This post was written by my brother, Jason Gregoriades. He runs the Gracie Barra South Africa academy in Cape Town and is a purple belt under Roger Gracie. He will be contributing more articles to the Jiu-Jitsu Brotherhood in the future.Losing is never easy. For some competitive athletes, it is a fate worse than death. To have given your best and still be found wanting, defeated by a superior competitor. Few things have the same potential to rock a person to their core; but in reality, losing is one of the most important experiences that we must all face at one time or another.

To better understand this lets address the following questions: Why is losing so difficult? Why is losing crucial to an athlete’s success? And how should we approach losing?

We are all consumed by a myriad of worries and responsibilities from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. These include amongst other things our careers, relationships and finances. Sometimes these concerns even permeate our dreams.But when we are on the mat sparring against a resisting opponent – our thoughts are focused on only one thing and that is the moment. Jiu-jitsu is a form of meditation. In my opinion, this is the reason for the massive global explosion in popularity that it has experienced over the past decade. People start training for the usual reasons e.g. self-defence, fitness etc. and soon become hooked. I believe we are all ‘meditating’ on the mat and most of us don’t even know it. Perhaps our minds crave this release from our daily concerns and that is why we find training so enjoyable.

The head is attached to the top of the spinal column, and can therefore be used as a lever to ‘steer’ the entire torso of an opponent in a desired direction, or stop movement in another. By twisting the head you cause your opponent great discomfort, and severely compromise the mobility of his spine. Also, as the head is the center of a person’s physical awareness because it contains the brain and many of the major sense organs, it is very easy to distract and upset the rhythm of an opponent by interfering with their head.

For several years now a debate has been raging within the grappling community over which style of groundfighting is better – no-gi or gi. To me the answer is “both” and “neither”. The two are not diametrically opposed nor are they mutually exclusive. Many grapplers dogmatically limit themselves to training exclusively with or without the gi. This is a detrimental practice because they are denying themselves access to the benefits of the omitted style.