Why We Prepare for Competition as a Team

"Do you compete" can feel like a heavy question, particularly if just recently you were deciding to give Jiu Jitsu a try for the first time. Walking through the academy door and stepping on the mat for the first time can be plenty challenging enough.

There are a number of steps between walking through the academy door for the first time, and stepping on to the competition mat.

Jumping into competition without proper preparation is dangerous. To an extent, that is what makes us want to do it in the first place. Jiu Jitsu is designed to mitigate danger, and you need to test your Jiu Jitsu in order to have confidence in it.

That said, you need to have enough Jiu Jitsu under your belt in order to have something to test. Otherwise you are just testing how tough you are, not how good you are. That can be valuable to know, however it also tends to solidfy bad habits, making them much harder to change latter

I strongly feel that we can have an academy that is family friendly, beginner friendly, AND also field an excellent competition team.

You do not need to become an expert to compete, but you do need to be competent. With regards to Jiu Jitsu competence is always having a really good idea of what to do in just about every position, while under significant duress. Otherwise you are just reacting.

When we train Jiu Jitsu we are training to make others have bad reactions while you are in a good position, ready to capitalize on their mistake.

If you focus on getting to the this level of Jiu Jitsu before competing, you can then enjoy building the qualities that you are really testing in competition:  Mental focus and functioning while under duress. How well can you apply what you learned in training with a little more pressure.

Words are helpful but sometimes pictures help us understand a little more. To that end I present to you a fine compliation of super preventable injuries from the fine folks at Scramble. A little prep goes a long way!