Does competing help you progress...

[bjhcpa]

In my opinion it has to.

I am a white belt, been training for about a year. I have done 1 tournament, (won a match, lost a match). I am on the list to test for blue belt next week. I have decided not to test so that i can compete some more over the next 2 months as a white belt. I am finally at a level where i feel 1/2 way comfortable enough to enter, but i definetly could not enter as a blue.

While i want to test with all the guys i have been training with, i think the chance to get some tournament experience is invaluable, regardless of what your long-term goal is in BJJ.

Am i wrong not to test. My instructor is cool with it and understands. Am i right that competing can greatly help advance your game. Some of the guys are saying, just test and wait another year to compete. I dont see why i shouldnt take the opportunity to get some experience in now. To me waiting a few months to be a blue belt is well worth the experience of entering 3 or 4 tournaments.

By the way, i am in no way sandbagging, im not that good, just finally at a level where i feel confident enough to give it a shot and gain some experience.

[patusai]

IMHO, fighting at the white belt level this time may afford you a few more wins...perhaps. Experience at the white belt level after you are probably past that level probably does nothing for you except to let you know that you are a blue belt potentially and can fight better with the white belts. How you will feel if you go to the tourny and lose all of your matches? However! talk with your instructor before you do anyting. Talk it over with him/her. They can counsel you to take the right path

[elbows_and_knees]

IMHO, fighting at the white belt level this time may afford you a few more wins...perhaps. Experience at the white belt level after you are probably past that level probably does nothing for you except to let you know that you are a blue belt potentially and can fight better with the white belts. How you will feel if you go to the tourny and lose all of your matches? However! talk with your instructor before you do anyting. Talk it over with him/her. They can counsel you to take the right path

nah, at this level, that experience is invaluable to him. You have boxers that fight 50 + amateur fights before turning pro. Then, once they turn pro, they fight low level guys that they can easily beat. Why? it's a transition period. Same thing with bjj. it's not about winning per se, it's about transitioning to another level. the experience he gets by competing at white belt will help him to stay relaxed when he's competing against the sharks at blue belt level. Not only that, but he's now learning to compete within the ruleset and seeing how tournaments play out, how long they last, what to eat, how to train, etc. all of this will be invaluable to him when he moves up.

to answer the topic question, competing helps you progress immensely. if nothing than for the fact that it gives you the drive to train harder. you HAVE to be at a different level to be competitive. even higher if you want to consistently win.

[jaymac]

If your instructor feels you are ready to test and be a blue belt, you should test. Entering the tournament at your level will only test you further. There will always be tournaments. You are essentially saying you are willing to watch your classmates rank ahead of you so you can represent white belt well at a tournament. Tournaments are alot of fun, a great learning experience, and supposed to be challenging.

[bjhcpa]

i think for the most part, the advice i am getting from the upper belts is the same as elbows and knees.

Jay,

Im not avoiding a belt test so that i can go "easily" compete at the white belt level. Like i said, i have very little experience competing and have never wrestled or anything like that. Yes i am really dissappointed not to be testing with the group i have been training with, but like a few higher belts have said, so I get my blue 3 or 4 months after the rest of my class, yet if i enter 3 tournaments over that time i will likely have 10+ matches under my belt. With how long everyone stays a blue belt, in 3 months basically my fellow training partners and I are all on the same level again, only I have the invaluable expereince of having competed a few times. Expereince i wouldnt feel comfortable trying to get right now as a blue belt.

[elbows_and_knees]

definitely. you're doing the right thing.

[BJJ is 1]

Stay at white get some more experiance thats what I would do

[innocui]

I train in GKR karate, and we have divisions of grouped grades, e.g. 3rd-1st kyu.

I think it would be better to test first, then go to the tounaments as a blue belt. You need to get experience of the higher divisions, and the standard that you should be aiming for at blue belt. The people winning the tournaments will be the best in the grade band, so they give a good indication as to a "good" blue belt.

Before i started going to tournaments, my instructor told me that i could never really know how good a black tip i was until i fought the best black tips in the country. In my first tournament i won silver in kata, qualifing for the uk championships, where i came 4th

[Patrick]

Hello,

I removed a post from this thread in error. It is quoted below. I apologize for the confusion. Thanks.

I train in GKR karate, and we have divisions of grouped grades, e.g. 3rd-1st kyu.

I think it would be better to test first, then go to the tounaments as a blue belt. You need to get experience of the higher divisions, and the standard that you should be aiming for at blue belt. The people winning the tournaments will be the best in the grade band, so they give a good indication as to a "good" blue belt.

Before i started going to tournaments, my instructor told me that i could never really know how good a black tip i was until i fought the best black tips in the country. In my first tournament i won silver in kata, qualifing for the uk championships, where i came 4th

you think this way because you don't train bjj. if he tests now and competes, he will be wasting his money competing, and he won't be getting as much experience as he can. Why? because the blue belts will kill him. he needs more experience before he's ready for them, but grappling white belts won't get him that experience.

This is how bjj is different from karate and other traditional styles. In karate, if you have fulfilled all of the requirements for the next level, you can test; that doesn't mean you are good, it only means you know enough for the next level. With bjj, you are not ready for your next rank until you can keep up with all of the guys in the belt higher than you and beat them at least some of the time. This is what keeps them competitive and establish integrity within the style. In kung fu, when I was a yellow, I had beaten green, blue and red sashes in my class. matter of factly, when I was testing for green sash, I broke the nose of one of red sashes with a hook kick. In bjj, this will NOT happen. you will NEVER see a white belt beat a purple belt or above. and for several months, you won't see them beat a blue belt either.

That is the nature of sport arts. competition makes them that way. Why don't you see journeyman boxers with only 2 fights fighting champions with 20 + fights? because it's a no contest. experience is a powerful thing. you fight other journeyman boxers and work your way up the ranks.

[Jersey Devil]

Listen to those who are telling to you compete- the most important experience you're going to get is going to be at the white and blue belt levels.

Competing is a very difficult thing to do, as a result many people try to write it off as not being important.

If you're trying to advance just for BJJ's sake, tournaments do a great job of showing you the holes in you game. You get to compete against someone who doesnt know your game, and likewise you dont know his. After the tournament, you may be surprised at what you find out about yourself- maybe you realized your armbar isnt what you thought it was, or maybe your need to work on your cross side escapes.

If self defense is your cup of tea, all the jitters and nerves you feel in a tournament are going to happen when you get involved in a real life altercation. The more familiar you are with it, the easier it will be.

That being said, good luck in your tournament.