Carmine

Have you had a time during your training where you felt really good about your performance and when it was promotion time, you didn't get promoted? Did you find yourself analyzing the person that got the promotion and comparing them to yourself, with them not being as good as you with each comparison?

If you haven't experienced this feeling, you're either very new to grappling, a great liar, or a completely ego-less grappler (which I have yet to meet in 11 years of grappling). It's natural for all of us to look around the gym and compare ourselves with our classmates and their skills. And at the same time, those comparisons can be counter-productive to our grappling progress.

Generally, when we notice someone else moving forward, we get anxious and start questioning why we aren't progressing at the same rate. And if we can't come up with what we figure out are rational reasons (e.g. they're younger, stronger, more athletic, trains harder, takes more private lessons, etc.), we then settled into what I call "rank envy mode" and start challenging the decision behind their promotion and why we were overlooked. And "rank envy mode" has been known to make students go after newly promoted guys to embarrass and prove to everyone how the wrong person got promoted. Rank envy mode has also been known to make some grapplers change schools or quite grappling completely.

The biggest problem with comparing ourselves with our teammates around us is the presumption that everyone should learn a new skill and progress at the same pace, regardless of how each of us learns and processes new information. There is no standard pace for learning and progressing. Each of us has an internal rhythm that drives us to determine and achieve goals based on how important they are to us. So, a person with lots of non-grappling commitments demanding his time shouldn't expect to progress as fast as a person with no commitments and lots of time to train. And at the same time, two people with identical external commitments won't progress at the same rate if achieving grappling perfection is more important to one person than the other.

What's the solution to training comparisons and rank envy? The best solution is to leave the evaluation to your instructors and to keep training. If you trust your instructor's judgment and consider them a good instructor, let them determine when it's your time to move up to the next belt level. You're at the school to become proficient at grappling, not evaluate your teammates' performance or determine if promotions are being handed out fairly.

Paul M. Greenhill, "The Wise Grappler", is the creator of The Wise Grappler System and author of The Wise Grappler Ezine, a weekly ezine that provides martial arts training and personal development tips for the older (over 35) and non-traditional martial artists. To learn more about "The Wise Grappler" and to sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit his site at http://www.ihateyoungpunks.com or contact him at paul@thewisegrappler.com

(c) 2007 Paul M. Greenhill