Hey, Chris Ulbricht from Garden State Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Red Bank, New Jersey here. I wanted to share with you some thoughts I had on the disadvantages of getting angry and upset during training. I’ve seen new and experienced fall into this trap, and at some point or another we have all (myself definitely included) have been guilty of it.

If you want to keep your training productive, you need to keep your cool and stay calm and collected. Getting angry and frustrated on the mats…

• Blinds you from being in the present moment and learning from the mistakes you made. Being angry is equivalent to being too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Keeping a curious, calm, and positive demeanor will allow you to remember details more accurately to help you learn and improve faster.
  
  
• Makes your training partners afraid to beat you. If you're a jerk every time you get beat, you're training partners might take it easy on you so you don't have a temper tantrum. This gives you a short term confidence boost but stunts your development in the long term because you're not being challenged and you're getting away with techniques that don't work. Try your best to win but be cool if you don't. More people will want to roll with you.
  
  
• Disrespects your training partners by implying that you are so good that you're outraged that you would ever lose to them. If you get pissed if the young blue belt gets you, think to yourself if you would act the same way if a 4x world champion tapped you out? So a world champion is okay but blue belts are not? You're making a statement about how you perceive your training partner by being upset.
  
  
• Makes the training environment hostile and intimidating for others. Your behavior might make other students leave, which means less training partners for you and is ultimately bad for your school and instructor. BJJ schools with bad vibes don't do well for long. Intensity is good. Training hard is good. Trying your best is good. Hitting the mat and cursing is not.
  
  
• Makes BJJ less fun for you and your training partners. Jiu-jitsu is supposed to be fun! Getting angry or cursing makes you and everyone around you enjoy jiu-jitsu less, which is totally lame and uncool.