An unfortunately common struggle for people starting out in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or any grappling art, is the issue of "How do I stay motivated?" You will hear this regularly on every grappling or fitness forum on the internet from people in their first year or two of training. This usually happens when the Honeymoon Period is over, and now they are staring at the years of hard, grinding work ahead to achieve their goals and for some this challenge seems insurmountable. All of a sudden that motivation that they woke up with a few months ago is nowhere to be found.

So what do we do when motivation runs out? When we wake up sore and beat up from the last night’s training and dread the thought of doing it all over again tonight?

The great secret of motivation is a phrase that I credit to YouTuber Elliot Hulse: "Motivation is bulls&%t".

The problem with motivation is that it’s fickle. It comes and it goes, changing with our moods and our feelings from week to week, and it’s simply not a constant companion. If we rely on motivation to get us on the mats, or under the bar, or into the ring, ultimately when that motivation leaves...it has a negative impact on our training.

The one quality that you will find in every single successful athlete on the planet is that they work hard, but are these people really always motivated?

It’s easy to look at those people and assume they are just more motivated than the rest of us, that they wake up every day with a renewed passion for what they do. This is simply not always true. Training is hard, it’s often painful, and sometimes, it’s terribly boring. Even when you love what you do, the fact of the matter is that sometimes training sucks. I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand what makes very successful athletes able to achieve their success, and I’ve come to one basic conclusion about the nature of success.

Ultimately, what really successful people bring to their sport, is a heaping dose of discipline.

I love Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but I would be a liar if I told you that I always feel like drilling, or that I always feel motivated to compete. Hell, sometimes I wake up and I think "Damn, I have to train today" and I have the strongest feeling of wanting to just say "Screw it" and take a day off. I imagine the smashing that awaits me on the mats, and the exhausted struggle that comes late into the sixth or seventh round of our open mat, and the feeling of wanting to do something, anything else for the evening comes on very strong.

It is my belief that this is a normal response to being heavily invested in anything that is really hard to learn. Even when you love it, it’s natural for that part of us which wants us to be comfortable, fat, and happy, to speak up in velvet tones with the seductive proposal: "Hey, you can take a day off.".

But this is where discipline comes into play.

Ultimately discipline is the act of deciding to do a thing, and then doing it exactly as you planned, regardless of how you feel about it.

If you get motivated to lose weight, or to get stronger, or to learn a grappling art…that is great. The motivation is telling you to make a commitment, but ultimately its discipline that fulfills that commitment. It’s not easy, but it is simple: You decide on a training schedule, and then you stick to that schedule, regardless of how you feel mentally, regardless of what other things in life try to push themselves between you and the training, and regardless of whether you feel like you are making progress or not.

What I have personally found in my own training is that most of the people who have surpassed me in skill have done it on sheer work ethic. They are logging more time on the mats than I am every month, and eventually that mat time translates to skill, and they wind up changing roles from someone I generally do well against to someone who generally gives me a ton of trouble. This isn’t an issue of motivation; it’s an issue of discipline. They are simply committed to training more frequently than I am.

There is no shortcut to success as an athlete. Every single ounce of skill we acquire comes out of blood, sweat, and hard work.

If you find yourself feeling de-motivated or not training regularly, it’s time to sit down, write out what your goals are, and then formulate a plan to achieve those goals. Once you have this plan written down, all that stands between you and that goal, is the discipline to execute on that goal every single day, even when it’s not fun, even when it sucks. Especially when it sucks.

It is never easy, but it is always worth it.

Copyright © 2015 by Christopher Gleeson

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