Story Time: I’m a loser, baby.

This weekend I competed in my first Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ) tournament at Grappling Industries in Toronto… You see… I started taking BJJ last September at the young age of 35 years old. I work full-time, 12 hour shifts, have a 10 year old daughter, have never competed in my professional sports, but after being lucky enough to achieve most of what I wanted in life I decided to try to do the impossible and take on the world’s hardest martial art… in December I decided that I would put my neck (literally) on the line and compete against real athletes. I think the next slide will summarize how it went quite nicely.

I have been training about 10-14 hours a week for this competition, lost about 10lbs to hit the 170lbs mark, and signed up in two divisions. Gi (traditional Kimono style) and No Gi (as above). That meant for this particular competition I would be scheduled for 8 fights. 4 in the morning and 4 more in the evening. On the day of the event one person pulled out last minute so I had three fights and got the ever-loving crap beaten out of me. Badly. I lost two matches and sat in the hallway gasping, seeing double, in complete shame. I considered not returning to the floor for the third fight but my coach and team encouraged me to get back out there:

“You only lose when you quit.”

so I got back out there.. and got destroyed even worse than before.

It is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I went home for some food and took a nap and when I got up I looked in the mirror at my bruised face and had my hardest fight of the day, deciding whether or not to go back for the last four matches. Two of my competitors would be the same from the morning and two others who were coming in fresh.

I don’t know whether it was madness or masochism, but I messaged my coach to tell him I was on the way. I was coming back to get my ass kicked again and would be god damn grateful for the experience.

I arrived to find out that one of the competitors from the morning had decided not to return, which meant an automatic win for me. Then I had my first match and once again, got absolutely destroyed. Thankfully, I had already prepared myself for this eventuality… but then during the next fight the craziest thing happened. I won. With one of the competitors quitting, and that victory, I found myself at the end of the day standing on the podium.

Plot twist: that’s me on the right. The one in utter disbelief. It may not be a gold medal, Imgur… but god damn it feels like it.

I guess the moral of the story is “You only lose when you quit”

Whatever your thing is, however bad you feel beaten down, please keep going.

Most Viral Edit: The irony of this post going most viral with, at the time, 80 likes… is not lost on me. Thank you, everyone!