please share your experiences here (white belts all the way up to black):

1. Was it as you expected?
2. Any surprises?
3. How long did you have to wait for your match?
4. Any concerns about injury?
5. What was your opponent like? Better? Worse?

youcallmebruce wrote:
please share your experiences here (white belts all the way up to black):

1. Was it as you expected?
2. Any surprises?
3. How long did you have to wait for your match?
4. Any concerns about injury?
5. What was your opponent like? Better? Worse?

1) Not really, i always thought i would do really poorly.
2) Winning, before training at serra's i never really did well at any real team sport. However, at tourneys there will always be guys from the gym there to support you, even if you never met them and they just see that your apart of the team, which is a huge help. The support didnt come as a surprise though.
3) Its luck really. for the most part white belts compete last but ive seen many teammates waiting on the sidelines for extended periods of time.
4) Always, it comes with the sport. But i personally never got seriously injured during competition.
5) I only ever competed when i was a white belt but ill share some experiences with you. Some of my competitors were really crazy and hoping around, it took a while to slow the match down to a reasonable pace. I fought the same all-american wrestler twice, he whooped my ass...twice. Some people cut too much weight and gas. Some guys are big, some guys are tall. You get all walks of BJJ practitioner so you just have to train hard, do your best, and take every match seriously and with the confidence that you train with a great group of people.

1. It wasn't much different than I expected. The rush of everything going on is really what got me. It took me a couple of silly mistakes in my first tournament to really get the hang of how to handle the energy and the environment.

2. The biggest surprise to me had to be how unorganized some of these tournaments really are which brings me to the next question.

3. Some of these tournaments just throw a random time at you. Grappler's Quest had me get there at 9am for the weigh in. I didn't get on the mat for another 6 hours. There was absolute cluelessness when I looked for answers. It was finger pointing after finger pointing. Nobody that worked there could give me an answer of when I was going to be out there. Turns out they sprung it on me 5 minutes before my match started. I wasn't very happy about that. But than NAGA was the complete opposite. They say 11:30, you better have your ass out there at 11:30 because you're going.

4. There was never a concern for injury when I was out there. I never had to face that insane guy trying to kill everyone. All of my opponents seemed to have a good head on their shoulders when it came to submissions. The only thing you need to be aware of is that some guys will asphyxiate themselves before tapping out. So just be ready for that.

5. The opponents I've faced have all had some skill except for one kid (He wasn't exactly the pride of Tiger Schulman's). It's definitely a wild experience going up against someone you know absolutely nothing about. You don't know what he can do, what his game is; if he's big on submissions, a pure point scorer. You just try and go out there and be the aggressor right away and set the tone. For the most part though; the majority of my opponents have been around my skill level, but I have been the one to come out on top, so something's got to be said for that