Sophomore blues

Last night after class I made a personal observation of my game, which in turn led me to Google the phrase ‘ego and bjj.’ I found a great blog post that hit what I was feeling dead on the head. The post is by Sam aka: AngryGrappler, and is fittingly titled ‘Ego and Jiu Jitsu.’

AngryGrappler says:

“A lot of academies have mat rules, "leave your ego at the door." You hear it all the time in BJJ. Have no ego. My ego gets in the way. No ego no politics. But the thing is it's very hard! Because it's not a switch that you can turn off. It's something you have to try to accomplish every day. And it's hard! Because Jiu Jitsu is a sport, competitive, and it has winners and losers. That makes it hard not to care, even a little. I told myself since white belt, that I won't care if I get tapped or not. And I change my mind as soon as I get tapped! Nothing slows down your learning curve than ego. And it seems like the lower belts have more pride than some of the higher belts. On average people stay in blue belt longer than any other belt because of ego. I think it's like being the sophomore.”

I think there’s a whole lot of truth to this. I’m at the tail end of blue belt after 5 1/2 years of training and I’m struggling with ego. When I roll with lower ranked classmates, the drunken desire to control, dominate and win gets in the way of fluid movement and executing the most basic techniques. This in turn blocks the facilities necessary to learn. I also realized that fear is definitely at play here. Is this what the long-haired dude in The Last Samurai meant when he said “too many mind?” I think so. I’m thinking too much about winning, not winning and everything else in between.

As I spend my last days as a sophomore and beyond, I’m going to work on cherishing the lessons over anything else.

BJJ for life.