Aside from an interclub tournament several years ago, I have never competed in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That’s now changed. I completed my first Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition this past weekend.

I’m a recently minted purple belt (Dec. 2023) and I entered the comp’s medium heavy (<88.3 kg) and absolute (open weight) brackets in the master 1 division (30+ years old). There were four registered competitors (including me) for the medium heavy bracket and seven for the absolute bracket, which meant that I’d have two matches minimum and five at most.

I wasn’t worried about making weight. I’m usually sitting somewhere between 85-87kg, so I just needed to be mindful in the week prior to the comp. No new behaviours necessary. I’d intended to get there with 1-2 hours before my first match and relax into the environment. I wasn’t concerned about winning or losing. However, I did want to have a couple longer, full duration matches (5 or 6 minutes) and nab a W—ideally via a submission. That did not happen.

It started well. I weighed in, at home, at 86.3kg on the morning of. A gi is 1-2kg and I didn’t want to miss weight. Thus, I fasted till I had arrived and weighed in. That’s not a big deal. I usually practice time-restricted eating within a window of 11/1200 to 2000. It just meant extending by two hours. I made weight comfortably and had half a sandwich and a protein shake. Nevertheless, I hadn’t expected to need to do that to make weight. The plan was already awry.

I arrived as anticipated, with 1-2 hours before my first match. The teammate I travelled up with was on almost immediately after we arrived. We headed to the warmup area. He began a full warmup. I messed around, doing some glute activation, some rolling, some leisurely movement. He rushed off to hit the mats. I checked the schedule. My match was in five minutes. I threw on my gi. I hot-stepped down to the mats and made my way over to the scoring table.

My opponent was similar to me, physically; 6′ 3″ and then some, young-ish, lanky and all limb. He was dissimilar to me in both competitive experience and technical ability, though, as I was soon to discover. We stepped onto the mats, tapped hands, and the match began.

We tussled for grips briefly. As I sunk in a deep cross-collar grip (my right hand to his right collar), he pulled guard. My opponent locked in a De la Riva hook and, as I attempted to counter and untangle, he swept me and began a berimbolo. I avoided the back take but he retained top position and control of my arm as I turned to my side to begin escaping further. Shortly after, I tapped as my right hand was levered away from my stomach and moved behind my torso, up up up towards my neck. The match was done in less than a minute. That was me out of contention in the medium heavy bracket.

The absolute was next. I had to wait for an hour or so, and my opponent was the teammate I travelled up with. Fortunately, I had time to prepare. Unfortunately, I didn’t make use of it to do a thorough warm up as planned. I just hung around and watched other matches.

That match went the full length. I outweighed my teammate by ~10kg, and I probably had 3-5 inches in height on him. We remained standing for 2-3 minutes, during which I hunted grips and attempted some weak trips and takedowns. I had the rules of gripping (learned from Cedric Chin) in mind but I couldn’t turn them to my advantage.

Eventually, I pulled guard. My guard was quickly passed. I defended from side control. I almost had my back exposed as I turned onto one shoulder. I managed to grab some odd reverse seatbelt hold from bottom and almost slip into north-south position. We rolled over and I ended up in my teammate’s closed guard. As he adjusted, I stood and the guard opened. A De la Riva hook went in but I managed to untangle it, catch both his feet and pummel them to his torso and begin to pass. He transitioned to defending from turtle; I began to work for the nearside hook. With that halfway in, I swung my leg over, rolled, took my opponent with me, and just missed the establishment of the second hook on the back take. The match ended. I’d lost 7-0.

And that was my first Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition. It was not what I expected in terms of process, nor was it what I had envisioned in terms of outcomes. It was fun, though, and it’s something I’ll be looking to do more regularly from now on. The heuristic is that each competition is worth multiple of the equivalent training time in learnings. So, the big question: “What did I learn?” The answer: quite a lot. I’ll confine the pseudo-retro to three big rocks, though.

First. I picked up either a fractured rib or costochondral dislocation during the sweep-defend-sub sequence of my first match—this was investigated and diagnosed the next day, and felt intensely on the day, too. If I was being sensible and not unreasonably stubborn, I would have noped out of the second match. But I did the stupid thing and went through with it. It turns out that competing with a somewhat serious injury is doable. Not recommended, but doable.

More importantly, I suspect the injury was due to my near complete lack of warm up. When I spar intensely during normal training, it is usually after a ten minute pre-session warm up and an hour of technical drilling. The third, fourth and fifth rolls of the sparring rounds we usually do (five minute round, one minute rest, ten times) are when I feel at my most sharp and supple, physically, mentally and technically. I need to replicate that ramp up at my next competition, somehow. And if I can’t replicate that ramp up then I need to work out how to occupy a state of high physical readiness for the window of the competition during which I’m likely to have my matches. That is not a trivial problem. But it’s not an unknown one, either.

Second—and somewhat related to the first. Within an art like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, failure modes typically fall into three categories: physical, mental and technical. One’s physical capacities are lacking, one’s mentality is compromised or misaligned, or one’s skills are insufficient. As a one-time competitor, it seems that the mental constraint is the deciding factor. Physically and technically, the score takes care of itself. There is nothing, on the day, that can be done to significantly up-end prior investments in and development of physical and technical capacities. Thus, the aim on competition day is to occupy a yarak state of mind, a “strong but hungry” consciousness that is sufficiently relaxed to enable masterful, graceful execution but not so relaxed as to overlook the critical parameters of the finite game one is playing.

Third. As Ray Bradbury said, quantity produces quality. And that applies to competitions as aptly as it does to creative endeavours. I’ve gone from zero to one for BJJ competitions. As I go from one to ten to one hundred and beyond, I’ll become at ease with competition and my particular quality of jiu-jitsu and performance will emerge and evolve. The beautiful thing is that—although one can speedrun quantity accumulation to some degree and maximise the utility of accumulated volume across a few different dimensions—there isn’t really a cheat code. Dan John has a simple formula for success: “show up, ask questions, don’t quit.” Note the first directive: it applies to comps as much as life itself.

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Overall, my first Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition was fun and illuminating and it has encouraged me to do more of them, more often. It’s an asymmetric opportunity. There is a minimal, bounded downside—you might lose, you might pick up an injury; the usual table stakes—and a disproportionate upside—you learn a lot about yourself. That wasn’t apparent when my count of comps was zero. It is apparent now that my comp count is one.