Three things I wish I knew as a White Belt
When you start Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, it feels like being dropped into a foreign country where everyone speaks fluent violence and you don’t even know how to say “hello.” I remember those early months extremely vividly. The constant sense of drowning, sometimes literally in sweat. Looking back, there are a few things I wish I’d known at the start. They would’ve saved me a ton of frustration, helped put my training in to context, and accelerated my development if I took them seriously.
How to Redefine Winning in Jiu-Jitsu
If you train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for any length of time, you’ll quickly realise something uncomfortable but essential: you’ll lose far more rounds than you’ll ever win. Far be it from me to be pessimistic, but I am realistic, and that’s the reality of the sport we play. It is a sport of continuous struggle.
So the question becomes, how does one keep showing up, stay motivated, and find meaning when “winning” by submissions isn’t happening very often?
The answer is to reframe what success means.
