Is it a Waste to Compete in BJJ and Lose? (My $1500 Failure)

Is it a waste of money if you go to a BJJ competition and you lose? If you spend the money for the registration fee, travel expenses and you come up short on your first match. Is it all for nothing?

This is the BJJ question I received recently. Well it was less of a question and more of a discussion in one of the comment threads of a video.

Jay Go and I were discussing the topic.

As I share in the video and as I told him in the thread. If you do a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu competition and you fail to secure victory. I don’t believe it’s a waste.

We always throw out the idea that we never really lose in BJJ and that we are always learning. That sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail. We all say this. Then when it’s time for us to be the nail or for us to take the feedback. We are hard pressed to listen to our previous words.

In the video I share about a particularly frustrating experience from back in 2015 during a BJJ competition when I came up short. I lost the 1st round and had spent nearly $1500 to make it happen.

And as I’ll share through the story. I believe that $1500 failure in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu helped me adjust parts of my game which led me to be more successful in 2015-2016.

That was 100% worth it.

Also, some of those wins secure monetary prizes. So I actually made my money back on that loss.

If you’re shying away from competing in BJJ because you’re worried about the money.

Don’t. . . that shouldn’t be a factor.

Because we have so much wrapped up into the Brazilian Jiujitsu competition, it makes it worth more.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this especially rambling Chewy ramble.

-Chewy