In my 28 years of teaching and training, I have come to firmly believe that competition is essential to a student's overall development on and off the mat. Competing is a unique experience that challenges students and their self-perceptions, in ways that are hard to replicate in any other setting.
I, like most people, was first drawn to the martial because of its self-defense aspects, I had no desire whatsoever in competing. The first person to really explain to me why I should compete and how it benefited me was my old karate instructor Sensei Tanabe. He never pushed us to compete but did encourage us to try one or two tournaments just to see what we thought. After about a year of training, I thought I would give it a try and decided to compete at the next tournament. I went out and competed in both kata and sparring and well frankly, was not feeling the who competition thing. That ended up being my first and only attempt at a karate competition and I was ok with that.
In 1997 I began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after seeing Royce Gracie compete at UFC I and witnessing firsthand the effectiveness of it as a self-defense system. At this point, I still wasn't a huge fan of competing and didn't see its true value. for some inexplicable reason though, I decided to compete in my very first bjj tournament after only attending 10 classes. Needless to say, the outcome was a disaster with me sustaining a serious should injury that kept me away from training for the next 2 years. After a 2 year hiatus, I returned to training having sworn off ever competing again! That lasted all of about a year when I decided to again compete. While I avoided any serious injuries in this one I did however completely freeze and go into a defensive shell the entire match. Looking back I was still haunted by the events of my first tournament and allowed those thoughts to completely overwhelm me. After that dismal showing, I didn't even entertain the idea of competing for the next 21 years.
Fast forward 21 years to 2015, which found me still teaching and training in my beloved art of jiu-jitsu. As an instructor of my own students, I adopted a similar philosophy of competing as that of Sensei Tanabe. I never pushed my students but did however encourage them to at least try a couple for experience sake. At this point, 2 factors played a major role in my decision to give competing one last try. I began to feel like a hypocrite encouraging my students to step out of their comfort zones and compete when I wasn't. The other factor was that I had allowed fear to completely immobilize me in my last match. Again, I couldn't very well encourage my students to stand up and face their fears when I wasn't prepared to do the same!
In 2015 I entered my first tournament in 21 years, and the first as a black belt. Because of my age, I was limited to competing in international tournaments if I wanted opponents of similar age and rank. This brought with it its own set of unique challenges. I soon found out that I would be competing against former World and Pan American champions, men who had been actively competing for many years! To my surprise the first couple of tournaments I entered I placed 2nd twice and 3rd once! I have not quite been able to match or better those results since, but I have a new found joy and appreciation for competition and hope to compete as long as I am physically able
Needless to say, I have fully embraced the importance of competing in my life and the lives of my students. I have learned so much about myself and what I thought to be my limitations through competition. It has been a source of some of my greatest joys and deepest heartaches. Throughout it all, I have come away with the understanding that I am far more combable and resilient than I thought possible.
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