8 STEPS TO RECOVERING FROM A BAD COMPETITION

With 2x European Champion, Emilia Tuukkanen – Instagram @emiliatuukkanen

If you compete a lot in BJJ, you have for sure experienced losses and disappointments. Some less bitter than others - some making you want to rip someone’s head off. So how do you not end up separating some poor, innocent persons head from their torso?

1. Punch a wall. Broken bones are a plus, dent in the wall as well. The more you hurt yourself the better. That's the only thing a mentally healthy person can do when facing life-shattering disappointment. Extra points for smashing your head on something hard, repeatedly. Don't even try to be adult about it with all this "well, he/she was better this time, at least I gave my best, there's always a next time blah blah blah" bullshit. Go punch a wall.

2. Cry about your newly injured hand. Nobody will realize your crying like a baby about your loss when your hand is double its normal size and all the fingers pointing different ways. The louder you cry and sound like a werewolf with a hint of a tortured cat, the better.

3. After drying your tears you need to make an important decision: what to eat first now that your diet is over? It has to be something really good so you will stuff yourself enough to throw up. You can eat while you watch the last fights from your category and think (out loud) how much better your technique is compared to the other competitors.

4. Find someone to blame. Anyone or anything but yourself will do perfectly. It can be the taxi driver who took you to the venue that had the air conditioning too hot/cold, your hotel's bed was too soft/hard, you hurt your toe while warming up, your crush texted you right before the fight, the photographers around the mats had too brighter flashes on their cameras, your boyfriend/girlfriend wasn't supportive enough or maybe you were allergic to your opponents deodorant/laundry detergent.

5. After deciding who/what to blame, post it on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter right away with a long description of the situation and why this was NOT your fault and how you would be the winner of your category if the thing you're blaming hadn't happened. After few hours (or minutes) you can post a new status update and add some more reasons. It's important that everyone you know sees that this really had nothing to do with you and you are just victim of circumstances.

6. Now that everyone online knows that you are the true champion, you need to start taking about it loudly to anyone who has ears and is near you. What if they didn't see your status update and X-Pro filtered, long-captioned photo yet (#therealchampion #iwouldhavewon #notmyfault)? Or maybe they saw it, but didn't pay attention to every detail you posted? You need to make sure everyone close enough to hear you knows what's up and who is the greatest fighter ever (you).

7.  Time to start sulking and pouting like a 13-year old it-girl who got only 10 likes on her on instagram. It's important to remember, snap at your friends or really anyone you're in contact with. McDonalds not giving your food fast enough? Taxi driver not moving 0.0001 seconds after the light turned green? Hotel cleaner arranged your messy clothes so you don't right away find your favourite socks? All incompetent uneducated idiots who need to hear what you think of them. The more you ruin other people's day the better you will feel, trust me.

8. After a while you can remember an old injury that actually was bugging you at the competition too, you just didn't want to tell anyone about it before. That broken pinkie from months ago was the real reason you lost.

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