Exploring Competition Anxiety

• Anxiety is the feeling that something bad is going to happen in the future. 

• The goal of doing jiu jitsu is to add benefit to your life. Do not overfocus on one aspect (that manifests and dysfunctional) and let that take away joy from doing jiu jitsu

• You can change how I feel about this specific event to make it a more enjoyable experience

• “I’ve done well in tournaments before and thats made me feel good, even the matches I lost. There’s no rational reason that this experience will be different.”

• What is really in your control:
  • Something you have some degree of control over: How you feel about how you expect yourself to perform .
    • This is something that has value in actively thinking about to some degree, but don’t fall in a trap of negative cyclical thinking( see below). 

• Something you don’t have any control over: How this specific performance will be used to grade your progress forward.

• If I can’t do anything about it, don’t waste energy worrying on this. It might be a factor, or it might not.

Cyclical Thinking  

DYSFUNCTIONAL CYCLICAL: “The more I cannot get into a good headspace, the more difficult it will be to relax and do my thing. If I am not relaxed and able to do my thing, I will not be able to get in a good headspace”:

• THIS IS IRRATIONAL because you are capable of changing you headspace so you do not need to be stuck in a bad headspace that you cannot escape.

• You are dynamic and are capable of improving how you feel/react about something at any given time. 

• THIS IS A RATIONAL RESPONSE “Because I can change how I feel, I can get excited to compete,usually this happens when I see my friends and we get warmed up together.”

FUNCTIONAL CYCLICAL: “The more good actions I accomplish (takedowns, passes, sweeps, sub attempts, even minor advantage improvements), the better I feel. The better I feel, the more good things I will be able to accomplish.”

• THIS IS RATIONAL: When you find something (major or minor) that you did well,  use that momentum to keep doing good things. 
  • “If I do good things, I am likely to feel good about myself.”
  • Outcome of match should not be the entirety to how you feel about yourself and your jiu jitsu experience.
    • Its correlated, but its not everything.
    • “Jiu Jitsu is a part of me, but at the end of the day its still not the entirety of me. “

• Performance on one day vs. General competency
  • Enjoying jiu jitsu is more than just winning a medal on one specific day. Don’t over emphasize a single performance, good or bad. 

• It can reveal a lot about your technical game, but should not be an indicator of you enjoying jiu jitsu as an activity you do and a lifestyle you lead.