Are You Comparing Yourself to Your BJJ Peers?

Posted by Fanatics Authors on August 09, 2018

Do you ever feel inadequate at your current belt rank? I find this to be a common mindset among many BJJ players. Some would describe the feeling as undeserving.

If you’re involved with a good academy and you’re a part of a solid affiliation, you should be placing your confidence and trust in your Professor’s assessment of your progress. But BJJ is a personal endeavor as well. We have our own goals. We set expectations for ourselves that we might pursue quietly. So, where do these feelings come from?

When we train with our peers, the levels of skill we experience cover a broad spectrum. You may be a purple belt that frequently ends up on the losing end of your bouts with a particularly spry blue belt. Or maybe you find yourself lost when it comes to a particular topic, while a fellow practitioner thrives in a similar area. This can cause feelings of insufficiency in your game and cause you to question your level.

Stop.

I can’t stress it enough. Don’t compare yourself to your fellow classmates. The determining factors of success are many, and another’s success and achievement can’t be used to gauge your own.

After he retired, when asked about his pursuit of success in his profession, Darwin E. Smith of Kimberly Clark paper company stated, “I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.” Think about that. That’s a mindset that inspires forward motion and constant SELF-evaluation. You must focus on YOUR progress in comparison to who YOU were yesterday, not the accomplishments and progress of others.

We don’t always feel qualified in our given position, but make sure this comes from a place of ambition to better ourselves, and not a place of comparison to others.

Stop comparing yourself and get to work on improving your closed guard with the Lazy Closed Guard system from Rodrigo Artilheiro. You can get it here from BJJ Fanatics!

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