Heart vs. Skills
My son and I competed in a Grappling tournament last weekend. It was more like Jiu Jitsu than anything else. We both did Gi and no-Gi divisions.
After the tournament I started really doing some soul searching on why I didn’t do better… It reminded me of a scene from the movie Apocalypto. Our hero attempts to defeat the handsome gentleman pictured here. It doesn’t go so well. In the picture, the victor is making the statement, “Almost,” (because the hero almost won,) “Your name is Almost.” In the movie, “Almost” is translated into the word “Olac.”
Well, If I had to choose a fight name right now, Ifeel like I’d have to go with Olac. Why is it that I never seem to finish the job??
I sat down and reviewed the videos of my fights. The are a couple of the fights where I was just out done. I did what I could, fought hard, but still lost. I found that these didn’t bother me.
But half of my fights, I seem to tap when I really don’t look like I should. In those cases, I feel that in a lower stress environment, like just in class rolling around, I could probably take these guys. But on the mat in a competition these guys are beating me. Why am I so quick to tap?
I had to painfully admit that they just wanted to win more than I did.
That didn’t taste very good.
But it has given me something to think on. I always think about what move or position to improve on. But this is a mental thing. It’s different than technique. What I really need is to grab someone better than me, and have them push me into ugly territory. I need to keep from tapping so soon. I need to sit, trapped in a position for a while, with no hope of escape; and be okay with that. I need to hold longer, and fight harder.
This is an element of training that I think can be easy to overlook. We are so used to tapping as soon as a good hold gets put on, with a brotherly, “nice job.” But when do we work to fight that extra little bit to not tap.
Well, for me at least it appears that the answer is: Not often enough.
So, I begin my journey toward no longer being Olac.
Wish me luck 
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@skinnyd I agree with you. What makes this hard is that I remember coming to that same realization in class a long time ago. As a result, I am actually very hard to tap in class. But the speed and passion of a tournament somehow really change things. I need to get a handle on not getting caught up in that, and keep my head like in class. I fear it may be tough to simulate though
I struggled with this in BJJ for quite a while (tapping early). Eventually it occurred to me that survival and escapes are a crucial part of BJJ and that an escape is rarely an instantaneous event. It often requires surviving in impossible situations long enough to leverage tiny little holes in your opponents grip or until he/she shifts weight and makes a mistake.
When I got it through my head that I could actually hold out longer if I just didn't freak out, I started tapping a lot less quickly and noticed significant improvement in my escapes and reversals.
Obviously you want to tap if you're really, really caught, but holding out until the last minute forces everyone to increase their technique and their game in order to get the tap, which in turn forces improved defenses.
Hey Olac, maybe you should bag their head with their own gi, I hear they can’t breathe like that.