Tapping out in the beginning of our jiu jitsu career is what makes us humble. Anyone who makes it to blue belt, the first adult belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, has tapped out a lot. They have felt what it’s like to try their hardest and fail over and over again.
So naturally, after you start to get a little gym status as a new, respectable blue belt, you might start to coordinate your rolling to avoid certain people and gravitate toward certain others. This is what will inevitably lead to giant gaps in your training. Whereas the student who always tries to roll with everyone in the gym will grow. Why? Because he is learning how to roll against all those different games rather than just play it safe by only rolling with the ones he knows he can win against or the ones he’s comfortable losing against.
If you get tapped out, so what? Hinging your happiness on who you tapped, got by tapped by or didn’t get tapped by is the best way to stifle your training end up driving yourself crazy. Taking this kind of anxiety into a roll can actually affect the outcome of the roll. While you’re sitting there worrying about doing badly, your anxiety transforms itself into a self-fulfilling prophecy and you actually do badly. Your mind should be in a relaxed state during a roll. The only way to achieve this is to follow these simple steps.
- Roll with everyone
- Accept the outcome as your training
- Repeat
Seek out the beatings. Embrace the losses and learn from them. Don’t do favors for your ego because your ego will never do anything for you.
