Quotes & Sayings About Bjj

I have been given the rare opportunity to teach Jiu Jitsu for a living. This is a privilege that I wake up everyday grateful for, and a responsibility that I hold dearly. I understand how rare it is to be employed through a labor you genuinely love, and one which can be used as a vehicle for positive change in the lives of others. Even rarer still, I am often reminded of the quality of Jiu Jitsu I have learned, and the opportunity to have learned it. — Chris Matakas

The only way to consistently perform at your potential is to ask: Am I better than I was yesterday? — Chris Matakas

Have a clear-cut plan on what you wish to improve, and seek opportunities to improve it. The more conscious and honest we can be about our shortcomings, the more strength we will have to improve them. We are going to train hard anyway, we are not going to sweat any more or less. It is simply imperative that the sweat is properly directed. — Chris Matakas

Any advanced student will tell you the best way to recover guard is simply not to get your guard passed in the first place. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu forges friendships in a way I've never known. Being involved in an art as intimate as this, where bodily connection is a must, the common cultural boundaries of personal space are broken. You will never see more hugs, high fives, and physical expressions of love than on the mats. Ultimately, this proves to be one of the most fulfilling aspects of our pursuit of mastery. Along the way, we learn to love others as we love ourselves. — Chris Matakas

Do not seek victory, for victory in itself will not serve you. Seek to understand what made the victory possible. — Chris Matakas

You are never as good as you think you are, and you are never as bad as you believe yourself to be. — Chris Matakas

We must remember that science is a way of using empirical evidence to better understand our world. We are all scientists, just many of us are not very good ones. However, we are all capable of exercising our intellects in a purposeful, linear pursuit of knowledge. — Chris Matakas

If you are fortunate enough to have a particular activity with which you find greatest joy and technical success, it is your responsibility as a growing human being to continue that study. Whatever your endeavor, if you can expand upon the knowledge in your strongest subject, that new found understanding of all things will trickle down to every other area of your life. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu gives me an ideal to strive toward. Technical mastery lies on an infinite continuum and completion of this skill is impossible. Every time I train I have something that I can improve upon, and this will hold true for each and every training session that lies between me and my grave. — Chris Matakas

I believe the real reason we pursue anything in life is not for the thing itself, but for who we become on the way to its accomplishment. We strive to accomplish things in the attempt to mold ourselves. The greatest benefits Jiu Jitsu will have in your life will have nothing to do with Jiu Jitsu. It is this simple understanding that allows me to persist in my study. Even on the rare days when I may not have a burning desire to practice Jiu Jitsu, I am reminded that my practicing Jiu Jitsu is more accurately my practicing to become a better human being. The lessons I learn on the mat will serve me in every area of life
personal development, relationships, business, and the like. — Chris Matakas

Relationships formed through Jiu Jitsu are deeply rooted in respect for one another, and this is often not the case in matters of modern society. — Chris Matakas

Autopilot is great, and removal of thought is one of the highest ideals of training. But removal of thought in the moment must be preceded by purposeful thought beforehand. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu is a baptism by combat, and serves a purpose in the inner life of the individual that has always existed, but our modern culture fails to acknowledge. — Chris Matakas

Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken. — Chris Matakas

By becoming a black belt, you will become whatever it is you wanted to be in the first place, and Jiu Jitsu will have served its aim. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible. — Chris Matakas

All of Jiu Jitsu is finding a way to get your partner to willingly go where you want him to go in the first place. — Chris Matakas

This is the opportunity the fellowship of Jiu Jitsu affords us. To reach our highest potential of self, and then to offer that self to another. — Chris Matakas

I would more appropriately define mastery as the technical ability possible within the constraints of your particular existence. It must be noted that this is a subjective definition, and that this degree of mastery would be individual to each of us. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu provides a place of fellowship that, unfortunately, our society has largely failed to create. — Chris Matakas

I believe the best use of ones life is to serve others through a medium you are most passionate. Jiu Jitsu allows me the opportunity to give someone my time in the pursuit of THEIR dreams. It affords me the gift of willingly spending my non-redeemable life in the interest of another. Jiu JItsu has given me the opportunity to positively influence countless lives. — Chris Matakas

We must not learn to try harder. The key is to learn how not to try in the first place. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish. — Chris Matakas

Imagine a true master of the art, someone with complete skill in every aspect of Jiu Jitsu. This master would not force anything. He would simply allow the roll to take whatever form it does, and in every position would act in the most efficient way based off what the circumstance dictates, and not what he himself prefers. — Chris Matakas

We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life. — Chris Matakas

I believe that which you study is only matched in importance by the sincerity with which you approach it. — Chris Matakas

I wanted to get to the most essential aspect of my being, and look around for a while. I wanted to explore what I am in my most basic self. I wanted to chip away at all of the nonsense I have acquired through my twenty-nine years on this earth. I wanted to find truth. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. Jiu Jitsu has peeled the veil of daily life, and has shown me what lies beyond the curtain. We willingly accept the chains that circumstance forces upon us, and we grow to find comfort in them. We attach various fetters of day-to-day living to our being, and we do so with a smile. We accept these constraints for they come in the way of comfort. We accept conformity for it appears the path of least resistance. We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves. — Chris Matakas

Devoting yourself to a particular art is invaluable. The art becomes our vehicle with which we drive down the road of life. We use this vehicle to learn about ourselves and this place, to conquer fears, to become more of what we already are. In my own life, I have found most valuable the transferable skills of learning from jiu jitsu to all other facets of day to day study. In devoting myself with such commitment to this art, in undertaking the task of understanding jiu jitsu to whatever degree by circumstance allows, I have unknowingly learned how to learn. — Chris Matakas

I train Jiu Jitsu because I recognize that I am a piece of the whole, and as I grow so does that which contains me. The whole of man advances with the growth of a single individual. Every life I influence is benefited from the fact that I have devoted such a large portion of my life to this pursuit. I will be a better husband, father, and whatever other future roles I may hold because of my time in this sport. In making me a better man, I know that society as a whole is improved. — Chris Matakas

True mastery, it turns out, is not found in accumulating each and every tool under the sun. True mastery is learning that there are really only a handful of tools, and it is the proper application with correct timing and setting that makes them so useful. — Chris Matakas

To base your self worth relative to others is to play a losing game. If you are at the bottom, you will be filled with self-loathing. If you are at the top, you will be filled with self-aggrandizement and ego. This will most certainly be one of your greatest obstacles to achieving whatever degree of mastery you are capable. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man. — Chris Matakas

It appears, at least from my perspective, that each and every position in Jiu Jitsu regardless of the seeming complexity is really governed by no more than a handful of minimum viable products. Pursue to understand these essentials, and you will see that complexity is a myth perpetuated by lack of understanding, and it is this understanding which is possible for each of us. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu removes the societal walls that we have been forced to unknowingly hold up with our adopted beliefs. It removes the limits of common thought, and allows for expression of our highest ideals. — Chris Matakas

I use my understanding of jiu jitsu as a road map to learn other activities. I look for the similarities between the two, and use jiu jitsu as an allegory for whatever my new practice may be. I truly believe once you have learned one thing, you have learned all things because you have learned how to learn. — Chris Matakas

Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. — Chris Matakas

The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set. — Chris Matakas

There is no more valuable skill than studentship. The farther we go down one area of human understanding, the more we see the corollaries that all activities share. Everything I do for the rest of my life, all the skills I acquire, will be made possible because of my time spent on the mats. It has revealed a symbiosis between all things that I never knew existed. — Chris Matakas

The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive. — Cameron Conaway

An arm bar in a vacuum is worthless. It is the realization of the truths which constitute that arm bar that is the real treasure we seek. — Chris Matakas

Each increment of knowledge imparted in this way is so satisfying-and one's ignorance at every stage so consequential-that the process of learning BJJ can become remarkably addictive. I have never experienced anything quite like it. — Sam Harris

Jiu Jitsu can be a source of total transparency such as a mirror, but it takes a conscious choice to see what it has to say. — Chris Matakas

We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves. — Chris Matakas

This is a trust that you just cannot find in modern society for there are no conditions to forge it. — Chris Matakas

If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training. — Chris Matakas

I believe we must pursue mastery for who we become along the way in its achievement. When we progress in Jiu Jitsu, that newfound experience and wisdom transcends into all areas of our lives. We use Jiu Jitsu as the vehicle for growth, but that growth radiates over all of human activity. Someone who devotes time and energy in learning this skill is learning far more than how to subdue an opponent. The student learns persistence, perseverance, pattern recognition, problem solving, and most importantly, learning how to learn. In the arena of life, these virtues are far more valuable than any guard pass. — Chris Matakas

I've learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen. — Cameron Conaway

As an instructor, my goal has always been to use Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to help our students achieve their goals, whatever the case may be. I have yet to find a better vehicle for growth, and the moment I do I will certainly pursue it with the rivaled fervor that I approached Jiu Jitsu. — Chris Matakas

To achieve anything we must grind, but to enjoy anything we must flow. — Chris Matakas

Where the hell is your guard?" She shouts.
Damn if she doesn't sound like Haley. "I'm tired."
"Do I look like I care? You're getting the hell pounded out of you. If you want to tap out, then tap out, but don't stand there and let him win. — Katie McGarry

I can think of no more worthwhile aim than pursuing mastery in this craft while transcending one's own limitations. — Chris Matakas

BJJ is like trying to solve a puzzle that keeps changing..so magnificent ... yet completely humbling. — Phillipe Nover

Your progress as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner is a direct reflection of the standards you have for yourself. — Chris Matakas

There is no concrete way to play Jiu Jitsu, and this is why so many different types of people find joy in it. — Chris Matakas

In Jiu Jitsu an inch is a mile, and a second is an eternity. Use each wisely. — Chris Matakas

For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves. — Chris Matakas

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself. — Chris Matakas

It is fellowship, this most fundamental need on our way toward achieving our highest expression of the human experience, which Jiu Jitsu provides. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu is a vehicle for self-discovery and growth. It reminds me of my ego, of my insecurities, and of my shortcomings. — Chris Matakas

In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique "harder," rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand. — Chris Matakas