How to Redefine Winning in Jiu-Jitsu
Failing with Enthusiasm
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 and fail with enthusiasm.
Rethinking What It Means to “Win”
When people start training, they often treat rolling like competition. They measure success in taps: “I caught two people today, but got tapped three times.” It feels logical, after all, submissions are the clearest, most visible outcome of a round.
But the thing is, if tap outs are your only metric, you’ll end up miserable. Because for most of your Jiu-Jitsu journey, especially in the early years, you’ll be the nail far more often than you’ll be the hammer. But that’s okay as long as you learn to recognise all the other ways you can “win” a round.
Let’s grind Jiu-Jitsu down to grains of sand, the small, measurable pieces of progress that make up the art. Inside those grains are all the tiny victories that build real skill over time.
The Many Ways to “Win” in Jiu-Jitsu
There are so many wins in Jiu-Jitsu that have nothing to do with submissions, and all of them are more valuable than counting the taps during class:
Doing more consecutive rounds without sitting out. Win.
Successfully passing guard (even once). Win.
Recovering guard when you’re under pressure. Win.
Lasting longer before tapping to a heavy top player. Win.
Sweeping someone you couldn’t move last week. Win.
Maintaining control longer from mount or side control. Win.
Breaking grips and regaining posture. Win.
Attempting a new move you’ve never tried before. Win.
Successfully climbing the ladder. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win.
Every one of these is a victory, and more importantly, a measure of tangible progress.
If you survive thirty seconds longer today under that 90kg brown belt’s side control than you did last week, that’s a huge win. If you recover your guard more times against that relentless guard passer, you won that exchange. You’re collecting data. Every attempt, every adjustment, every breath under pressure all of them count, and they are all victories.
By framing success like this you’re doing three extremely important things:
You are associating success with achievable, attainable targets that are wholly aligned with positive, regular skill acquisition.
You’re disconnecting “tapping out” with the feeling of failure, instead associating it with feedback gathering.
You’re tapping into a learning approach called gamification, which as learning science shows, is tremendously beneficial in acquiring deep, reliable skill that can be recalled under pressure while drastically increases your motivation to do so.
Your Competition Isn’t Other People
The only person you’re competing against is yourself. It’s a cliche I know, but it’s true, especially in this sport. Jiu-Jitsu sits in a strange middle ground between collaboration and competition. You’re sparring with a partner who’s actively trying to beat you, but you’re also working with them to develop skill.
Every round is a shared experiment. You’re both collecting feedback. That means you can stop worrying about “winning” the round in taps, and start focusing on improving one variable at a time and succeeding at doing so.
Want to get better at guard retention? Focus only on that for a few rounds.
Want to sharpen your escapes? Start from bad positions deliberately.
Want to improve your pressure? Set a goal to hold side control for longer before your partner escapes.
Listen, I do completely understand that getting tapped out can feel rough in the moment, I’ve been there many, many many times. But in the long term, if your partner shows you a gap in your game that you can address, that’s a victory for you. Lose the battle, win the war.
Why Failure Is the Best Feedback
Every time you fail it’s an exposure to the truth of your skill level in that particular area of your development. Every mistake you make shows you the sharp edge of where your current skill level lies. It is brutal honesty, like the mirror telling me to shed a few pounds after a week on the beers in Berlin. This may or may not have happened this week.
That cold, sharp mirror is one of the most beautiful, humbling, and addictive parts of this sport. If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t change you. If you weren’t getting smashed sometimes, it wouldn’t be real. Failure proves the system works.
That sweep didn’t land because your base was off. That choke failed because your angle was wrong. That escape didn’t happen because you panicked.
Good. Because now you know.
Every failure gives you valuable data if you’re willing to look at it without ego. If you can learn, through exposure and intentional effort to greet failure with curiosity instead of frustration, you’ll progress faster than anyone in the room who’s only focus is who they tapped and how they did it. You’re turning failure in to success, while they’re feeding their ego.
Learn to Crave Failure
The next time something doesn’t work, try not to be frustrated or angry at yourself. Smile, because you’ve just been handed some priceless information. Start wanting those moments like you want pizza at 1am after watching the UFC. Be a greedy bastard for it. CRAVE IT.
Failure is how you refine your Jiu-Jitsu. If you are too focussed on avoiding failure, you are starving your growth. No pizza for you.
Turning Failure into a Framework
Write down one thing you failed at in class this week. Try to describe why it failed (technical, tactical, emotional), ask your partner if you need to. Then write one adjustment you’ll make next session. When you get to that session, try exactly what you wrote down, then callibrate based on the new information. That’s how failure turns into progress. That’s how you build resilience, awareness, and the confidence to try new things, all the stuff that really matters on the mats.
Final Thoughts
In truth, no one masters Jiu-Jitsu. We’re all just continually trying to refine our mistakes at higher and higher levels. So if you want to stay in the sport long term, learn to fail well. Fail early, fail often, and fail with enthusiasm.
When you do, you’re learning, you’re growing, and more importantly you’ll start to engage with Jiu-Jitsu at a much deeper, more meaningful level.
If this resonated with you, I explore this idea and much more in my book Cheat Codes: The Secret Guide to Winning on the Mats.