Competition is not everything but...

After the National Gi competition, I did a little speech at both dojos (Epsom & Sandrigham).

The reason for the speech was to acknowledge the need for the club to promote and follow a calender shaped around competition but at the same time explained that competition was not everything in our mind.

At the same time, I hope that it did not belittle the achievement of our competition who achieve 6 medals from 10 competitors (which is an outstanding result by any means).

It make sense to have a specific rules set around what competition rules we are expecting to enter.

So for example, since we enter NZ grappler events which follow SJJF rules currently, we train under these rules.

It would be pointless trying to follow different rules and then having to modify our set of skills for each event.

The competitions available in Auckland are typically a regional nogi and gi and a national gi and nogi which are spread around the year.

Usually it is like 2 events per semesters.

So we put our training around these events and at the same time we create 1 inter club event about 4 weeks before each NZ grappler competition to prepare ourselves accordingly.

So it is like 4 events per semester (2 inter-clubs and 2 NZ grapplers events).

It is plenty action and help create a necessary momentum in the club.

At the same time, I would like to acknowledge that competition is not compulsory or necessary for our students.

In fact, I would say that competitors only makes 20% to 30% of our members and we could not keep the lights on so to speak if we only cater for competitors.

So why do we compete?

It gives us a purpose and help with creating a semester around the events.

Otherwise, rapidly people just keep rolling and just smash each others senseless.

A way to look at it is is guaranteed self destruction without goals outside the club.

So competition makes you think about training to compete and defeat someone else from another team.

But at the same time, you will compete and make friends with other competitors.

So it is not just us versus the world mentality.

For our non-competitors, you still play a major role in our program.

To start with, you drill and roll with our competition team and every rolls counts and I can guarantee that everyone appreciate your participation.

You will get promoted in due time like the rest of the team and I can easily say that I am product of such system.

So basically, while we use competition to create a momentum, the coaching staff does not to estrange the members that are not interested in competing.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a great sport but also is good for self defense, fitness and we also focus a lot on camaderie and friendship.

Thank for the support everyone.