metaphor of the act of Jiu Jitsu. You must seek to improve your connections. There is an ideal execution of your game that you will always be chasing after. It will never be perfect, but it should always be getting better. Every exchange is an opportunity to grow and learn, and everyone in the exchange can benefit from the experience. This is Jiu Jitsu. On your mats and in your community. As a coach your job is not just to be in the experience, but to lead it.