Losing Jiu Jitsu Tournaments: How to Handle Losses ?

Cameron

Cameron is the Founder of Grapplers Graveyard. He is an athlete, a life-long learner, and a combat sports enthusiast. His goal is to build websites that help people become smarter, healthier, and happier.

Congratulations, you put yourself out there and allowed yourself to fail. You should be proud of yourself, win or loss. Failure and embarrassment are huge catalysts that will help you propel yourself to the next level. Remember that feeling you had inside when the referee held up your opponent’s hand rather than yours? What did that feel like? You must fail upwards to become a champion, it is part of the process. Nothing great was ever built overnight. Here are some takeaways you’ll need to return after losing jiu-jitsu tournaments.

Losing Jiu Jitsu Tournaments: Losing is good and bad

We want you to reframe from using the word losing. We do not lose here, we learn lessons.

Losing is your gateway to learning those things that you need to work on, if you cannot find at least one thing to pull from the match your lesson here is that you need to detach from your ego.

The only way you will become great is by losing. Losing until you start to become the winner you imagine yourself to be.

Your family came and supported you and you lost in front of them. Good.

A girl you are head over heals for watched you get choked out. Good.

Embarrassment and short-term failure will propel you to new heights. We have a rule. 24 hours to be upset about something but then move on. You can not change the outcome.

Do not get down on yourself

No one enjoys it at the moment. You are not alone here.

It is easy to get wrapped up in a negative loop. Get right back into the gym and start to build that positive momentum for yourself, that is what you need.

Momentum is the most powerful tool, get right back on the mats and start to create it for yourself again.

It’s time to get right back at it – recover and move on.

You may have lost by points last minute, made a mistake early that your opponent capitalized, or just have been the gold medalist’s first victim of the day.

“Losing” is nothing to be ashamed of, not doing anything about it is.

Ask yourself tough questions. What would you do differently?

Flaws get exposed.

When you’re in a competition the match can teach you some hard truths. Parts of your game that you don’t notice in your home gym may be a problem in a competition.

For example, it can show you that you need a better side control escape, or better mount retention. Maybe the coaches in your gym don’t emphasize it, or maybe your training partners don’t attack it, but your opponent most certainly will.

The Real Victory

Its often said the “2^nd place is the first to lose.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. When training for a competition we train harder and more consistently. This is because we are prepping for the competition. After training hard for this competition, we have gotten much better than we were prior to the start of the competition.

This means that just because we lost a competition, we still got a lot better as practitioners. At the end of the day, this is the real key to winning your next match.

While this might be a cliche, most people don’t have the courage to get on the mat in the first place, you should feel accomplished for even competing.

That said, it still sucks to lose. So, it is absolutely critical that you understand what you have gained in losing:

Detaching From Your Ego
Months of High Effort Training
Discovering Holes in Your Game to Fix Moving Forward

Injury Rehab

Are you suffering from a sports-related injury? Find an online rehab program to help solve the problem! We have partnered with sports med professionals with love 20 years of experience to provide you with in-class service!

Pros: