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Are you superstitious? How does it affect your grappling?

Are you superstitious? How does it affect your grappling?

A little while back before the infamous Aldo v McGregor match there was no octagon staredown during promotional duties. Apparently Aldo is superstitious and he wouldn’t step into the octagon except to fight. A lot of help that was…

This is just one in a long line of superstitions tied to martial arts and we’ll focus more specifically on jiu-jitsu. Superstition is usually defined as an irrational belief that an object action or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.

Many athletes develop a ritual before a fight, something coaches even encourage as it may help an individual calm down and focus. This isn’t a superstition you see – human beings are naturally inclined to act in patterns. Patterns reduce anxiety. Would you tie your belt a new way for the first time on competition day?

Just think about the way you choose a spot on tatami to work with your partner. Do you see a pattern? Are you usually in the same part of the room? What is your preference?

Patterns bring comfort while being inclined to touch the tatami a certain number of times beforehand might be going too far and venturing out to the OCD side of things. But more importantly, the latter is tied to irrational thinking.

Biggest basketball legend – Michael Jordan famously wore his University of North Carolina shorts underneath his actual Bulls shorts for Every basketball game. While this seems a tad odd, not to mention irrational, it’s not exactly harmful unlike say never washing your belt.

Many martial artists hear stories of white belts discoloring after years of wear and tear. Allegedly by assessing the belt -the experience could be distinguished. This makes for a nice tale but what it doesn’t say is that this is a really great way to rub fecal matter all over your sparring partner’s face. Even worse, whipping someone with a dirty belt can have serious implications for that person’s health as you would be bringing bacteria in direct contact with cracked skin.

 

superstitious

 

At some point during our bjj journey we hear things like “Washing your belt washes your knowledge away”. If it were true people would be selling dirty belts all over the internet (instead they just sell the regular ones, stripes optional. I won’t transcribe the science of this but if you click here you can read what an actual microbiologist said about this topic.

So why do we fall for this trap and let ourself fall for the illusion of control stemming from superstitious behavior? Well according to some studies (Vyse, 1997) superstition develops from circumstances perceived as unpredictability.

Are they a sign of weakness?

Considering that attributing success or failure to outside circumstances means transferring responsibility outside of yourself – as such it should be a sign of weakness. When you start believing in circumstances you leave room for coincidences, “destiny” and ultimately failure. This means that in your mind it’s no longer crucial to work as much because something else will decide anyway (Nowicki and Strickland, 1971).

But Vyse counters this by saying that sometimes creation of false certainty serves better than no certainty at all as his research would suggest. Some life situations are very important and there’s no such thing as complete preparation for them so in those cases they would provide you with a sense that you’ve done yet another thing to secure the desired outcome.

 

A Lucky GI

There are also some conditioned superstitions that may be formed and used on a conscious level (Kramer and Block 2008). These superstitions will be born from awareness of link of, say, wearing a certain gi competing and success. There’s also likelihood you would keep choosing these company products as a conscious strategy to control future events. Marketing feasts on this type of phenomenon.

In the end…

Science is unambiguous: the stronger our faith in our abilities is the more likely we are to adopt some form of ritualistic or superstitious behavior to gain control over the uncontrollable. While rituals and familiar methods of preparation certainly have their benefits one should try hard to redirect from useless superstitions that might divert attention from actual preparations as well as hazardous behavior such as not washing or replacing hazardous gear.

Building confidence has many facets and in the world of martial arts, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu specifically, one can never be too prepared. But we should still be self-aware and spot the line before going too far and letting random things distract us from what really counts.