Grappling with the Gorillas

The thing I love about grappling sports is how they force athletes to be honest with themselves.

In many sports, especially team sports, it's easy to blame a poor performance on somebody else's mistakes.

Basketball -- "I would have made that basket if he hadn't fouled me! The ref didn't even call it!"

Football --"Are you blind?! That wasn't pass interference! That should have been a first down."

Soccer -- "Are you kidding me?! That was totally offsides. Trust me; I watched all of Ted Lasso, so I am 99% percent certain that I know what offsides means!

Even the stats-obsessed world of baseball is guilty of this sin. Baseball prides itself on being able to point out the raw truth of a players' abilities by analyzing mountains of data. When it comes to how good at pitching or hitting a player is, the numbers don't lie. And don't get me wrong -- I think America's pastime is one of the greatest games ever made -- but the very nature of any team competition makes buckpassing inevitable.

But in the world of grappling sports -- sports like wrestling, jiujitsu, and judo --you really can't blame a poor performance on anybody except for yourself. Grappling is a mano a mano competition. If you lose, you lose. You have to accept the fact that in this game of simulated battle, you did not come out victorious. You have to humble yourself in that moment and admit that you're not the baddest man or the baddest woman on the planet.

I've seen many big, tough, and strong guys who try out jiujitsu for the first time, not knowing what they're getting themselves into. They quit as soon as they get defeated by somebody who has been training for longer than them. There's no shortage of videos online of this kind of thing happening. These gym bros don't like reality, so they run away from it.

(One of my favorite moments can be seen here, where jiujitsu fighter Pedro Sauer defeated professional bodybuilder Lance Bachelor in a no-holds barred bout. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNcQEpsX-qU)

Assume this classic scenario; a young dude wants to prove how naturally good at fighting he is, so he signs up for a jiujitsu class and challenges someone to a sparring session. Let's call this bro Kyle. Kyle fights a smaller, less athletic jiujitsu purple belt. Since Kyle has no knowledge of grappling, he gets choked out in about a minute.

"Whatever man," Kyle says while recovering from the stranglehold. "If this were a real fight with no rules, I would totally destroy you."

But Kyle is lying to himself. If that person was able to defeat him easily in a fight WITH rules, what makes Kyle think that he'll somehow have the advantage when the rules are taken away? Does Kyle think he's such a world-class puncher than he'll be able to knock his opponent out in a single blow before they manage to drag him to the ground and strangle him? Is he better at biting, groin kicking, and eye-gouging, or something? (Even though in a fight with no rules, all of those options would theoretically be available to both participants?) Or does Kyle think he'll "see red" and just go crazy when a real fight is going down? No. This is ridiculous, and deep down, Kyle knows it. Yet he maintains the facade because his ego hurts.

Kyle must say things like this in order to protect his own self image as a tough guy. Kyle can't handle the fact that he was physically dominated by another human being, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. So instead of accepting defeat and trying again, he goes into denial and never steps on the mats again.

In the many years that I've spent dabbling in the grappling arts, I've been manhandled by jiujitsu champions. I've been spiked on my head by a D1 wrestler hitting me with a double leg takedown. I've been flipped head over heels and slammed onto the tatami by judo black belts. These are crazy things to experience.

One of my training partners is such a formidable wrestler, I often compare grappling with him to grappling with a silverback gorilla. In such a scenario, you might think that you've got a strategy to beat him. Maybe you can figure out a way to trick him. If you time it right, you can catch him in a sneaky submission hold. But in reality, at any given moment, he is capable of ripping off your arms and beating you to death with them. And there's not really anything you will be able to do to stop him. Really, when grappling with gorillas, it's best to just be honest with yourself about your own capabilities.

See, I used to get frustrated by losing. But nowadays, whenever I get caught in a sparring session, I am more likely to grin, give my opponent a fist bump, and start fresh. These experiences consistently keep my ego in check. They force me to acknowledge that the only way that I will ever improve as a martial artist is if I continue to dedicate time to practicing and perfecting my skills.

Learning to gut check myself has had a huge crossover to all other areas of my life as well. Improving my craft in writing, improving my techniques as a teacher, improving my methods as a coach....all of these endeavors require me to take a step back every once in a while and acknowledge just how much I have to learn. Nobody achieves greatness without eating humble pie. In order to become a winner, you must occasionally put yourself in scenarios where you're definitely going to lose.

If you want to become a better version of yourself, sometimes you must grapple with the gorillas.