For Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu enthusiasts, BJJ is a fun and enjoyable activity. It is an excellent physical activity that helps us improve our shape and develop our minds. Think about countless lessons you learned while rolling on the mats with your friends. On top of that, jiu-jitsu is incredibly fun, and not many things get you as excited as figuring out a new technique and seeing it work in sparring. Nonetheless, with all this mentioned, many people quit jiu-jitsu after some time, and BJJ’s drop rates are very high. There can be many reasons for this, such as family, job, injury, or something else, but two reasons stand out the most.

Ryron Gracie knows the common reasons why people quit Jiu-Jitsu and offers insights into how to avoid falling into these traps.

For Ryron Gracie, most people quit because of the following reason:

“People begin to compare themselves, maybe how fast when they first started, they started going really, really fast and they kind of plateaued, instead of just paying attention to their own journey. Yourself to others, in a state, almost a comparison is the thief of joy basically. You start comparing to others and new, you, their house is bigger than mine, I don’t like my house anymore. That’s not how it works. Imagine if you compared, you know, your partner, your girlfriend, your wife to others all the time, you never… it’s always… it’s never anything, you can’t do that. You appreciate what you have, and you know that it’s, if you don’t want to get caught in that, we’re always comparing to others, that’s huge.

And we start to compare, I guess that comparison comes based off of your expectations, right? Because that person’s been training for only a year and a half, you’ve been training for two and a half years, but yet you couldn’t hold them down, or they were able to hold you down. So now you think that they have less experience, but yet they’re outperforming you. So then when you tell yourself, I’m not that good, or I can’t do this, or this isn’t for me, so you start disqualifying yourself because… and somebody could be, someone could pass you that has nothing, spirit, that’s very normal, it’s okay, but don’t worry about where they are, worry about where you are. Worry about where you started, worry about why you started, and where you are now.

And this is gonna happen, especially your 39 years old, 44 years old, this person’s 24 years old and they’ve been training for half the amount of time, but they just learn faster for whatever reason, they just, they have that youth. So you know, I guess it has to stay fun. It’s when it stops being fun, why are you gonna do it? And it stops being fun when you compare yourself, when you expect this and you get this from yourself in terms of your performance. So keep it fun, and you’ll do it longer.”