OK, I’ll admit it. I can be a teeny bit competitive at times. I hate losing. I hate not being the best at something. I hate tapping, even in training. So shoot me! That’s been giving me some headaches recently, because a lot of my training partners are damn good. Even leaving aside the ones with a sizeable weight advantage, a lot of the time I find myself struggling.
Maybe I’m the only person to feel like this, and you’re all wondering what I’m talking about, but I suspect not. I know there are some enlightened folk who seem serenely unbothered by about such ultimately unimportant things as making a mistake and getting choked in sparring, and I salute them. At the same time, I don’t think competitiveness is necessarily a bad thing. As with certain other things in life, “it’s what you do with it that counts”.
A trap I see a lot of people fall into is the “big fish in a small pond syndrome”. I may even be guilty of it myself now and then, until I catch myself doing it. It’s nice to be the biggest fish around, and an easy way of doing this is to shrink the size of your pond. The easiest way to do this is to surround yourself by people you know you can beat. If I’m being given a hard time by one of my training partners, I could massage my ego by torturing a few white belts. I can decide to only ever play my A-game, and stay away from areas I’m less good at. To ensure that the other fish in the pond don’t get too big, I might try to keep all “my” secrets to myself. I could keep things back from someone I’m coaching… little tricks that might give me an edge. Then with a bit of smoke and a few mirrors, I can convince myself that I’m even bigger than I am, and that my little neighbourhood of pondweed is representative of the whole world.
The thing about big fish in small ponds though, is that they tend to get eaten pretty quickly if someone takes them and drops them in a larger pond where there’s some real competition.
The only way to get really good is to surround yourself by other big fish. That element of healthy competition drives a competitor to develop and improve in a way that being able to casually annihilate everyone s/he trains with never would. Homo Sapiens evolved in a hostile environment amongst a bunch of other species who wanted to eat us, and may have seemed to have all the obvious advantages… size, speed, strength and really big teeth.
It’s not all about competition though… it’s about collaboration too. What you want is a whole group of big fish together in the same place, all sharing their ideas and growing together. The bigger the other fish get, the more I can learn from them. While it might be hard work keeping up, and tough on the ol’ ego at times, it’s also the perfect environment for getting seriously good.
Now I’m off to bed before I mix any more metaphors…
You torture white belts?! Right Rosi, gloves are off, you will feel the wrath of my A-Game ‘doing nothing in guard’ and you’ll see! *shakes fist*
Other than that, I’ve been rolling with Griff and Gaz on a regular basis and have found that I’ve improved slightly (especially defence!). I’ve not rolled with a fellow white belt in a while so it’s going to be interesting when I do.
“The only way to get really good is to surround yourself with other big fish…” – Which is why I’m rolling in the big people class!
I’ve wandered over from [PJ].
I’m glad I’m not the only one that can’t stand tapping! I get so annoyed when I’m not good enough, and I find it hard to be civil if my boyfriend throws me or gets me to tap when I’m rolling with him. It makes it worse that he doesn’t even care if he loses.
“As with certain other things in life, “it’s what you do with it that counts”. ” *teehee. Nearly missed that opportunity for a childish giggle! When I fancy a nice time in training I make sure I don’t roll with you
Much love! Hehe
“When I fancy a nice time in training I make sure I don’t roll with you”
Rest assured that the feeling is entirely mutual….
You’re not the only person to feel that way. I used to only play my top game with my sister (the only person my size and skill level) because it felt so wonderful to finally be able to tap someone on a regular basis. Then I realized a) wasn’t doing her any favors because she was getting so used to being beaten that she wouldn’t try as hard and b) wasn’t doing myself any favors because rolling with her is my one chance to work on my guard game with the knowledge that if/when it gets passed, I still don’t have to deal with 200 pounds on top of me. But it’s still a battle to make myself do it, and I always have to give myself a little pep talk reminding myself that tapping=learning (if I let it) and that I really am helping myself in the long run.
Good luck in the big pond.
This reminds me of my favourite thread ever, by a purple belt posting as NSLightsOut.
http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?p=974042#post974042
“Every single case of permanent stagnation I have ever seen has involved one common factor: Fear of losing in training.
This, in my experience, has manifested itself in a number of different ways, including but not necessarily limited to:
- Fear of losing to people lower in an imagined ‘hierarchy’ of skill
- Fear of losing to a lower belt
- Fear of trying something new if it involves risk
- The belief that ‘not tapping’ is always equivalent to a good performance/increase in skill
The irony is that all of these fears actually are the root cause of permanent skill plateau. This vicious cycle, after a while, seems to almost paralyze development.”