During your training of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there are going to be times when you want to throw in the towel. Maybe your perspective of the past two or three weeks is that you haven’t shown any progression or you’re getting caught in techniques that you typically defend and counter.

Don’t quit.

Think about where you were 6-months or 12 months ago. It is very tough to see improvement in your game, especially once you hit the Purple Belt. You will have times of doubt, especially when you are getting taped by Blue Belts who you were tapping all the time back when you were a Blue Belt!

It happens. Those teammates see the change in belt color as see that as a measuring stick to turn their game up a notch. While you still see them as your teammate, they now view you as an “upper belt” that they want to tap.They are going to be coming at you with everything they know and if you tapped them, it’s expected as you are the higher rank. Now when they tap you, they are going to puff their chest out a little further because they tapped an “upper belt”. Even if you were promoted last week, they don’t care.

Don’t let the learning opportunities on the mat make you quit. Are you getting caught in submissions because your teammates have been drilling a specific technique over and over to eliminate the mistakes that they were making; which allowed you to escape or defend so easily in the past? Have they been working on chaining together several techniques to keep you off guard and just as you are about to escape, you fall right into their submission.

When you train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, you will have your fair share of peaks, valleys and plateaus but those are never reasons to quit. Your journey will have plenty of twists and turns and when you look back on this moment 6-months or 10-years, you will be very happy that you did not allow BJJ to make you quit.

So keep training. Take notes and be honest with your game so you can make the improvements that you need. Talk with your teammates that have been gaining on you to see what it is that they have been doing (or what you have not been doing) that has been allowing them to catch you more often. Maybe you have been setting up your same chains in the same order.

Ask them. Because once you start making it difficult for them to catch you again, they will need to bring their game up.

Never quit.

Ed LeMonnier

2 Stripe Purple Belt

Frequency Martial Arts – Bloomington, Illinois

Affiliate of Robson Moura Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Association