The first competition: when it makes sense, and how you actually prepare

“I'm not ready yet” is the phrase you hear most often at the gym, and it almost always comes from somebody who has been training for a year. The problem is that the feeling of being ready does not arrive before the competition: it arrives after, and mostly after the second or the third.

The right question is not whether you are ready

It is whether you train with a degree of regularity, whether you have done enough sparring not to be frightened when somebody puts pressure on you, and whether you can tell when to stop. You do not need a complete game. Nobody has one at a first competition.

• You know how to tap in time, and you do it without waiting until the last instant. It is the one non-negotiable prerequisite.
• You have sparred with people you do not know, at an open mat for instance: competing against a stranger is very different from rolling with your usual training partners.
• Your coach knows you want to do it. Not to ask permission, but because they are the person who can tell you whether that competition suits you and which division makes sense.

The week before, not the three months before

There is no special preparation for a first competition: there is the training you were already doing. What changes is the week leading up to it, and the rule is take away, do not add.

1. 1Do not overhaul anything. Starting a diet or a new strength programme seven days out only makes things worse.
2. 2Scale the volume back over the last two or three days. Arriving tired costs you more than arriving with one technique fewer.
3. 3Check your weight with the kimono on, on the scales, a few days beforehand. It is how you avoid discovering the problem on the day itself: at IBJJF tournaments the divisional limit is measured dressed and there is one attempt only.
4. 4Pack your bag the night before, not in the morning. ID, a legal kimono, and everything else.
5. 5Look up where it is being held and at what time, allowing for the fact that published schedules almost always slip.

What actually happens on the day

You wait for hours, you warm up, your name is called, and you are on the mat. The first thirty seconds go by without you noticing: it is normal, and it is the reason almost everybody remembers their first competition badly. Then the body starts doing the things it knows how to do again.

You can lose in fifty seconds. It happens to a great many people, it does not mean you were not ready, and it is not wasted time: it is the one lesson training cannot give you. How the day works, hour by hour, is here: How a BJJ competition works.

A mistake worth avoiding

Entering the Open Class as well, “while I'm here”, without having thought about it. At IBJJF tournaments you enter on site after the medal ceremony, and it is a choice to be made with a clear head: after three matches, against opponents who can weigh twenty kilos more than you, it is a different day from the one you had planned.