Maryland jujitsu students know the biggest BJJ tournament of the year is the IBJJF Worlds tournament. The IBJJF Worlds competition takes place in California the first week of July. Only one person from each division can get the title of IBJJF Worlds champion. Getting first place is an incredible accomplishment. It’s the biggest tournament of the year because it brings out the most competitors who participate in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. There are two types of people who participate in fighting in the Worlds Championships; the casual and the serious.
The casual individuals are the ones who train for less than 3 days/week. Each day they only do one or two practices. Some casual competitors will not train pass the point where they don’t feel comfortable. Casual competitors usually don’t respond to pressure to dedicate more time to training well. It ends up having the opposite effect and they train less. Casual competitors want to be good a Brazilian jiu-jitsu but are not willing to put in the time and effort required to reach that goal. They only decide to train hard when the tournament they want to compete in is less than a month away. Unfortunately when the competition is over with casual students go back to doing BJJ class sporadically. MMA in MD instructors divide their students up into those categories as well.
The serious competitors are the ones who treat Brazilian jiu-jitsu as their occupation. These types of competitors are hard to beat because they are training year round to be the best. They are usually on strength and conditioning routines to help them improve their jiu jitsu. The best fighters in who get MMA training in MD believe in the philosophy of ‘no days off’ because every time you don’t do jiu jitsu your opposition is getting stronger. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial arts where if you don’t use it you will lose it. Taking a day off of training is like taking five days off of training. BJJ competitors that are serious will compete in as many tournaments as possible leading up to the IBJJF Worlds tournament. This serious competitor mindset should be incorporated into your everyday life as well.