Overcoming The Fear Of BJJ

The fear of BJJ… does this syntax have any sense at all, considering the fact that most of us who are engaged in the sport of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu are trying to become warriors? Well, for some people, practitioners of this sport, it surely does. Actually, for many of them. And the way of dealing with these unpleasant feelings is everything.

Why? Because these fears have the power to decide whether you will improve your jiu-jitsu game and become even more motivated, on one part of the spectrum, or spoil your progression in BJJ on the other part of the spectrum… maybe even finish your training. You wouldn’t be the first, nor the last one who quit training because of the FEAR. However, people who do actually quit will always disguise that reason into something else. No one wants to admit that the fear got the best out of them, right?

After all, didn’t Carlos Gracie promise us this, a long time ago?

Jiu-Jitsu Transforms Cowards into Men, Chickens into Stallions. — Carlos Gracie

Let’s see what can we do about it!

Fear Is Always Near

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu indeed has that power to transform people, no one sane would doubt that. But no matter which part of your BJJ journey are you currently at, the possibility of fear raising its ugly head is always there. It’s a constant, never-ending struggle. It will not manifest the same way for a white belt or someone just starting, who maybe needs the courage of opening that door handle of his BJJ academy, and someone who is a black belt, who hasn’t competed for a long time and now plans to. Or, for someone who has been out of the game of BJJ for a while because of an injury, and now returns after 6 months or a year, while all others have been training fervently in the meantime.

But the common point of all of the aforementioned situations is – FEAR. Being nervous, disturbed, unsettled or even intimidated with the idea of returning to mats, returning to competition, returning back to the expectations that you set for yourself a long time ago, returning to the person that you always dreamed to be on the mats.

Fear Is Not Our Enemy

But, you see, fear is not our enemy. And it also isn’t unknown to many many brave fighters, who have accomplished so much and who are always praised by the whole world. Two of them who instantly come to my mind are Georges St-Pierre and Mike Tyson. If you listen to many of their interviews, they always mention the huge amount of fear they felt before each fight. And they were both world champions of the highest grade.

When you listen to them speaking about fear, you can notice that they aren’t ashamed of the fear. They don’t sound like they need to hide the fact that they had a fear prior to their fights. On the contrary, they are almost proud of it, proud of the correct way they approached their fears and capitalized on it, which made them much better fighters. They didn’t negate the fear, they didn’t try to pose themselves as fearless killing machines, or some kind of human terminators. They accepted and embraced their human side to it, but it was a conscious decision to turn that fear into something productive. So that that very basic human emotion, one of the strongest ones, doesn’t stop them in their martial arts journeys and their dreams of becoming the champions.

Embracing The Fear

Look for example what Mike had to say about his fear:

“When I come out I have supreme confidence… I’m scared to death. I’m totally afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of losing. I’m afraid of being humiliated. But I’m totally confident. The closer I get to the ring, the more confidence I get, the closer the more confidence I get. All day in my training I’ve been afraid of this man. I thought this man may be capable of beating me. I’ve dreamed of him beating me. But I always stayed afraid of him. But the closer I get to the ring, I’m more confident. Once I’m in the ring I’m a god. No one can beat me.” — Mike Tyson

Tyson had an inferiority complex, and was afraid of humiliation. His trainer Cus D’Amato used this to his advantage. He taught him that “you will never overcome fear, but you must accept it as beneficial to preparation.” Tyson’s acceptance of fear allowed him to use his fear of humiliation as ammunition against his opponent. It was about transforming one form of thought energy into another form.

How You Deal With Fear Decides All

It’s not the presence of fear that is the problem. Nothing is wrong with us when we feel it, nothing. It’s perfectly human. But how we deal with it … well, my friends, it decides ALL.

And I would go one step further at this point, and say that it decides ALL not just in BJJ/martial arts world, but in so many situations in life in general. Starting from choosing a university, life partner, career, etc.

Let’s see what we can do about our fears particular for BJJ…

Coach Tom Davey, a brown belt, has a gym in Adelaide, Australia, as well as his online resource, The Grappling Academy, where he selflessly offers so much valuable information for the starting and more advanced grapplers.

The first thing he says about fears in BJJ, is this old acronym:

FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real

Then he mentions worrying about the opinion of what others might think about us: “You think I have enough time in my life to worry about YOUR problems in jiu-jitsu? It has nothing to do with me.”

“For every person who hasn’t surfed because they are afraid of sharks, there is a hundreds of surfers who surf their whole life, who never even see one, let alone get eaten by one. And the same is with jiu-jitsu.“

“People don’t compete, or they don’t roll with the hard guys, or they don’t do tough comm training because they are worried about losing and tapping. But really what they are getting by missing out on that is just their ego saying: It’s ok, you’re safe! But that’s not safe: you are hiding, you’re running. You will feel much more confident when you go out there and face your challenges, you go chase your dreams, you go roll with the toughest guys in your academy… and when you get tapped, you know you’ll be proud of yourself because even if you don’t win… Who cares?? You’ll be proud of yourself because you stepped up to the fear.”

The bottom line of his advice is this one: “Always choose pride over fear.”

Watch the whole video:

Overcoming The Fear Of Joining BJJ Academy

A specific form of fear in BJJ is the fear of joining the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy! This is perhaps the worst fear of all aforementioned because it stops you from even beginning your journey. Or, at best, wastes a couple of your good years before you finally decide. Which is bad too. If you are interested in Jiu-Jitsu, and you haven’t had your first class yet, but instead you were always procrastinating, then this is a video for you!

In the following video, coach Tom lists 5 creative ways to overcome the fear of joining the academy:

Fear Of Losing Slows BJJ Progression

And at the end, here we include advice of popular Chewy, who runs a successful Chewjitsu BJJ Academy and Youtube channel. The real name of Nick Albin, he has been competing in wrestling, MMA, and BJJ for years, and we definitely recommend subscribing to his channel.

“From my experience, the students that are the best in my gym, are the ones who just GO FOR IT.” — Chewy