Working on Your Weaknesses

Recently I have been trying to play butterfly guard. I am pretty terrible at it, and to be honest I’m not terribly surprised when it is shut down.

However, I keep trying, because it’s good to work on your weaknesses once in a while. It’s pretty certain that those techniques will never be your “A” game- but I would rather attempt to improve even slightly on my weaknesses than be limited through solely working on my strengths.

It’s human nature to want to only do the things we a re good at- we know we do them well, and the successful completion makes us feel accomplished. It’s the willingness to step out of the comfort zone that will make us better either in that technique, or even sometimes in something completely different, because there is a similar principle that can be applied.

Jiu jitsu is a sport that at its core is all about evolution: both the evolution of the sport as a whole and, in ways more importantly, the evolution of the player. Keeping an open mind to both the things you are good at, and not so good at, will promote that evolution.

You can’t get to the next chapter of a book if you just keep reading the same paragraphs over and over again. 🙂