One Bad Day
One difficult training session can feel like a verdict on your progress. Most of the time, it is only one difficult training session.
Do not use one hard round or one bad day to judge your jiu jitsu. Your training partners have good days too, and progress only becomes clear over time.
At some point during training, most people do this without really thinking about it.
You look around the room. You notice who’s getting the better of who. Who feels tough to deal with. Who’s a little easier to deal with. You start to get a sense of where you stack up. It’s pretty natural, especially when you’re trying to figure out if you’re improving.
One of those days
I had one of those days not that long ago.
I had a morning training session at Stronghold - it was a small group, just 4 of us - and I got tapped by Coach Wade (as expected), a purple belt (it happens), and a blue belt (…that one stung a little).
It would’ve been easy to walk away from that and start reading into it. Start questioning things. Start wondering what that says about me and where I’m at.
I could even justify it by saying to myself that the blue and purple belts were crazy strong, or I only got a few hours of sleep.
A bad day is incomplete information
But the truth is, days like that happen to everyone.
Sometimes things feel sharp. Sometimes they don’t. And maybe it doesn't have anything to do with me at all.
Maybe they were just on fire that day.
Zoom out before you decide what it means
If you zoom in too close on one round - or even one day - it’s easy to come away with the wrong idea. Especially in a room where everyone is working on their own things.
From the outside, it can look pretty clear. But, honestly, it usually isn’t.
One bad day can feel like it tells your whole story.
But most of the time, it's just one bad day.
See you on the mats.
Joshua is the owner and head coach at 608 Jiu Jitsu in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. He writes about learning, problem solving, and becoming a better training partner through jiu jitsu.