Winning at Any Cost

There’s a version of competitive drive that serves you well on the mat. It keeps you engaged, pushes you to close gaps in your game, makes you take training seriously.

Then there’s the version that works against you.

You’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve felt it. The need to win every round, regardless of the training value of winning. The inability to tap cleanly and move on. The refusal to drill anything that exposes a weakness. The spazzy frantic energy that comes from someone who can’t tolerate being controlled.

This version of “winning” is expensive. It injures training partners. It prevents you from learning the things you most need to learn, because you only do things you’re already good at. It builds a narrow, brittle game that collapses the moment someone finds the edge of it.

More fundamentally, it confuses the practice for the performance. In training, being submitted is data. It tells you something about where your game needs work. If you refuse to be submitted, you refuse to learn.

The best training partners I’ve had over the years have all shared one quality: they were genuinely fine with tapping. They tapped clean, reset, and got back to work. No drama. No explaining. No revenge rolling.

The tap is the lesson. Take it.

— Vince

Vince Choo

BJJ 3rd-Degree Black Belt · 5th Dan Karate · Coaching since 1993 · VCBJJ Bangsar, KL