Doesn’t matter if it’s in training or in competition.

The feeling of losing over and over again can be frustrating and even reason enough to make you want to quit Jiu-Jitsu.

As we don’t want to see anyone giving up, we have rounded up 10 valuable advices from fierce competitors who had to live through tough defeats and lived to see a brighter day after that.

Here we go.

1. Set new goals immediately

In 2011, Rafael Lovato Jr. had a disappointing campaign at the European Open, in Lisbon. Days later, he jumped in another competition in Poland and ended up the champion after submitting no other than Bernardo Faria. From that experience, he extracted the lesson: “Following a tough defeat, analyze your mistakes and correct them. Once you’ve done that, immediately set new goals and use the recent defeat as fuel in your pursuit of a future victory.”

2. Rekindle the old flame

Five-time world champion Romulo Barral lived the toughest period of his career in 2010 and 2011. A knee injury that would not go away even after surgery made him think of retiring from competitions. He even called it quits after a disappointing campaign at the 2011 Worlds. Barral explains how he changed his mind: “When the pain in my knee came back I thought of quitting. Then, one day I stepped on the mat in my academy and I felt that same old desire to train and compete. I knew I was not done yet!” After his return, Barral won two world titles and an ADCC  gold medal.

3. Don’t waste time blaming others

Bernardo Faria is known for putting all out there whenever he competes. He recalls on one event at the 2011 European Open when he thought he was hit with a bad call by the referee. After a burst of anger, he tells us how he regrouped to keep on going and achieve one of his goals for the event. “I worked on my mindset after the bad call at the open class. I needed to overcome the hurt and feeling of injustice and be 100% ready for the heavyweight division that would play out the next day. I did that and ended up winning it.”

4. Defeat is okay; quitting is not an option

“If I had never lost, how could I know my own flaws?” With this question, world champion Rodrigo Cavaca sums up the importance of taking the most of each setback. It may seem a cliché, but it is actually one of the most important things ou can do in life, on and off the mats. Whenever defeat comes your way, embrace it and learn with it. The only thing you can’t do is use it as an excuse to quit.

5. Expect the unexpected

Guilherme Mendes suffered one of his toughest defeats at the 2010 Worlds. One of the favorites for the gold medal, he lost to Paulo Melo in his first match. An unpredictable injury during training hampered his weight loss programa and forced Gui to lose too many pounds too close to the event, which drained his stamina and power. Then, he said: “I learned there are many factors that can lead to defeat. The formula to get back on your feet is to expect the unexpected and keep focused.”

6. Just keep going 

Roger Gracie, the most accomplished competitor of all times, was once plagued with an incredible streak of four defeats in the black belt open class division final at the Worlds. Bad refereeing, wrong strategy and though opponents were the reasons the gold medal wouldn’t rest on his chest. In 2014, when asked about that, Roger looked back and saw the bright side of his ordeal: “I’m sure that those defeats were the main reason I kept going and ended up winning the open class division three times. I knew I could be better and each year I would work harder to be better”

7. When there’s time, there’s hope

Three-time open class black belt world champion Marcus Buchecha is known for never giving up on a match before time runs out. He won some of his most important titles in the last seconds of the finals, like the 2012 absolute at the Worlds and the 2014 open class at the WPJJC. The lesson Buchecha leaves us is: “If I look at the clock and there’s 5s left, I know I still have time to do something. I see people giving up with two minutes left. That doesn’t make sense to me!”

A university professor moonlighting as an MMA fighter, Jonathan Gottschall in a photo from Washington and Jefferson University in Pennsylvania, where he teaches / Photo: WashjeffEdu.com website/publicity

A 39-year-old professor of English Literature in Pennsylvania, USA, Jonathan Gottschall has published six books and a number of interesting theories. Some of them may even be revolutionary, like the one about the importance of works of fiction in the development of the human race, a theses he presented in his latest book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human.

In other words, he’d be a nutty intellectual like all the rest, were it not for one detail: his fixation for MMA, a sport he started practicing a year and a half ago, for which his brutal curiosity led him to… step into the ring and go toe to toe just a few weeks ago.

“By practicing MMA I learned, above all, that I’m a man of contradictions. I didn’t do it for personal reasons, but intellectual ones. I wanted to understand why men fight in ritual combat and the reasons that lead a gentle personal like myself to delight in these spectacles of barbarity,” said the writer.

An interview with Gottschall was featured in the latest issue of Brazil’s Veja magazine, more excerpts of which you will find to come:

WHY MAN FIGHTS

“Both literature and social sciences have shown that through combat man pursues status. It may seem like a vain reason but status determines where an individual figures in the hierarchies. Being at the bottom of the hierarchy, both for man and animals, is a bad place to be—and of course, it’s an obvious risk to survival.”

UFC, MMA AND EVOLUTION

“When I started watching, back in the 1990s, I was impressed by the violence of the sport. I couldn’t believe such a form of fighting could be legal. Honestly, the fights turned my stomach. I still get sickened by some situations. MMA doesn’t impose limits on aggressiveness. Besides being the utmost expression of human brutality, it is a very eclectic style, one that accepts modification and is in constant evolution. Other styles, like karate and judo, have established rules, don’t incorporate new moves. I’ll go out on a limb and say that MMA is the most evolved form of martial art.”

THE FIGHT AND THE DISAPPOINTMENT

“It was my first and last fight. I don’t want to do it again. I was defeated by armbar, but that wasn’t the problem. The worst part was the ultimate anticlimax. I wasn’t sweaty or even tired. After a year and a half of training, dieting and a month of anxiety leading up to my stepping in the cage, I was disappointed. It all went so quickly. I was hoping for something more epic, prolonged and brutal. Something like Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad.”

Anderson Silva trapped by the Jiu-Jitsu of Daiju Takase, one of the few to have beaten him. Photo: Susumu Nagao.

In this video dug up by the folks at CagePotato.com, the camera crew filming Pride 26 caught Anderson Silva irate after tapping to Daiju Takase, in 2003.

Anderson, as the footage shows, tapped to a triangle, a Jiu-Jitsu move he’d practiced defending “more than a hundred times,” as he repeats to Rudimar Fedrigo, Nino Schembri and Jorge “Joinha” Guimarães 3:50 minutes into the video.

First he said this to himself:

Sheesh, Anderson.
What was that? You blew it.
Jeez, you practiced it a lot there.
%$#@ that #%#*! (screaming)
Thank you … (Elvis Nino and another person)
(talking to teammates)
@#$*, I trained more than one hundred ways to get out of that $#&%ing infernal triangle!
&%$& that &*&¨@! &%$&!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iufihed-r4

The footage, taken years before Anderson reached the pinnacle of MMA stardom in the UFC, harbors a few lessons:

1. BAD DAYS HAPPEN IN JIU-JITSU

Even if you repeat a position a thousand times, you do get caught by surprise in Jiu-Jitsu. Accept it.

2. TAPPING OUT COULD BE JUST THE BEGINNING

If you tap out, it’s not the end of the world. Keep at it.

3. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS INVINCIBLE

All fighters meet defeat one day. Get over it and keep going.

Now did you learn anything from that, dear reader—besides four-letter words in Portuguese? Share with us below!