In the academy in which I spent my first four-ish years (white to purple), we had this rule: During free rolling after instructional, if you successfully executed the “move of the day” (whatever was taught during instructional), your partner would have to do ten pushups after the round.  (Didn’t count if the MOTDer was the instructor.)  In my current academy, there is no such rule.

I come before you today to discuss the relative merits of such a practice.

Pro: It’s kinda fun.  There’s good camaraderie to be had.  Good-natured ribbing from the rest of the class when someone’s doing pushups between rounds.  Congratulations to the MOTDer.

Pro: It makes you work for it.  Your partner doesn’t want to do pushups.  (Not because ten pushups is soooo hard; it’s the pride thing.)  So if you get the MOTD, you know you really got it.

Unless…

Con: If there’s a significant skill (or size/strength) disparity, achieving MOTD may be trivial for one partner and impossible for the other.  In this situation, the lesser player has no incentive to go for MOTD because it’ll certainly be stuffed; and the greater player would just be bullying the lesser by going for it and getting it time after time.

Let’s take a step back for a sec.  I feel it’s indisputable that we want to encourage MOTD attempts during the free rolls after said move is taught.  More reps, in a more dynamic and aggressive environment, will help to solidify and hone the technique.

So under what circumstances does the pushup rule encourage or discourage MOTD attempts?  I posit: encourage when skills are evenly matched; discourage when they are not.

To be a good training partner, the greater grappler in a heavily mismatched roll should allow the lesser to attempt – and even finish – techniques.  Particularly the MOTD, for the reinforcement reasons noted above.  Some folks have too big an ego for this (I encourage you to surround yourself with at least some high-level/low-ego grapplers) – but add pushups to the mix, and even the humblest high-level folks are going to be much less likely to concede MOTD.  This makes the lesser player unlikely to try, and therefore unlikely to reap the benefits of that extra practice.

What to do?  Chart out which matchups are close enough to make the pushup rule a positive, and enforce it only for those match-ups?  Gah!  Too much overhead.

So I think I’m going to try it out this way: allow – and even encourage – my students to agree before rolling, between the two of them, whether the pushup rule will be in force.  (Sort of like partners agreeing whether leglocks are kosher.)

Your thoughts and opinions are encouraged.

WARNING: If you’re considering competing, but haven’t made up your mind, you may want to avoid this article.  Go watch some tournament submission highlight reels, preferably set to heavy metal music, and get pumped up.

People frequently ask me why I don’t compete.  First, let’s clear some things up:

• It isn’t because I’ve never done it and am scared to try.  I have competed before.  The opinions in this article are based on experience through several tournaments, run by several different organizations, over several years.
• It isn’t because I’ve never won.  I’ve won some (and lost some).  This isn’t a whine-fest because I can’t cut it and need to justify not trying.
• I’m not evangelizing.  This is how *I* feel about competing, for myself, personally.  I encourage others to compete.  I coach competitors, often very successfully.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, here’s the executive summary of Why Eric Doesn’t Like Competing in BJJ:

• Competitive spirit.  Drive to be (perceived as) “the best”.  I don’t have it.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in America, where sport is life and winning is all.
• In that spirit: I’m not the best.  I know I’m not the best.  There will always be somebody better at my weight and rank and age and experience level.  If I come home with a gold, it just means that guy (really those guys, plural) didn’t happen to be there that day.  This diminishes the value of my “gold”.*
• As combat sports go, BJJ is fairly “pure” – that is, despite the competition rule set, a tournament match is pretty close to A Real Fight.  However, some people are determined to bring home the “victory” no matter what, so they study how to work the system and finagle the rules.  I consider this unsportsmanlike and sleazy.  It diminishes the value of a gold medal.  In an ideal world, the winner would be the better fighter, not the better “player”. (It should be noted that I know some people who win matches and bring home medals with unimpeachable integrity.  These people have my utmost respect.)
• The value of a victory is wildly variable.  Unless you were there on that particular day watching that particular competitor, you have no way of knowing whether he brought home a silver after fighting five deep against tough opponents, breaking a rib, and losing the final by one advantage point; or took gold in a two-man bracket by squashing his one opponent who had to move up in weight because his bracket was empty.  Even in a single match, you get your hand raised whether you submitted your opponent in 20 seconds or scored one advantage point on an almost-sweep and then stalled the rest of the match.*
• To expand on that point, a medal doesn’t mean much.  There are so many divisions that bringing home a medal is almost a foregone conclusion.  Let’s do some rough math on a hypothetical example: IBJJF has nine weight brackets for adult males.  Times five belts.  Times three medals.  That’s 135 medals.  A biggish tournament has about 600 competitors total.  Let’s say half of those fight in adult (as opposed to master’s) male divisions.  So just by walking on the mat, any of those guys has a 45% chance of coming home with a medal – win or lose.
• Luck of the draw sucks.  Most competitions are single-elimination.  This means you can be the second-best fighter in a 30-man bracket, but if you happen to fight the best one in your first (or second, or third, or fourth) match, you walk away with nothing, same as the worst fighter in the bracket.  Conversely, the fourth-worst fighter can get a first-round bye, beat the three worst fighters in the bracket, lose the last match and come away with a silver.*
• Cutting weight is stupid and unfair, not to mention dangerous.  This is one place where IBJJF has it right: they weigh you right before you get on the mat.  Most other organizations have weigh-ins the day before; the guy you’re fighting might be 15lbs overweight because his coach knows how to banana-bag him after the weigh-ins.
• Tournaments are notoriously poorly organized.  You are pretty much guaranteed to spend most of the day waiting for your bracket to be called.  Then once it is called, you had better be there or you’re disqualified (no refunds).  And you’ve got to be ready to jump on the mat right away.  So you’ve got two choices: stay warmed up all day (and be exhausted and dehydrated when your turn comes); or grapple cold, which is a great way to get injured.
• Some people love the adrenaline.  I hate it.  It doesn’t make me stronger or faster; it makes me nauseous and weak – and then I crash.

*A lot of this averages out over time.  But you don’t see people giving you the whole picture when they’re showing off their medal case.

Now, I don’t want this to be a 100% downer article, so it’s only fair if I list some of the positives of competition as well:

• It takes courage and heart to step on the mat all alone, face off against a complete stranger, and put your training to the test in a public forum.
• A tournament is great motivation to step up your training and make big gains in your skill, strength, endurance, speed, etc.
• You can’t beat the camaraderie you glean from going to a tournament with your teammates, watching each other fight (win or lose), screaming from the sidelines, congratulating (or commiserating) afterwards, and going out for a big, unhealthy meal and drinks afterwards.  (I get this from accompanying and coaching my teammates; but *somebody* has to do the fighting.)