Episode 327: Do you get Anxious about rolling and competing? Do find yourself constantly criticising yourself with negative self talk? This is actually not helping you just do the thing- get better at BJJ. Managing your self talk and your psychological approach to the pressures of BJJ is key to your long term success. Both JT & Joey have had their own battles with managing their minds and have had very different journeys taking different approaches to getting their heads straight. There is a definite time to expect high standards, analyse and critique what you are doing... but do not keep breaking things down and criticising when it is time to perform. Knowing when to think and when to just go is a skill that needs to be practiced and understood. If you are not learning different ways to keep a handle on your mind in a BJJ context then you are missing out. Everyone is different whether you are a hype beast or Zen champion you need a routine to be able learn and perform at your full potential. You gotta cut out the negative self talk and know how to get yourself right.
Episode 327: Do you get Anxious about rolling and competing? Do find yourself constantly criticising yourself with negative self talk? This is actually not helping you just do the thing- get better at BJJ. Managing your self talk and your psychological approach to the pressures of BJJ is key to your long term success. Both JT & Joey have had their own battles with managing their minds and have had very different journeys taking different approaches to getting their heads straight. There is a definite time to expect high standards, analyse and critique what you are doing... but do not keep breaking things down and criticising when it is time to perform. Knowing when to think and when to just go is a skill that needs to be practiced and understood. If you are not learning different ways to keep a handle on your mind in a BJJ context then you are missing out. Everyone is different whether you are a hype beast or Zen champion you need a routine to be able learn and perform at your full potential. You gotta cut out the negative self talk and know how to get yourself right.
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. Ladies and gentlemen, today's show is brought to you by Parry Athletics the best pair of training shorts in the game. They do rashies, they do shirts, but what I love is they have shorts for you to roll in, as well as shorts for you to chill in. I love them because they're so multi-purpose and they look awesome. Now you can get your hands on these and you get 20% off with the code BULLETPROOF20 at checkout. Get yours today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof BJ podcast. I am JT and I'm here with the ever handsome Joseph Worthington.
Speaker 2:
Hey, we get, like I don't know, 50,000 downloads a month on this show. Maybe more Okay, Maybe more Okay sometimes more. It's a bunch of people. Yeah, it's quite a lot of humans. Now, obviously, many of those are people that are listening to multiple episodes, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's at least 5,000 of you listening right now At least, at least who really love what we do. Of course, there's a percentage of you that are just waiting for us to fail, and that's cool.
Speaker 1:
We're here for the haters, no worries.
Speaker 2:
However, for those of you that are like no, I'd like you guys to stick around. I reckon that probably of that 5,000, there's probably about 4,400 who haven't yet given us a five-star review on whichever audio platform they're hearing this Big facts. So in the three seconds it's going to take you to that now. Please do that. Now scroll up, give us a five star review. If you're on youtube, like and subscribe. It just helps to support the show so that we can keep supporting you.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, fam now psychology in bjj. This is very important thing because you need a lot of mental fortitude to stay in the game. But you might be holding yourself back by putting unreasonable expectations on yourself, unreasonable expectations on your coach, but then also you might be speaking very negatively to yourself internally and not realize that's holding you back, because I have had this chat with a few people and I used to do it myself, so I used to be very self-critical.
Speaker 1:
You would be surprised Early in my athlete journey in Taekwondo because I used to think well, if I'm my biggest critic, then no one can discredit me. Like I'm safe. If I'm my biggest critic, Like I will always be better, if I'm really mean to myself in my head.
Speaker 2:
Lady, there's nothing you can say to me that I haven't already said to myself in the mirror every morning. Pretty much, pretty much.
Speaker 1:
Or worse. You know a lot of us. I think that comes from this perfectionistic idea of like if I'm really critical, I'll always get better. Now, sure, it's good to have high standards, and there's probably a place for you to critique your technique and stuff like that, but if you're always kind of judging yourself every time you make a small mistake and be like, oh you fucking idiot, like that straight away has got you distracted from what you need to pay attention to, which is getting better at the thing, yeah, and so getting emotionally caught up or having this repetitious habit of criticizing yourself is not helping you, because I've actually spent a bit of money talking to psychologists for one reason or another a couple of them sports related, a couple of them just behavior related and it's taught me to be less self-critical.
Speaker 1:
And so I had a chat with an athlete recently who's going to the ADCC trials and they were asking me questions about should they look more jacked when they're cutting weight? I was like what? What are you talking about? And they said, well, when I cut weight, I look like flaccid and like skinny and limp. And I'm like, yeah, that's what you look like when you cut weight, but shouldn't I look more jacked. I was like why what's looking jacked? But you know, I want people to think I'm strong and I'm like yeah, but dude, what are you doing? Stop thinking about what other people think. Don't worry about looking a certain way to appeal to others, like you're cutting weight, to make a weight division, to perform at a sport, and everybody looks like shit when they cut weight.
Speaker 2:
Probably not Ethan Kralenstein. He looks great. Yeah, he's on a lot of juice.
Speaker 1:
He's on a lot of juice. I'm not talking about Ethan Kralenstein, but I'm saying, like, think of Conor McGregor when he used to cut for 145. He looked like death. Same thing could be Even him making lightweight. He looks fucking atrocious, right, because you are literally…. You're like you've got a water balloon and you're putting a hole in the water balloon and draining out half the water. Yeah, you're going to look flaccid, yeah, so don't worry about this hole. I got to look jack thing. I understand. Mikey Musumechi is like 0% body fat and looks really muscular, but he's just a skinny guy.
Speaker 2:
But ADCC has that like 24 hour weigh in or whatever. Yeah, they do. Yeah, our way in, or whatever.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, they trials too right, yeah, yeah, the day before. So there's an element there. But why I wanted to bring up this element of managing your psychology is I think people do this to themselves just in the gym. Don't even worry about competition. You know, we look at someone, think, man, they took off their rash guard or their gain. You're like, dang, they got fucking abs. I don't have abs. Oh my god, they got some huge arms. I don't have fucking huge. Oh my God. They've got such huge arms. I don't have fucking huge arms. Shit, everyone's better than me. And it starts this like negative spiral, you know. And look, I think I regularly have to overcome a lot of I wouldn't say it's negative self-talk, but maybe a little bit of doubt. You know people start to talk about imposter syndrome.
Speaker 2:
I never feel you love ripping on yourself I do syndrome. I never feel you love ripping on yourself, I do. But I give you an example. It's a bad habit when we, when we shoot content together, when jt's, when I'm holding the camera and jt's the guy doing the thing, if he gets something wrong on the first take, I'm like let's, you'll be like fucking idiot, like bro, like multiple takes is part of it, but you're like, you're like no, I'm good, I'm good and I. I can see you battling with, like you know, your expectations of yourself when it comes to presenting on camera.
Speaker 1:
I'm the fucking one take wonder. I have already practiced this shit. I expect one take one to glory. That's what I expect. But if we talk about jujitsu, I expect to fuck up, you know, not not necessarily in a in a performative way, but like I expect to get a new technique wrong multiple times. Yeah, and I understand that that's part of the learning process. So I'm actually here for that, like I'm actually really here for getting something wrong, because for me I feel like that's a process of discovery, whereas I think for some people they're like oh, I'll never be good at this, you know. But we all know that we all had to struggle to improve.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, this is, it's weird because we accept it in other parts of life, but when we come to a different context, say jujitsu, where it often doesn't, it doesn't necessarily translate that we're patient with ourselves yeah, I think a lot of folks would have and, yeah, like a improper calibration of you know expectations with juiu-jitsu, like, oh fuck, I've been trying this for the last five minutes and I still can't do it. It's like, man, tell me if you've once been doing it for a couple of months. Yeah, then it's problematic. Yeah, for sure. You see those people, like as a coach, you see those people, whether it's on the gym floor or in the academy, who are really hard on themselves and and almost getting in their own way. Yeah, because it's, you know, like it's fine to be critical, but it does like when you sort of exert their energy like oh fuck, like no, like that's a waste of energy, like the better response is like, okay, what do I need to do? Okay, cool, let me try again.
Speaker 1:
fix the thing let me try again and the patient and the repetition like the thing will come, yeah well, the thing that I always say um, even if it's like a kettlebell lifting technique, correct someone's technique, and I'm like all right, now, just do that a thousand times. Yeah, you'll be, you'll be okay at it. Yeah, like that's the thing that we forget, because actually, process videos they're not interesting, right? Process videos yeah, what are they? You know someone's like oh, you know, work in progress. We don't give a fuck, we want to see the glorious, magical ending.
Speaker 2:
You know like, you know like any video.
Speaker 1:
You know, yeah, I'm just working on my. You know it's not entertaining, I think, because we have montages. Right, the montage is the compressed real, the compressed 15 seconds of glory. You know, like when you see here is a time-lapse video of a seedling growing into a fucking plant, yeah, but it condenses six months into 30 seconds, you're like wow, that's beautiful, how cool, how entertaining it's not entertaining to see someone get 1% better at something. No, you want to see the before and after, which is here.
Speaker 2:
I was, I was, whatever. Well, you want to see the journey.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but you want it condensed right, Like no one can sit down and watch 12 months of you fucking up.
Speaker 2:
I would push back on that and say like, I get your point. I'm not saying but I would say yeah, but think of someone, um, think of someone that's showing their progress, say over that long timeline, and it's like unsubscribe yeah, but but no, but I'm sure there's. There's someone that you've done this with, whereby they show it, and you've been watching this person do this thing for months and then you're like, oh, they finally got it. Like how sick if you, if, if it's, if that person is, you know, interesting enough to you that you follow them for that long. Yeah, and you might not have watched each of those videos in full but you've, you've, you've clocked it.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, they're struggling with that. Oh my god, they're not struggling anymore. How cool yeah so it's like a longer, it's like a more macro view.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, potentially, but I'm not saying that this is a good behavior with humans. I'm just saying it's a behavior?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's a nature within humans. When we have a short attention span, like we want the thing condensed into and and you know, whatever I was, I and he's this grey haired guy.
Speaker 1:
he's a pretty funny guy, but he's talking about how, back in the day, you had to wait for stuff. I didn't even realise I was waiting for the bus. I didn't have no fucking phone. Mindfulness, mindfulness, you know. He's just so good. Have you ever rewound anything in your life? You had to just sit there Let it rewind. Mindfulness, you know.
Speaker 2:
I was a guru.
Speaker 1:
I didn't even know he's a funny guy. Patience with yourself and this is something I do, like I am a very impatient person Is we are often more patient with others than we are with ourselves. So you might meet someone who's very generous and kind with others, but they're very critical of themselves, and one of the ways to recontextualize that is you should speak to yourself like you would speak to a young child. We usually have more patience for young kids because they don't know They've never done it before. You don't want to scold a kid for doing something wrong. They've never done it. It's not going to help them get better being mean to them. If we could, like take that approach and apply it to ourselves, then we might be better off. You know and that's what I wanted to say about the psychology piece is that you being hard on yourself isn't necessarily helping you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah right, you know as a way to think yeah, yeah, sure Can be at times, you know, but it absolutely can become like a toxic trait of sorts.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, because then there's a time, like there's definitely a time in development, where being critical is good for standards and improving technique and, like you know, not accepting being sloppy, but then when it comes to say the, the performative or like a comp, that's no time to get negative on yourself.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like time and place yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's the time to get with your unified self. You got to get everything together and just fucking be like all right, I believe in me. That's why the fuck I'm here, I'm doing the thing, yeah. So even when you get down on points you're like I'm still pull out that triangle. That only comes from really supporting yourself in that moment.
Speaker 2:
That's an interesting thing you mentioned makes me think of a 12 rules thing I read a long time ago. It was big in the movement culture, but it was about John Cage, I think 12 Rules for Learning or something, and it was this. He put together these kind of 12 sort of rules about learning Johnny Cage.
Speaker 1:
Johnny Cage, weird the immortal. I was thinking Johnny Cage is also Mortal Kombat, but I thought Johnny Cage was a Marvel character. He's like super jacked black guy. Sounds like he could be.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, he could be, but continue. But one of them was which just makes me think of that like the time and the place, and one of his rules was don't try to analyze and do at the same time. Yeah, they're separate processes. Yes, and I think that's really big. It's like there is a time for analysis and critique and personal feedback and review and stuff, and then there's a time for action. Yeah, and you see this right, Like when you get people going on a drill, say in class, and you're like all right, cool, we've spoken about it, I've showed you what I want, we've spoken about some more, now do. And then someone comes with a stupid, fucking Spider-Man question and you're like not now. No, do Do. Like questions are good in three minutes' time. Yes, once you've had a chance to embody what we've just spoken about.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
You know. But I think that, yeah, we do that right. So it's kind of the equivalent of being at a comp and starting to review your game and being like actually I don't feel particularly confident.
Speaker 1:
Confident in x, yeah, it's like, nah, probably not the time for that. No, now is not the time to to question yourself and review your battle strategy. Well, it's like, let's look at some of the greatest athletes of all time. They're not cerebral. You know, brock lesnar is not a cerebral guy, he's fucking not, but he's one of the greatest collegiate wrestlers of all time, because I've heard him interviewed, because I've heard him speak many times.
Speaker 2:
You know it's not to say but you hear him?
Speaker 1:
I mean, I just I've heard him on podcasts like right, but I'm saying that if we look at some of the greatest, it's like the? Um, what's the character in bobby boucher? In, uh, waterboy, he like they get him up to talk in front of the high school kids and the guy has a ball and make a tackle. Very good, bobby. And then what? And then he get up again, he get a ball and a tackle. Okay, that leads me to my next point. Kids, don't smoke crack, because he's got nothing to say, he just does the thing. Yeah, and I'm not. You know this is a stereotype, but in the moment the there can be no thoughts or doubts. There has to just be execution. Yeah, and that requires a certain level of stillness. Now, that can come from years of meditation, or that can just come from you're a dumb motherfucker and you're just doing the thing. You know.
Speaker 2:
I just yeah, you know I just or you do, or you just know how to. I just run through their face, yeah, I just run through their face, yeah, or you gotta you. You have a you know a good handle on your behavior at those. In that context I I agree, because I'd say with someone like a Brock Lesnar, I mean.
Speaker 1:
Or like a running back in football. I'm trying to remember the name of the actor he played for like the Seahawks. He's very famous. His video is literally like motherfuckers, don't like it when you just run full of space. He just says it 20 times. His nickname is Beast Mode. Anyway, it's so good and it's your spirit animal. Well, because the thing is, I'm an overthinker.
Speaker 1:
I am, yeah, and I've had to cultivate the not thinking to be better, yeah, knowing when to pull the trigger right yeah, and I think but you see it a lot in in fighting as much as anywhere where you have someone who's a great athlete or a great competitor and there's moments where they don't pull the trigger. You know you, you see it where you get a match-up where one person is just bringing it and the other person falters for whatever reason. They either get a bit gun shy or something happens that their psychology is not as strong. Now, obviously, if you just get knocked out, there's you know that happens, right, but we see it throughout history where certain athletes are consistent in executing under pressure and there's no thinking, it's just it hits all by itself. So if you are someone who overthinks here's the key thing you may think it's helping you. You may think, oh, if I think about this more, I'll get better. You may think it's helping you. You may think, oh, if I think about this more, I'll get better, maybe, maybe there's definitely a time and place, and also there's a time and place for analysis, critical thinking, all of that. But then there's also a point at which there needs to be less thinking and more doing, and for everybody it's different, right. So what gets you into a place of just being able to zone in or get in the zone and just perform. The thing is different. For me it takes about a gram and a half of caffeine, a few hard hits to the face and a psychotic wish to kill another person. I feel very calm in those moments, but that's not good for someone else. Someone else might need to actually sit and breathe and maybe do like a small amount of meditation to be able to zone in.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but this is the important thing if you do not get a handle on your psychology within bjj, you may never actually realize your potential. You, it's a limited amount of time, right, yeah, especially when it comes to competition, and that's usually where people are under the most pressure. So you've got to say to yourself how many ADCC trials have you got in? You it's every two years, right, like if your competitive career is 10 years, it's only five shots at the Big Apple. Or if you want to compete at the Worlds, each year at every belt or whatever the hell, it's still only 10 opportunities to do that.
Speaker 1:
So managing your psychology on the smaller levels, the less pressurized levels, which is going to class, comp, class, local comps, blah, blah, blah. You've got to have a fairly trained approach to dealing with that external pressure. But at the end of the day, it's all in your head, right? You're the one who's oh, this is so important. The end of the day, it's all in your head, right, you're the one who's oh, this is so important, fucking. You know, masters, five fucking regional par, tuck it champion. You know, like there's only you and some other guy in the division and he's from a gym and you know him like it doesn't. It's only as important as you say it is, but your ability to just be able to clear the noise and do the thing. It takes a bit of practice. So do you have a structure? Do you have a strategy? This is important.
Speaker 2:
Now.
Speaker 1:
I have gone and spoken to sports psychologists. I've talked to other psychologists in terms of managing my mind and that's a bit of work. Some of you may not be interested in doing that. You might be like, oh, this sounds like some fucking bullshit, like I just fucking do my thing Right, so simple enough. But I think managing expectations is an important thing which will enable you to enjoy jujitsu more as well. And that can be a thing that you've got some people who are actually quite good at jujitsu but they're kind of miserable. Like they win comps and stuff, but when you talk to them you're like you're not a happy person, are you? Yeah, you're in pain a lot. They're kind of there's a bit of edge to them. Like I definitely know for myself, I've made myself less happy by having unreasonably high expectations for something that didn't warrant that. Yeah, so is there anything you do to manage expectations, joe?
Speaker 2:
I think checking in with it, I think that's the main thing, because sometimes to be a high achiever, you have to have high expectations yeah Right. And then sometimes having high expectations is a limiting factor in your success in a thing, yeah. So I think, checking in with it and reviewing, like, am I setting a bar for myself? Is that bar at an appropriate height? No, actually, I haven't. You know, sometimes I'll reflect on something about. No, I haven't actually held myself to a standard or tried to exceed my standard for a long time. Okay, cool, let's do that. You know.
Speaker 2:
But sometimes, yeah, you might look back and be like fuck, I haven't enjoyed my training over the last six months. Why is that? Well, actually I've been might look back and be like, fuck, I haven't enjoyed my training over the last six months. Why is that? Well, actually I've been trying to do something that just, it's not actually vibing with me. So, you know, checking in with it gives you a chance to recalibrate and I think that that's where, like, reflection time is really the thing. I think a lot of folks never reflect, yeah, and then they they don't have tools around that, and I think that that you know if I'm, if I'm thinking about what the kind of boiled down thing of this conversation is. It's like being able to reflect on yourself and what it is that you want and what it is that drives you. That's really where you, where you discover. Like you know, do you do high expectations, work for you, or?
Speaker 1:
are you just hurting yourself? Yeah?
Speaker 2:
do you enjoy this thing? Actually, do you fucking hate this thing? You're doing it for someone else, you know like all of the above.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think having an honest friend helps, like a good friend of mine, millay shout out, millay is a black belt down in Melbourne with Lachlan Giles. One time when I was a purple belt, I put all this time and effort in I lost the final to Ben Hodgkinson on decision. It was savage Fuck that guy. No, shout out. Basically I got second so I didn't get to go to Abu Dhabi. I wanted to go to Abu Dhabi. It was a dream of mine.
Speaker 1:
It didn't happen but I had kicked the ass of everyone else and so I'd done better than I'd done the previous times and I was kind of a bit gutted and I was a bit down and Mille had competed as well. He was the belt above me and I think maybe he was second or he was on the podium. But he said, dude, look how far you've come, how good is that? And I was like nah man, I fucking lost to Hodgkinson. And he was like nah, dude, but you're so much better.
Speaker 1:
Like, isn't that great? How good is it that you are this good at jiu-jitsu now compared to where you were six months ago? And I had never thought of it like that. Right, and in the moment it still didn't really hit, but the more I thought about I was like you know, he's right, he's actually right and I have gotten better and that was my whole goal. So this isn't the end, you know, like success is not final, failure is not fatal. I just like, just like yeah, millay was right, and it does help to have someone outside of you to just help check your expectations, I guess, yeah, there it is folks Managing your psychology for BJJ. It's worth giving it a think and it will help you in the future.