Tag Archives: ego

What Would Gandalf Do: Masters Division vs Adult Division

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In judo and bjj, being 30+ years old means you have the option to compete with other 30+ year olds in a separate “Masters” division. This year, I have joined the ranks of this group. My first instinct is that of Groucho Marx of not wanting to belong to any club that would have me as a member.

Early on, in my 3+ years of jiu jitsu, I was forced to acknowledge a simple reality:

I will never be as good as the current black belt BJJ world champion in my weight class.

I know this might seem like an obvious fact to just about anyone who knows anything about jiu jitsu. In fact, it’s pretty embarrassing just to write those words. But I’m human, I’m a dreamer, I have an ego, and I had to ask myself on a few occasions: how good can I get? The answer to that was painful, humbling, but ultimately liberating. I have found simple happiness in the day-to-day learning, hard work, improvement, and a systematic dedication to understanding the art and the sport of jiu jitsu.

Anyway, I’m off to DC for a presentation tomorrow, after several days and nights of programming, reading, scribbling in a notebook, and then more programming. My life is not that of a full-time competitor. For me, my work (research) is the main challenge and the main source of enjoyment in my life. Despite the occasional lack of smile, I’m sincerely a happy dude.

gandalf-you-shall-not-passSo for major tournaments (e.g. Pans) I’m faced with a choice: masters division or adult division. I know many people from white belt to black belt that go back and forth. The reality is that winning Pans in any age division is tough, but of course there is a reason why black belt masters matches are 6 minutes while black belt adult matches are 10 minutes. The guys that win the adult division don’t just bring technique, they bring an incredible level of physical preparedness (cardio, agility, flexibility, aggression). The 30+ guys have a bit more “old man strength”, wisdom, and experience (theoretically). Still, I believe that “wisdom” (the opposite of “recklessness”) is more of a negative than a positive. Ultimately, competition requires stupid confidence and focused aggression. If your brain is allowed to ask philosophical questions around the time of competition, you’re probably going to lose.

Also the masters divisions are usually smaller. At the 2013 Pans (see 2013 Pans competitor list) the purple belt middleweight division had 37 guys for adult and 25 guys for masters.

In some sense, thinking about age is the very thing that ages you. If you don’t give a shit, then you don’t age. I’ll leave with this quote from Satchel Paige (baseball player from over 50 years ago):

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”

What is “Ego” and How to Have Less of Whatever Makes It Bad

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The goal of “no ego” is professed as all-important in the jiu jitsu community. And yet, in contrast to how often the goal is stated, detailed discussion of this concept is much rarer (at least in my experience).

Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

“Ego” as a standalone term is usually used to mean an inflated sense of self-worth. It’s our need to compare ourselves to others, and in the process exaggerate the things we’re better at, and ignore or justify away the things we’re worse at. Unfortunately, such comparison moves you away from enjoying the moment itself. Neither winning nor losing can be good enough. Also, in the context of jiu jitsu, comparing yourself to others is counter-productive to learning, because you have very little incentive to try things at 100% that you’re not good at. If you do, you are likely to “fail”, and evaluate the failure in a negative way for your development.

I think the best way to avoid the negative effects of ego is to go against human nature and resist comparing yourself to others.

Better Than Yesterday

In judo, I’ve often heard the quote: “It’s not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday.” The quote implies that it’s good to compare yourself to the you of yesterday. In general, that’s true in that your goal should always be to grow, improve, learn. But the “yesterday” part leaves the door open to ego. Because how do you know if you improve? Well the usual way is: “yesterday I rolled with person X and he tapped me and today I rolled with him and I tapped him”. I improved! You are again forced to make that counter-productive comparison.

Two Things to Learn From Failure

When you step on the mat, even among friends and long-time training partners, comparisons are abound. It’s human nature, and is very difficult to stop. I know there will be times that people will make judgements about my training, and I will do the same of theirs. For example, I know that it’s sometimes the case that a person who hasn’t passed my guard the last few times we rolled and passes it easily today several times will feel good about their jiu jitsu, and visa versa. Sometimes I can’t help making that comparison even when I know it’s not good for my jiu jitsu growth.

Here are two things I try to do to fight the ego when I fail at the main task of stopping the comparison before it even enters my brain:

  1. When I get smashed, I try not to justify it as “well he’s been doing it much longer” or “he’s much bigger” or “he’s much smaller so I wasn’t really trying” or “he’s a higher rank” or “my rib is hurt, so i couldn’t really defend”.
  2. When I roll with people that I feel I wouldn’t want to “lose” to, I start playing at 100% a new game I’ve been working on or one that I’m not yet comfortable with. It often fails, and I end up doing poorly, and have to deal with the stress of being smashed and take the hit to my bloated self-esteem. That’s the point: Force yourself to experience defeat as a way to re-calibrate the ego.

By the way, on that second point, it’s important to try the new techniques at 100% not 70% nor 20% and to not make any excuses or justifications, otherwise the bitter reality of the lesson will not be internalized quite as well.

It Never Gets Easier

The prescriptive goal, in the end, is: don’t compare yourself to others. I believe that this is something that has to be practiced actively every day. It’s not like once you hit black belt, you’ve suddenly been liberated of the chains of ego. In many ways, it becomes more challenging to remain humble at that point. Not just acting humble, but living humble. That’s so damn hard to do. But if anything can make that process easier, it’s jiu jitsu!

I usually don’t like Eckhart Tolle because of the overly-spiritual hand-wavy pseudoscience he teaches, but this short video of his I saw a while ago I think is a nice comment about the place of ego in our life:

Winning, Losing, and Keeping Score in Training

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I truly believe that to improve in jiu jitsu I have to knock the idea of winning or losing in training out of my silly ape brain. There are several reasons for this:

  1. I will feel shitty on days when I “lose” more than I “win”.
  2. I will avoid new techniques in training because they will make me “lose”. Or I will do those techniques at 50% so that it’s clear to my opponent that I’m not really trying.
  3. People who are not keeping track of this won’t want to train with me because this mindset is contagious.

I’d like to believe that I have achieved this goal, but in reality I’m far from it. I distinctly catch myself feeling good when I get a submission, and being frustrated when I get submitted. Of course, it’s perhaps impossible to fully move past that while still going 100% but I’m certainly far from achieving a reasonably minimal level of ego.

Some approaches I use for improving in this department are as follows:

  1. Roll with people who I wouldn’t want to “lose” to for whatever reason, and use a new technique I’m working on at 100% without care for anything except the success of that technique. If I get frustrated at some point, I catch myself and just laugh (on the inside) at the foolishness of my frustration.
  2. Never count “match points”. I’ll consider the points scored in an individual scramble just for the sake of tournament preparation, but never who has scored more points or submissions in the match. A lot of people I look up to actually do keep track of points because it makes it more fun, but for me the fun can too easily cross over into excessive competitiveness where my game is in danger of stagnating.

One last important point, I believe in the long term I can’t fake not caring about winning or losing in training. Even if I don’t say anything, it comes out in subtle ways that people can pick up on. But like for many things in life, one of the best approaches to achieving a desired state of mind is to fake it till you make it.

“The More I Tap Out The More Unbeatable I Am”

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The quote in the title comes from Ryron Gracie (in the video below) who is scheduled to compete against Andre Galvao on October 14th. It refers to the fact that losing gives you an opportunity to learn the gaps and flaws in your jiu jitsu game. But it also is clearly something Ryron tells himself to help fight the ego that is an ever-present and at-times-destructive force in jiu jitsu and in life.

When I first heard the quote in the title I was put off a bit. That sounded like the opposite of something a top grappler should say before an epic superfight, but then the deeper meaning of it began to emerge. I realized that it came from a humble dedication to learning the art which is perhaps bigger than any individual competitive accomplishments.

I have tremendous respect for Ryron Gracie for going against Andre Galvao. Ryron’s competition resume is much smaller than that of Galvao, so he is a huge underdog. But given that he is a big-time well-respected instructor, the fact that he accepted this fight is truly admirable. I believe that very few people in his position would do so. That in itself is a victory to be proud of: a victory over his ego.

 

The Most Effective Martial Art for Self Defense

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People often debate what martial art is most effective on the street in a self defense situation, and I just saw someone on the forums say the “100m dash”, and I would have to agree. Perhaps also with some additional training in the use of pepper spray.

I’ve always believe that what you need for self defense in a mugging-type situation is:

  • No ego.
  • Common sense.
  • Zero hesitation.

That all sounds simple enough but actually is hard to develop because you have to put yourself in training as close to the real situation as possible, in order to develop the confidence and instinct needed to respond quickly and without hesitation.

But really, you have to be careful in thinking of whatever martial art you do as good for self defense. Maybe my experience is not representative, but all the fights I’ve been in involved lots of ego and lots of alcohol. So, really, for me, the best self defense system involves removing one of those or preferably both.

So, in conclusion, the best martial art for self defense in a world of guns is a mix of:

  • 100 meter sprint
  • Common sense
  • Minimum ego
  • Moderation in the consumption of alcohol

By the way, this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because I do think that practicing grappling martial arts like brazilian jiu jitsu or striking martial arts like muay thai is great for gaining confidence and improving your chances in an altercations (everything from a serious assault to a friendly bar brawl).

“That Guy is a World Champion?”

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In a This Week in BJJ show, Kevin Howell said something that resonated with me. He was talking about rolling at the academy versus competing, and that some guys who are killers in the academy do not do well in competition, and vice versa. Kevin said that he’s seen world champions rolling at their school and couldn’t believe it because they weren’t always “winning” their sets.

This resonated with me because of my own struggles with ego, and of what I imagine many people go through. The experience is of “losing” on the mat when working on anything outside your comfort zone. Of course, as everyone says, there is no “losing” or “winning” on the mat in the academy. But that’s a mindset, and such a mindset takes a lot of time to develop. It’s certainly not natural, and doesn’t come easy.

I imagine that keeping the ego in check gets harder and harder as you move up the ranks. I imagine how hard it must be for brown and black belts to work on a new technique, which may result in them getting smashed by aggressive lower ranks in training.

But it certainly does seem that all the great competitors have this one thing in common. They are willing to work outside their comfort zone, even if it means being smashed over and over in training.

Three New Blue Belts

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Peter, Lee, and Dave got promoted to blue belt at Osagame yesterday. All three of them are good competitors, and all three are good people. Congrats!

There’s something about a promotion of a friend that makes me look back with a kind of melancholy pride. Their old belt is a reminder that time flies and that all those months and years of training, competing, or just hanging out on the mat are behind us.

On my way back home, I started thinking of all the times I watched Dave and the others competing, on the edge of my seat, yelling stupid random advice. I know I’m just a blue belt and I’m talking about other blue belts. What the hell do I know? But the experience is still real, and it is certainly exciting knowing that this is just the beginning! I look forward to moving through the ranks and watching the others do the same as Ray and the other instructors grow the club and the competition team.

On a side note, I gave Dave some advice today on a couple of techniques, and then felt like one of those annoying white belts or blue belts that are always correcting people on their technique. Clearly, 2 years of training is enough to make anyone an expert ;-)

I thought that dealing with that whole ego problem would get easier as I progress, but it’s actually getting harder. It makes me appreciate (what I imagine to be) the immense mental barriers that brown and black belts must overcome in order to learn new techniques in the gym and to test new strategies on the competition mat.

Burning Bridges

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“Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear.  That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.” – William Faulkner

I hear about big and small teams splitting in BJJ and it always sounds like there is major disagreements and close relationships going cold in a blink of an eye.

I wonder why?

In either case, no matter how much animosity there is due to egos clashing, I feel it’s always worthwhile to suffer the weight of that tension and try to make things better, as opposed to giving up and “burning bridges”.

I hope I’ll have the strength to swallow pride as I go through life, through little bickering and major conflict, coming out on the other end with the same friends I started the journey with.

Losing Your Temper

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Losing your temper during grappling

One of the biggest benefits I gain from judo and jiu jitsu is an understanding and control over my ego.

There’s something about being armbared and choked that sets me off on a self-analysis that in the end makes me a better person. What I mean by “better” is an understanding of my place in the world, along with a greater respect for other people.

Sometimes, rarely these days, I’ll lose my temper. It doesn’t really reveal itself in anything I do on the mat, but I just feel a mix of frustration and anger. Last time it happened for me I remember was a month ago when I tried a butterfly sweep on a blue belt (and overall good guy) and he crossed the knee a little too hard, stuffing the sweep but also hurting me a bit. My body was exhausted, my mind was frustrated. I tried to reguard but couldn’t. Nothing was working. Unlike usually when I just keep trying, keep working to improve position, I stopped and when the set ended I walked off the mat. I was embarrassed for how much frustration I was feeling from something that is just part of jiu jitsu. I really didn’t understand the source of it. I just sat watching the sets, breathing, and 5 minutes later was fine.

Such incidents, as rare and insignificant as they might seem, is how I progress towards a calmer outlook on life, allowing me to deal better with difficult stressful situations on and off the mat.