Over the past few days, I have really been analyzing and thinking about some of the psychological aspects of jiu jitsu. Yes jiu jitsu is a physical sport. Yes you need to know they keys to a move to pull it off. If your not in the right mind set though you are going to fail.

Thinking back to my early days of jiu jitsu, I used to always use the same excuse. “Ohh I can’t get this because I’m just a white belt.” Ohhh that guy tapped me because he’s a blue and I’m just a white belt.” While this excuse made me feel better on my drive home, it ultimately didn’t help me progress. I wasn’t really looking at myself critically and seeing what I needed to work on. Instead of figuring out my mistakes and fixing them, I was making the same excuses over and over again and blaming them on my skill level. By no longer making excuses I was able to really focus on areas of my game that I needed to improve on and get better.

Thinking that I was just a white belt also made me complacent. If I was getting beat in a certain area I would give up. I mean I was just a white belt…Why should I care if this blue belt has me pinned in side control? The problem with this thinking is that you never push your self. Yes in theory a blue belt should smash a white belt….However if you don’t push yourself you will never progress. Pushing yourself helps motivate you and show you that you can do it. There have been plenty of times where I doubted moves but I pushed myself to try them and low and behold I could do them! If I had just been complacent I would not have developed some of my favorite moves and transitions!