There will come a time in our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training when we’ll feel weak, defeated in front of a challenge. It’s inevitable whether you’re a white belt or a black belt to have those so-called off days – or when things don’t seem to fall into place. Often times, this is where we separate the good from the great. While some fold under pressure, others know how this is a mere bump in the road to rise above such an obstacle. Believe us, we’ve all been there. We arrive at a crossroads with a lot of questions in mind, doubts centered on our overall skills training regimen, or our current progress on the mats, or both. If not taken care of as soon as possible, these negative, somewhat differing insights will slowly eat us inside – halting our development in the process. For now, it’s important for us to understand this aspect of BJJ, the mental side of the art, and how to improve from within.
Focus and concentration are two key components not just in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but life in general. Enhancing these will help us grow leaps and bounds, in ways we least expect. This infographic centering on improving concentration and focus talks about the subject in-depth, and how we can further develop our minds especially in this digital day and age. With all the distractions around, from various social media platforms to off-putting news, high-tech gadgets to enjoyable apps, it can really be difficult to keep our eyes on the prize, so to speak. However, based on the aforementioned article, we can better this by simply determining the relationship between what we see and our intellectual demand. Once we realise this link, we unravel a part of our psyche that allows us to nurture thoughts into how our brain reacts to growing levels of stress, which ultimately leads to upgrading our concentration and focus.
In BJJ, different belt levels have different mindsets, according to In Fighting. There’s the white belt, our entry level where we have absolutely no clue on what, why, when, where, and how we’re doing what we’re doing. Next is the blue belt, the following step in which we’re gradually gaining cognisant capabilities, or we now know what we previously didn’t know. Down the road, there’s purple belt, or being consciously competent and generally knowing what to do, followed by brown belt, a level where we actually do what we already know. Lastly, is the black belt, or the total state of consciousness – becoming indifferent to ability and inability. Here’s where eat, sleep, and breathe Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or in other words, fall deeply in love with the martial art in such a way that practicing it is a reward on its own.
To sum it all up, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a long, arduous journey. We’ll experience a lot of bumps, scrapes, and bruises, as well as battle inner demons, which will eventually hone us to become first-rate practitioners on the mats and better persons in life.
This is a guest post from Ethan Bailey.