One Reason Competition is Important...

Competition is important because it helps keep BJJ instructors honest.

Every instructor has a different set of criteria from one another and most likely, a different set of criteria for each belt.  For example, some instructors use an attendance system for some of the early belts while others focus primarily on competition results.  This often causes significant differences in the actual skill levels of students wearing the same belt color.  A blue belt from school A, which focuses on international competition, will be significantly “better” than a blue belt from school B, which promoted the student for attending 96 classes.  The student might not necessarily know more techniques but in sparring, the competition experience will pay off, and more likely than not, student A will win..

The situation is very similar to the one faced by high schools.  How do you compare “A” students from one school to the next.  The valedictorian of Philips Exeter, one of America’s top prep schools, is not the same as the valedictorian of an inner city school.  How much of a difference is there?

Philips Exeter - All the snarkiness of an elite college but a high school!

~800 students, 115 teens with children or expecting - Stay Classy Robeson High!

What the educational institutions decided to do was create a standardized test (best known of which is the hated SAT) by which they could compare these individuals*.  Think of international competition as the SAT for us instructors – we get to see how the training regimens and teaching methods we use stack up against Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructors from across the world!  If our students do well, that means that as an instructor, we are able to produce students at the highest level i.e. Ivy League students.  If our students don’t do so well, it means we need to improve**.

That’s why I think competition is so important.

* Standardized tests, just like competitions, are not the perfect solutions to this problem but they do provide a point of comparison to be considered.  To completely discount them would be worse than only focusing on them.

** Instructors need to be able to bring up every student’s abilities, not just the elite competitors BUT it definitely says something when a school can produce champion after champion just like it says something when a school can turn out-of-shape non-athletes into solid athletes.  They are two equally important sides of the same coin.

Tweet This Post