Leadership and Life Lessons in Martial Arts

I decided in my mid-forties to start learning martial arts. For years I was interested in training in a combat sport, so I started practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) and then added judo. I recently started training again after suffering a serious injury (more on that later), and I thought it a good time to write about some of the lessons I have learned from BJJ and judo, and how they apply to leadership and life in general.

You can get Good at Anything if You Keep Showing Up

Want to get good at jiu-jitsu? Keep showing up. BJJ is very complicated, and it takes years of study to get good at it. Judo is the same way. You learn throws only to realize in live rounds you cannot hit that throw in competition. Instead, you have to look for set-ups and angles that allow you to hit a variation of that throw. This means you need to keep showing up.

Each time you show up – in leadership or life, you learn a little more. It might not seem like much – the proverbial drop in the ocean, but over time that learning builds and pays off. Always show up because no other way exists to get better.

Turn and Face Your Opponent

A cardinal rule in BJJ is to never give up your back. Having someone on your back is one of the two worst positions to be in. (The other is full mount where your opponent is basically sitting on you.) From the back your opponent can apply a number of strangles and can transition to a host of other submissions. It is a very dominant position for your opponent. When fighting someone it is natural to turn away from them. You are protecting your face and vital organs of your chest while also maneuvering to create more space between you and your opponent. The moment you turn away, however, is the moment any semi-skilled BJJ player will take your back. In fact, in certain escapes you need to turn toward your opponent, not away. This is one of the toughest things to learn when you first start BJJ, and it is a great lesson for leadership and life: do not turn away; always face your opponent.

How many problems in life get better when we ignore them? None. How many get worse? Many of them. And none of them go away. We need to turn towards and face our problems in order to solve issues and get better. Turning away from problems only makes them worse, and as a problem becomes bigger it becomes more dominant in our lives.

Become Comfortable in Uncomfortable Situations

Since starting my martial arts journey, I have found myself in situations I never thought I would: laying underneath large, sweaty people; being picked up and thrown by people larger and smaller than me. I had to learn to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations before I could learn and grow. I had to learn the difference between being uncomfortable and being in a position where I could get hurt. You will hear experienced players say, “Never tap to pressure.” When your opponent is applying pressure to your upper body – leaning in with all their weight – it is very uncomfortable and you want to tap, but because you are not at risk of injury you should not. Instead, you need to learn to control your mind and your emotions and work the escapes you know.

Only when we have uncomfortable experiences can we grow. Leaving our comfort zones – you know, becoming uncomfortable – is where we learn about ourselves and about others and where we gain the knowledge needed to thrive in those uncomfortable situations. As leaders we will often find ourselves in uncomfortable situations where pressure is being applied. Do not tap! Instead, control your mind and emotions and remember your values and act accordingly.

Apply Pressure in the Right Spots

Sometimes for a hold to work properly, to give it that extra oomph, you need to apply pressure. You need to lean in to your opponent, rest all your body weight on them, get them off balance, make them uncomfortable.

Sometimes as leaders we need to apply pressure as well. This does not mean to be nasty or the stereotypical jerk boss. But when used in the right situations and at the right times, applying pressure can help us and the organization succeed.

Know When to Tap

The flip side of being comfortable in uncomfortable situations is tapping early and tapping often. For those who do not know, tapping – either your opponent or the mat – is a sign you submit and the match is over. My first instructor told a story of when he was starting out and his opponent had him a rear naked choke. He decided he was not going to tap even though all of his escapes had failed, and because of that he tore something inside his throat, which made eating, drinking, and general daily living tough for a few weeks. His advice was to tap early and often. You do not get bonus points for hanging out in a submission hold longer. You just risk serious injury. This might seem contradictory to my last point, but it is actually complementary. In order to succeed at both of these principles, you need to know when the position you are in is difficult or dangerous. You can tough out difficult. You need to tap out to dangerous.

As leaders, you need to become very astute at telling the difference between an uncomfortable situation and a dangerous one. Are you living out your values and helping the organization to achieve its vision and mission? Or are you risking your organization’s health and the trust others have in your leadership? If it is the later or if you are not sure, then tap out, reassess, and come back for another roll with a new game plan.

The Best Escape is to Not be That Situation

I once asked an instructor about the best escape from a choke. He said, “Do not get choked.” Escapes are needed when you put yourself in a bad situation. But the best escape is to not put yourself in a bad situation to begin with. Be smart. Be cautious. Move quickly not recklessly.

Make good decisions and you will not find yourself in bad situations. And when you are not in a bad situation, you have no need to escape.

You can be Friends with Your Opponent

I have made some good friends in BJJ and judo. Many of these men and women I would not have met outside of martial arts, and I am grateful for that. We spend several nights a week choking each other, trying to break each other’s arms, and throwing each other hard on the mat. Afterward, we laugh and joke and talk about our weekend plans.

In leadership and in life we can be friends with our opponents. Winning and losing does not mean destroying or being destroyed. Disagreement is a part of life, and it can be healthy. Too often today we see any disagreement as “violence,” and the person with whom we disagree as a “thing” to be “smashed.” But disagreements do not have to be that way. We can both have our say and move on. Today’s opponent can become tomorrow’s ally.

Always be Balanced

The Gracie family invented Brazilian jiu-jitsu. They learned Japanese jiu-jitsu from Mitsuyo Maeda, and evolved it into a new martial art. They are the most famous fighting family in the world with the grandsons and great grandsons of the original four brothers - Carlos, Oswaldo, Gast?o Jr., and Hélio – carrying on the family tradition. Their insignia is a triangle. Why? Because in BJJ when you have at least three points of contact with the mat you are far less likely to get swept onto your back. But with only two points of contact – standing for instance – you are probably going to get swept.

Be balanced and always in contact with your values. This will help keep you upright and strong when the fight rages.

Face Your Fear

Judo is an amazing sport, and I wished I had started playing as a kid. But judo is also scary. Judo is based on a series of throws and takedowns that can result in your opponent flipping you head over heels. Literally. You need to rely on your training and break falls, and you also just need to get thrown a lot. Many a night I was nervous about getting thrown the first time, but by the end of the night it was no big deal.

In life and leadership, we often need to go toward the thing that scares us. In doing so, we can experience it and realize it is not as bad as we thought. Remember, the goal is to become more courageous, not less afraid.

Getting Injured and Coming Back

In practicing martial arts and combat sports, the chance exists you will get hurt. I am usually sore, something on me almost always aches, and my knuckles and fingers will never be the same. But serious injury is also a possibility. I know. During live rounds in judo class, I dislocated and broke all three bones in my ankle, requiring surgery. It took me four months before I was healed enough to come back to class, which was just two weeks ago as of the writing of this article. I am limited in class. I sometimes get frustrated, but know I have to be patient. Doing too much, too soon can result in further injury. I also have to clear the mental hurdle of trying not get hurt.

My injury was a terrible experience, but it taught me a few valuable lessons. It taught me greater humility. Not being able to move around like I wanted, to rely on others for rides, and going up and down the stairs in townhouse sitting down all taught me humility. The injury also taught me patience. I learned I cannot just hop out of a walking boot and start walking like I did before the injury. I went through a process of physical therapy and small steps (pun intended) to get back to walking (mostly) normal again.

But the important thing was coming back and not letting the injury defeat me. In life and leadership, we will be injured, knocked down, and hurt. Do not even try to avoid it because it might actually make the injury worse. The important thing is to get up, dust yourself off, and learn from what happened in order to come back better than before.