Many people train BJJ so that they can stay in shape. BJJ offers one of the best methods in this sense – you will get stronger and improve your cardiovascular endurance while increasing your mental sharpness as well. But for some people, this is simply not enough. They have to take things one step further than everybody else. If you feel this way, then you might want to consider BJJ competition. This article will share with you some of the best tips on how to prepare and go about competing in BJJ.
Training before competition
It goes without saying that you must invest a lot more time and effort into your BJJ training sessions if your goal is to compete. At the same time – the worst thing that you could do is to overtrain. You want to find the golden middle line between overtraining and undertraining. To be sure though – most people are erring on the side of undertraining. If you’re overtrained, then your body will tell you. You may get cramps and otherwise feel very exhausted. Injuries may follow. Be sure to prepare sufficiently for your competition – but not to overdo it.
Gameplan for competition day
Most people would say that it’s very helpful to have a gameplan for your BJJ competitions. This involves knowing your strong points and how to use them properly in a match. It’s a very bad thing to do to go and freestyle the entire competition session. Of course, this is not a deal-breaker – you may still win the match even if you do a freestyle. And in some cases, you will have to do a freestyle because your gameplan may fail. But either way – make sure that you know which moves you’re going to try out.
A simple gameplan may be the following – try a double leg takedown and get into side control and, from there, look for the Kimura lock – but if your double leg takedown should fail then you pull guard and look for the triangle from there. It’s simple – make sure that you have something to back down on in times of need.
Handling the nerves
No matter how experienced you are on BJJ training sessions – going on a competition is like nothing you have ever felt before. The stakes are a lot higher here and you and all of your opponents will strive for a win. Typically, there will also be people watching on the sides.
So, it’s perfectly understandable to have some anxiety before the match – it could start the day before, or even the week before the tournament. The thing to be aware of is that this is perfectly natural and that it happens to everybody. What you need to do is persist and go out there and compete anyway.
But it’s not a good thing if you’re so afraid that you’re paralyzed. In this case – if you feel overwhelmed by the pressure – it’s a very smart thing to do to start warming up dynamically. You will see that the pressure drops as you warm up and do basic physical drills and that you’re feeling better. Again – be mindful not to overdo this as you risk getting tired or, even worse, injured.
With time you will develop your courage and it will get easier and easier to compete in BJJ tournaments – once you see that it’s not that big of a deal anyway to compete.
So, the main point of this article can be summed up in the last line of the previous paragraph. It’s not that big of a deal to compete. Train hard, develop your gameplan, and go out on competition day. It’s a thrilling experience and you will see that it will be over before you even notice it. Be sure to have fun!
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