Competition and How Privilege Affects Your Ability to Be Successful

Lots of people like to talk about how competition is the objective standard of BJJ. However this isn’t true. There are thousands of BJJ practitioners that do not compete for various reasons. However one of the biggest reasons someone is going to be successful in Jiu-jitsu is Privilege.

I had a conversation with someone earlier this week who was adamant competition should be the indicator of skill and “If you don’t compete, and want to declare a skill level, it’s up to whoever is gullible enough around you to believe it”. However there are several factors that make this just patently false.

First off, let’s talk about your location. For example, I live in Boise, Idaho, which according to a quick Google search is the 94th largest city in the United States, with a population of about 250,000. The other thing is that Boise is relatively remote in comparison to most other major locations. While we do have local tournaments here, mostly grappling industries, they aren’t the best for finding a large competition pool to test your skill against. If I wanted to travel to one of the larger competitions, like the IBJJF Seattle Open. I would need to either book a flight or take time off work to drive the over 8 hour trip over there. Plus the cost of the hotel and food while I am there. The minimum amount of money I am probably spending would be $1,000. As opposed to a competitor who already lives in the area who only has to pay the entry fees for the tournament. Additionally, the local athlete has the comfort of their own home and not having to deal with hotels and interrupted sleep cycles. This creates an imbalance because it becomes much more difficult for me to go and compete and test my skills. It also does the other competitors a disservice because they do not get to test their skills against people who might be better than they are, but cannot afford to travel to the tournament to compete. There are plenty of talented Jiu-jitsu practitioners that may want to compete at larger events, but just can’t justify the expense to go compete.

The second part of privilege is training time. Most “high level” competitors train full time and can afford to not have a job or have a support system that allows them to not have a job. This isn’t true for the vast majority of BJJ practitioners. Most of us have day jobs so we do not have the ability to train more than a couple hours a day, less if you compound that with family and other activities. Being able to train full time or train and teach full time is an enormous privilege for people who want to compete because additional hours on the mat and exercising really pays off when you are out there competing. Having the ability to forego other obligations and just do Jiu-jitsu is a privilege not many practitioners have. The ability to train more and focus more on competition is a large deciding factor in if you are going to be successful in competition.

The final point of privilege I wanted to bring up is physical ability. Many people deal with different physical issues which may or may not be visible. I and several grapplers I know have RA, which can greatly affect our ability to train consistently or will cause a lot of pain as part of training. This is a physical limitation that can be a factor in competition. If I go to compete, and am having a bad day related to my RA, it is going to be far less successful than a good day. This is another thumb on the scales in favor of my opponents when I compete. It makes it more difficult for me to both train and perform on the competition days. It makes another barrier to me being a successful competitor. Additionally, if competition was not about physical readiness, then the majority of BJJ competitors at the “highest level” would not be taking things like steroids, Testosterone replacement, or other PEDs to improve their physical attributes.

These are all reasons why we should not put too much stock in competition as the measuring stick of all BJJ practitioners. Just because I do not compete very frequently due to the above reason, does that make my knowledge lesser? I have been training in Jiu-jitsu now for almost 25 years. Do those years and all of the learning count for less just because I don’t have a wall of medals behind me as I type this? There are many different paths to success in Jiu-jitsu. We should not be so blind to think that one path is better than the other. I think competition is a valuable part of Jiu-jitsu and is a great way to test your skill, but it isn’t the only way and it isn’t the indicator of a top level practitioner.

I have met many top level competitors that while they were very successful in competition, were just plain bad instructors or were not interested in being instructors. And that is fine for their Jiu-jitsu journey, but we can acknowledge that competition is not the end all be all of Jiu-jitsu just like all the other aspects of this sport.