Choosing Defeat
There is no feeling like beating Goliath. But you need to get smashed by Goliath on the way.
*Record Scratch*
*Freeze Frame*
Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation.
Most combat sports are either non-competitive (krav maga, aikido) or geared towards kids (wrestling) and advanced adults only (MMA, boxing) or they are divided by skill level as signified by belt color or years experience (BJJ).
Not judo. There are no skill categories when you compete. And you are expected to compete. There are age and weight divisons for kids, after 18 there are only weight divisions.1
It’s a feature, not a bug.
The photo above is from just one of several instances where I — a lanky intermediate beginner with a zealous coach — got to share a mat with a nationally ranked competitor. In this instance I was on the you-guys-can-try-too-if-you-want team at a friendly team bout in preparation for the national judo leauge. Every person I stepped up on the mat with had a decade or more of headstart on me, plus the proper strength and conditioning for a semi-pro athelete.
Now, I’ve played team sports before and sometimes you go up against a team you know is better, the one that always beats you. It’s demoralizing, but in a different way from one-on-one martial arts. It doesn’t have that singular David and Goliath moment: walking up to the competition area; standing in front of the giant with nothing but a secret weapon and a prayer; except the secret weapon is a shitty uchi mata and the prayer is mostly that you won’t leave on a stretcher. You know the outcome already but you’re about to find out how much it will cost you.
And yet — we do it. It isn’t rare. Us beginners. White belts. The new guy at the gym in his first sparring session. They are not those Rocky moments of being the scrappy underdog where no one believes in you except you but your hard work and dedication is about to pay off. The facts are straightforward: you are worse than hem, but it’s your duty to still give it all you got and get beaten.
You get beaten because it’s part of what you signed up for. It’s part of the curriculum. Pain and defeat and fear and exhaustion and the panic are known parts of the game if you join a martial art with hard sparring.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
You get to go compete or sparr against someone who will make you look bad and make it look easy while you flail all your best weapons to no avail. And it will make you better.
You will not be berated for it — quite the opposite. You go in the arena and the only spectators are those also in the arena (plus their friends and family). That makes for an incredibly healthy grind culture. For those of us who did not grow up in the testosterone-fueled circles of friends daring friend to try stupid shit that might get you hurt — an arena which has been diminishing for decades as violence and danger have been slowly crowded out — this is often the first encounter with that mindset.
I’ve always found sparring and competing out of my league very freeing. Scary, yes. The first time a black belt (or equivalent) ask you to sparr with them it’s a weird rush of anxiety. But the beauty of it is that you’re not supposed to succeed. You’re only supposed to fail and get to know failure. Learn who to fail (fall) safely. Learn that it’s okay to suck. Learn to get up and go again. You are judged not on your skill but your perseverance and attitude.
It’s like a Disney montage except the initial part where you suck lasts years or decades but the culture around you keeps pointing to the end of the montage, the top of the ladder, and encouraging you to hit and miss until you start missing less often.
There’s a quote in Fight Club:
After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down. You could deal with anything.
This is only true to an extent. The extent is that with which you push yourself. You get used to everything. I often hear some version of this from people beginning training because their nervous system is firing like crazy when showing up to training at all. Without fail, after the first attempt at martial arts people either crash or act like a 10-year old after 2 espressos. Both reactions reek of adrenaline hangover. After a little while you get used to it and you need hard sparring to give you that kick instead. Then competitions, harder sparring rounds, tough conditioning, what have you. The effect always wears off eventually.
But you do pick up a lesson along the way: even if it’s hard you know that you can try. You’ll have harder challenges in your life than being tossed around like a ragdoll by a man twice your size — illness, depression, economic hardships, relationship troubles. But when those challenges come you can recognize that feeling: you’re about to step up against something uncertain and hard with a high likelyhood of pain, perhaps failure. But you know how to just step up and give it your best anyway.2
One day it might pay off. You might be a green belt giving it all you got and get some good throws in on some black belts. Literally or metaphorically.
I am simplifying. There are sometimes tournaments targetting “beginners”. And sometimes there are Master’s classes that separate those above 30, 40, 50 etc from the young group — if they are so lucky and enough fighters show up.
Judo was conceived as a moral and educational system, not just a martial art, and one of the main benefits was exactly this ability to face tough challenges. Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo and by extension most modern martial arts culture, considered this vital training for youth more than 100 years ago. Around the same time judo was being created the book Bushido: The Soul of Japan was released. It was a sort of mediatation on the national soul in a time of great cultural revolution in Japan. One of it’s core messages is the seven virtues. The relevant one here “courage” (勇気, yūki). The idea of martial training as a practice for a good and virtous life was present from the beginning of the modern Asian martial arts wave, which started with judo.