There are a handful of skills and life lessons that we can take off the mat, and I fully believe that learning something like Jiu Jitsu can help in learning “grace under pressure”.

I apologize if I’ve mentioned this before, but much too often we see people lose their cool when they are put in stressful situations- and there is lot of pressure from a lot of external forces: pressure from your boss at work, pressure at home from a significant other or parent, pressure from the whole clusterduck that is highschool, college or grad school, or pressure even from the onward march of time and you STILL haven’t developed a super power (I don’t know about you, but that one definitely keeps me up at night), just toe name a few.

Chalk it up to one of those fun, complementary skills that are developed during jiu jitsu- keeping your cool in bad situations is one of those essential skills you need to learn in order to advance. You’re stuck in mount? Flailing around most certainly isn’t going to help- you’re just putting yourself MORE at risk of being submitted. So what do you do? You try to keep your cool and you start to look for ways to get out of the situation. In that case the pressure is both mental and physical- pressure of not wanting to lose, on top of the pressure of someone literally sitting on top of you.

And much like in those situations on the mat, the better you are able to maintain your wits about you, the more likely you are to actually succeed in said stressful situation.

So, long story short, keep the cool that you have been honing on the mat in your every day situations, and more likely than not you should come out on top in the end.

That’s my advice for now- have a great day everyone!