It goes without saying that Gordon Ryan had to compete a lot in order to become as successful in Jiu-Jitsu as he is today…
But not a lot of people actually understand the scope of competition he underwent in his “come-up” days.
He thought back to those days in a recent social media post, surprising many with the number of matches he competed in from white to black belt:
Coming up from white to black belt, I basically competed every weekend, or at least 3x a month.
I would compete in both gi and no gi divisions, weight and absolute, teens and adults divisions all on the same day.
The most matches I’ve had in a single day is 19.If I were to guess, I probably have around 1500 matches in total, and probably somewhere around 15-20 losses, which is insane to think about.
Ryan then went on to share important advice with all BJJ practitioners who want to achieve greatness:
One of the biggest things you can do as a young competitor is compete, compete, compete.
The last thing you want to do is have to learn how to compete when you’re already facing the best in the world.Normalize competing so that when you make the big leagues, all you need to worry about is techniques and tactics.
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