Keep Jiu Jitsu Fun

If jiu jitsu has started to feel heavy, this one is for you. We’re chasing a sport we chose, we pay for, and we love, yet a lot of us walk into the academy carrying an invisible pressure to prove we belong. That pressure shows up as tension in every roll, frustration when things don’t work, and a running “scoreboard” in our heads that tracks taps, guard passes, and who we think we should be beating by now.

We talk through how to keep Brazilian jiu jitsu fun without pretending it’s easy. I dig into the mindset shift that happens after the honeymoon phase: when curiosity gets replaced by comparison, and training turns into a performance test. You’ll hear why two people can wear the same belt and still run completely different races, how goals can change over time (competitor or hobbyist), and why progress often looks like staying calm under pressure, breathing instead of panicking, or simply showing up when life is demanding.

Then we get practical: how to build playful, experimental rounds on purpose, how to give yourself small “missions” that redefine success, and how to notice when the fun disappearing is a sign you need recovery, a change in intensity, or a conversation about the training environment. If you want better BJJ training, more motivation, and a healthier relationship with the mats, start here.

Subscribe to Caffeinated Jiu Jitsu, share this with a teammate who’s been feeling burned out, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What would make jiu jitsu fun for you today?

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Transcript

Are You Still Having Fun?

Joe Motes (Host) 0:54

And welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Caffeinated Jiu Jitsu. And I want to start today's episode with a very, very simple question. And that is, are you still having fun with jiu jitsu? Now I know that might sound like a strange question for most of us. After all, this is uh a sport or martial art where we voluntarily let other people, you know, choke us, bend our arms, smash us into the mat, and occasionally make us kind of question why we show up in the first place. Fun may not always be the first word that comes to mind. But most of us started training because there was something about jujitsu that we enjoyed. Maybe it was the challenge, maybe it was the opportunity to learn something new, and maybe you just wanted to get in shape or learn how to defend yourself, maybe even meet new people or find something that could help you manage uh stress happening outside of jujitsu and outside of your academy. Whatever the reason was, there was probably a moment early in your journey when jujitsu grabbed fully your attention. And you learned uh you learned your first escape, you completed your first sweep, you survived a round that you did that you did not think you were going to survive, and maybe you even caught your first submission, and for the rest of the day, you could not stop thinking about it. Everything was new, everything was confusing, but it was also super super fun and exciting. And then and then as time passed, something may have started to change for you. You began paying more attention to who tapped you, you started comparing yourself to people around you. You wondered why someone who started after you was progressing so quickly. Maybe you became frustrated when techniques did not work, disappointed when rounds did not go your way, and increasingly, increasingly concerned about whether you were getting better fast enough. And without realizing it, the activity you started because you enjoyed it became another place in life where you felt like you had to perform, and that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about keeping or how we can keep jujitsu fun and why that matters, and how we can continue challenging ourselves without turning every training session into a test of our value. So, grab your favorite caffeinated beverage or if you're on your way to work, and I hope you enjoy listening. And let's get into it. So,

Remember The Beginner Mindset

Joe Motes (Host) 4:41

if you think back to your first few weeks or even months in your jujitsu journey, you probably did not walk into the academy with a a detailed plan of how you wanted it to go. You you didn't know what you your ideal guard would be, you were not thinking about your competition strategy, your belt timeline or the techniques that would eventually make up your a game, as we call it. You were probably just trying to figure out where to put your hands, and you were learning to move your hips, you were trying to understand why being flat on your back is usually a bad thing or a problem. You were discovering that the person who looked half your size could somehow uh somehow feel like they weighed 400 pounds when they were on top of you, and you did not expect to know anything because you you understood that you were new, and that gave you permission, if you will, to be very curious, and you can make a mistake and laugh about it, you could try a technique and fail completely and still leave the session or the academy excited because you had learned something, a small basic improvement felt significant because you were not yet measuring every session against some larger or broader expectation. But over time, in jujitsu, that can change, and we begin believing that there are certain things we should already know. We tell ourselves that we should be better from certain positions at certain points. We become embarrassed when someone catches us with a technique that we think we should at this time in our journey be able to defend. The escape that once made us proud no longer feels like a victory because we are upset that we got placed in the bad position to begin with, and we stop seeing what we accomplished and start focusing only on what goes wrong. Sometimes keeping jujitsu fun requires us to reconnect with the mindset we had when we first started, and it means allowing ourselves to be curious again, it means remembering that this is an incredible difficult skill and martial art and journey, and that not knowing something is not a person of failure, it's expected. And there was a version of us who at one point was just simply excited to be in the room. That version of you was not worried about being the best person on the mat. You were just happy to be learning, and we should not uh or we should try not to lose that person.

Drop The Mental Scoreboard

Joe Motes (Host) 8:23

I think one of the fastest ways for us to remove the enjoyment from jujitsu is to treat every round like it is the final match of a you know big jujitsu tournament, a world championship or a pans or something like that. And you probably know the feeling I'm talking about. The round begins, and immediately there's this you know bit of tension, and you you you cannot give up a position, you cannot let the other person complete the sweep, you definitely cannot get submitted, and especially if the person is is newer than you are, or uh wears a lower belt, and suddenly there is an imaginary scoreboating in your head. Um, I tap them twice, they passed my guard, I could not submit them. The lower belt almost caught me, and no one else may know that a mental scoreboard like this exists, but you do. It influences every decision you make during the round, and it can cause you to become opposite of everything you want, right? You become stiff and and defensive, and it can make you avoid unfamiliar positions, it can make you rely on the techniques you already know will work instead of experimenting with something new, and it can also change the way you see your training partners. Instead of instead of viewing them as people who are helping you develop, you begin viewing them as people you must defeat. There is absolutely, I think, time for hard rounds. Most academies have things like competition classes, and there's a time to test your conditioning and and and you know, classes like those to sharpen maybe your reactions and learn how your game performs under pressure. Uh preparing for competition should or competition training should be tough, it should be difficult. And some rounds should force you to dig deeper. But every round does not need to carry that kind of weight. And some rounds can be playful, some rounds can be experimental, some rounds can be about attempting the technique from class, even when you know there's a good chance it would fail. This is something that I practice. I try uh, you know, the first few rolling rounds to land the technique of the day. And then also, you know, I like to have fun with my training partners and keep things light and playful and experimental during rounds. Lately, I'm doing a lot of uh lapel work, right? Lapel guards and lapel submissions, and you know, just kind of having fun with it. You know, you can start in a bad position, you can work from your weaker side, you can deliberately move away from your best technique and explore something that you're still trying to learn. That's that's these are ways you can stay curious, and when you stop requiring yourself to win every role in exchange, you create room to grow in your jujitsu, but you also create room to have fun, and I think another point here in this discussion is understanding how comparison will steal experience from you. Comparison,

Comparison Steals Your Experience

Joe Motes (Host) 12:29

I believe, is one of the most common ways we make jujitsu more frustrating than it needs to be. Progress, in my opinion, is highly visible in an academy. You see when someone receives a uh receives a stripe, you see when someone gets promoted, you know who's competing, who's winning medals, and who's uh or who seems to be improving quickly. You also know when someone who started after you suddenly becomes difficult to handle, and that can be mentally discouraging. And you may begin asking why they are progressing faster than you. You may wonder whether you're falling behind, you may even start believing that their success says something maybe negative about your own development. But in my opinion, jujitsu journeys are not equal because people's lives are not equal. One person may be 22 years old, training six days a week, lifting weights, attending open mats, uh, studying uh online instructionals and competing every month. And then another person, like myself, may be in their 40s and working full-time and raising children. They someone may be managing injuries and doing everything possible to make it to class twice a week. And those two people may wear the same belt, but they're not running the same race, right? I think that's important to keep in mind. I'm gonna say it again: you know, two people may wear the same belt, but we, you, are not running the same race. We have different bodies, we have different responsibilities, different athletic backgrounds, and different amounts of time available to dedicate to jujitsu. And when we ignore those differences, right, when we don't think about that, I think that's when comparison becomes really, really unfair. It also causes causes us to overlook the progress that we're we're actually making as an individual practitioner. And maybe you you are not submitting everyone in the room, but you are becoming calmer when someone mounts you. Maybe you are not winning competitions, but you're showing up consistently during a difficult season in your life. Maybe your guard still needs work, but you no longer panic the moment someone starts applying pressure. And I think those things, though they may sound small, I think those things matter a lot. And progress is not always a new belt, it's not always a medal or a highlight real submission. Sometimes progress is just breathing instead of freaking out. Sometimes it's recognizing your mistake a few seconds earlier or right when you you make it. I mean, my mistakes are becoming clear to me the moment I make them now. And it's because I'm able to slow things down and um recognize the positions I'm in better. I think sometimes it's also staying composed and a position that you're used to or that used to overwhelm you. And sometimes progress is simply, and this is this is huge, is simply just continuing to show up and to come back. How many times have we heard that consistency is what true growth is all about in jujitsu? You know, your your teammates' development does not diminish your own. Their promotion does not move you backward, their success is is not that's a word, evidence that you are failing. Your journey belongs to you, and you are allowed to experience it in your own timeline.

Choose Goals That Fit Your Life

Joe Motes (Host) 17:12

And you know, another point I'd like to make is that your goals are allowed to be different, and not everyone who trains jujitsu needs to become a world champion. Not everyone needs to compete. I remember when I really heavily started training, I I got the competition bug. I was like, oh, I'm gonna compete. I'm gonna do this, do that, do that. And I competed a few times and I enjoyed it. But then I realized that I it kind of was adding some pressure to my life that I didn't necessarily need, and that uh it was it was robbing a little bit of the fun out of it. So I identify, I guess you could say, here in jujitsu as as more of a hobbyist than a competitor. But realizing that, you know, I started at 42, that I'm probably not going to be any type of world champion, and being real about why I started jujitsu um helped me define my goals better. You know, not everyone needs to train every day, watch hours or watch hours of instructional content and follow some kind of specialized strength plan and organize their entire life around improving as quickly as possible. And I used to be like that. Jiu Jitsu used to dominate my my life. I drank a large portion of the Kool-Aid. Now, jujitsu is important, and it is a a steady occurrence and block in my life. Um, but it's more focused on on exactly what the podcast is about, and that's about the people and the connections and the life-changing aspects of jujitsu than any than my personal performance in it and you know meeting other people's expectations. I think some people want to pursue jujitsu at kind of the highest levels they possibly can, and there's nothing wrong with that. If if competition motivates you and you enjoy the process, go after it. Do it. We need that. We need we need some stuff to watch on YouTube and flow grapple and um all of this stuff. We need world champions to look up to and and you know just be there and represent the sport, but that is not the only valid way to participate in jujitsu. Some people train because they enjoy the community, some people train because it gives them a healthy outlet, some train because it is the only part of the day when their mind becomes completely quiet. Some people simply enjoy solving problems with their friends while I don't know, everyone else is wearing expensive pajamas, right? I I think that is enough. And there can be a strange pressure in jujitsu to constantly demonstrate how committed you are. How many times did you train this week? Are you competing? Are you doing street training? Are you studying outside of class? Are you training while you while traveling? There's also another level of commitment available, but you do not have to pursue every level. You're allowed to train twice a week, you're allowed to not compete or skip a competition if you compete regularly. You're allowed to rest your body. Um, your body needs it. You're allowed to enjoy jujitsu without turning it into another job. And loving something does not mean you have to maximize it. You can you can care about your development while also recognizing that jujitsu is one part of your life. Your relationship with the sport does not need to look like everyone else's to be meaningful.

Laugh More And Train Lighter

Joe Motes (Host) 21:59

And You know, another thing is is learn to laugh at yourself. Some of my favorite jujitsu moments have nothing to do with winning around or hitting a perfect a perfect uh technique. They are the strange scrambles where neither person knows exactly what's happening, and and that still happens now, even at Bluebelt, and they are the moments when you attempt something that looks smooth in your head, only to discover immediately that that was a terrible idea. They are the situations where you and your training partner end up tangled in some ridiculous position. You kind of look at each other and you you start to laugh like, what are we doing? And those moments are part of what makes training, in my opinion, my opinion, super enjoyable. You know, I think a healthy training room should should have intensity, but it should also have somewhat of a personality, right? People should be able to work hard without feeling as if every mistake will be judged. I recently had a guest on uh Dr. Colin Smith, and uh he trains, I believe it's up in Maryland, and they have the horde that trains just like their morning class. And you know, jujitsu there, they keep it fun. They there is no way you can go to their Instagram page or go probably train with them and not see personality, a fun, welcoming type environment. You know, there should be there should be room to laugh, there should be room to ask questions, there should be room to try something new and to get it completely wrong. There should be room to be a beginner, and sometimes we become so focused, so focused on taking jujitsu seriously that we begin taking ourselves individually way too serious. And every mistake feels embarrassing, every submission feels personal, and every difficult round will follow us home. But making mistakes is the entire point of training, and the academy, your school, is the place where things are supposed to go wrong. It's where you discover your frame is weak, your elbow is exposed, your base is unstable, or your brilliant new technique only works when the other person doesn't resist or put up a fight. You know, you can care deeply about improving without treating every mistake like it's some type of internal end-all character flaw. And you can train hard and still smile, you can be competitive and still laugh when something ridiculous happens, and you can take jujitsu seriously without becoming miserable about jujitsu.

Make Curiosity Your Training Plan

Joe Motes (Host) 25:33

So I think the best thing for us to do, if if if this is you listening and you've lost some of your your love or your or the fun of jujitsu is is bring curiosity back into your training, right? Is you know make jujitsu enjoyable again. You start experimenting. As we become more experienced, we often, I think, develop a game that feels comfortable. We find a guard we like, a pass we trust, and a few submissions that work consistently. And that is an important part of development. You need reliable techniques, but sometimes we begin protecting those techniques so much that the training becomes repetitive. And I recently found myself doing this, right? A lot of half guard, a lot of close guard. I almost always pull guard. Now I've started working on takedowns a lot more this year. I've uh still doing uh, you know, close guard, half guard stuff, but now working more on sweeps and getting into more dominant positions. So, you know, I had to take some of this advice myself and and get some of the fun and add the curiosity back to my jujitsu. You know, I think we arrive, we arrive at class, we play the same positions, attempt the same attacks, and evaluate ourselves based on the same results. And eventually every round starts to feel familiar and maybe a little boring. And curiosity can absolutely change that. You know, try playing a pris a position you you would normally normally uh avoid. Start maybe underneath side control instead of beginning from your strongest guard, work from your weaker side, ask a teammate to show you the technique they keep catching you in. Um, and hopefully they don't guard it like Coca-Cola's recipe. Um, that's a whole nother topic. But give yourself a small mission for the session that has nothing to do with winning. Maybe your goal is to recover your guard three times. Maybe you you want you want to attempt to move from um maybe you want to attempt the move from class in every round, right? The technique that you learn. Maybe you want to remain calm and control your breathing whenever you are placed into a difficult position. Your mission could be as simple as trying something you have never attempted before. And when you train this way, your definition of success changes. You no longer need to dominate the entire round. You can leave satisfied because you created one opportunity, you recognize one mistake, or you reached the position you were you were trying to find. And training becomes more of a laboratory instead of a courtroom. You are no longer trying to prove that you are good at jujitsu, you are exploring how jujitsu works, and that is where a lot, in my opinion, of the fun in jujitsu lives, right?

When Fun Disappears, Adjust

Joe Motes (Host) 29:13

I think uh we need to pay attention when the fun disappears. I think there'll be days when training's not fun, and that's normal. Uh you may be tired, your body may hurt, and you may have a frustrating round or spend an entire evening feeling or session feeling like nothing you tried worked. And one difficult class does not mean you no longer love jujitsu. But when every session begins to feel heavy, it's it's worth paying attention to. And maybe you're training too much and not recovering enough. And maybe you are placing unrealistic expectations on yourself. Maybe you are preparing for a competition and have allowed the pressure to consume the entire experience. I think that's a good topic for an episode. Maybe you are dealing with an injury, or maybe life outside the academy or the the gym is is already demanding a lot from you, and you're you're expecting yourself to train as if nothing else is happening. I think there are also there there also may be something about the training environment that that needs to be addressed. You know, we've done some episodes on toxic training rooms, and you know, whatever it is, you should not ignore it when jujitsu consistently becomes a source of anxiety or dread. That does not automatically mean you need to quit. It may simply mean you need something to change, or something needs to change. And it may not be in your control. You may need that extra day of recovery, you may need to reduce the intensity of your rounds, you may need to have an honest conversation with your coach who may need to address something, you may need to spend more time training with people you trust. And sometimes you need to stop tracking the outcome of every round and allow yourself to attend class without an agenda. And taking a step back is not the same as walking away. I think longevity requires adjustment. The way you trained when you first started may not be the way you need to train today. Your body changes, your responsibilities change, your goal, um, your goals need to change, and your relationship, your relationship with jujitsu should be allowed to change too, right?

Redefine What A Good Session Is

Joe Motes (Host) 31:57

So if we think about all of this, you know, how should we redefine a good training session? I think, you know, after training, many of us ask ourselves the same question. You know, how'd I do today? Uh usually what we are really asking is whether we won our rounds. Did I submit anyone? Did anyone submit me? Was I able to pass a person's guard? Did the lower belt give me more trouble than I expected? Those are understandable questions, but they are not always the best way to evaluate the success of our training session. You know? A better set of questions, what would they be? I think they would be along the lines of, you know, maybe did I learn something today? Did I attempt a technique we worked on in class? Did I remain composed when I was feeling crushed or uncomfortable? Did I help did I help one of my teammates? Did did I enjoy being there and being on the mat and going through the class? And there'll be nights when you dominate several rounds and learn very little. There'll be nights when you struggle through every round, but discover exactly what you need to work on. And I think the best session is not always the one where you performed your best. I think sometimes it's the one where you laugh the most and you had the most fun. You know, sometimes it's the one where you helped the new student understand a position. Sometimes it's the one where someone exposed a major weakness in your game and gave you something very meaningful to work on. And sometimes it could be simply the night you almost stayed home but decided to go anyway. And, you know, success in the training room on the mat, I'm here to tell you it's not always visible. And that is why we have to be careful about allowing submissions and round outcomes to become the only evidence that we are progressing. It kills our joy for jujitsu. You know, jujitsu is difficult. It is, it's tough, it's not easy. No one attends jujitsu and leaves and says, Well, that was easy. No one. If they do, they're lying to you and themselves. It is supposed to challenge you. It should occasionally frustrate you. It should place you in situations where you have where you have to manage discomfort, you have to solve problems and confront weakness, you would rather avoid. But something can be difficult and still be really, really fun. You know, you can you can care about getting better without allowing your performance and doing so to determine your entire self self-worth. And you can want to win without treating every training partner like an opponent you need to defeat. You can you can pursue and go after promotions and competition goals and technical growth while you're still remembering that this is something you chose to do, that you pay a monthly membership fee to do, that you invest time and money and effort. Most of us, especially those listening here, are not getting paid to train. No one is going to review our roles during an annual performance evaluation. Actually, that would be kind of cool. I think BJJ Fanatics actually has, this is off topic, has, or they used to have something where you could submit your roles, a video of your role, and they would actually provide feedback on it. But anyway, you know, there's no trophy for being the person who takes an open mat loss the hardest. Don't try to don't shoot for that trophy. You know, we train because somewhere underneath the frustration, the soreness, the exhaustion, and occasional disappointment, we love this. We love it. We love learning. We love the challenge. We love the friendships and community. We love the feeling of solving a problem while another person is actively trying to stop us. We love this human physical body chess. We love walking out of the academy and the school knowing or the gym, knowing that for an hour or two, we were completely and a hundred percent present in something that we chose to do. Protect, I think, protect that feeling. Work hard, but remember, please, please, please, remember to laugh. Set goals, but give yourself permission to change them. Take your development seriously, but do not take yourself so seriously that you forget to enjoy the process. The belts, I'm told, will eventually come. Your game will continue to develop. Some rounds will go your way, and plenty of the others will absolutely not. The real goal is to build a relationship with jujitsu that lasts. The only way to do that is to have fun with it. And before your next training session, ask yourself this question: What would make jujitsu fun for me today? Maybe it is trying that new technique that you learn from your professor or IG. Maybe it is rolling with your favorite training partner. Sometimes I go in just because I know I'm going to be able to. Maybe it is removing the pressure to perform and simply allowing yourself to learn. Whatever your answer is, whatever the answer is to that question, make space for it. And have fun. So thank you so much for giving me time and coming

Protect The Feeling, Closing Thoughts

Joe Motes (Host) 39:54

to listen to this episode and joining me again for uh this kind of felt a little bit like a a rant more than an episode, but um thank you for always supporting and listening to Caffeinated Jiu-Jitsu. We've got a lot of great content coming up, some solo and some amazing guest episodes coming up. Uh next week, um, beginning a new kind of 90-day or three-month chapter for the podcast. There's going to be some more heavy of the solo conversations. A lot of times it's just a little easier to get content out there. Um, more stories from the jujitsu community. A lot of people have listened to a lot of the past episodes with guests who are just out here telling their story and people are relating to it. And more to more discussions about what keeps us coming back to the mats. So until next time, uh train safe, train fun, have fun, and as always, keep your passion brewing.