One of the most powerful things we can do to improve our martial arts experience and game is competition. We don’t mean you need to prove yourself and demolish everyone in your path; we believe that simply going through the competition journey is enough to give you an exponential boost in confidence, resilience and deeper self-awareness.
While not everyone who trains Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai choses to compete, we highly recommend it if you’re interested in expanding your physical and, most importantly, mental toolkit. We can only learn so much in the classroom; to really challenge ourselves and see how we adapt in high-pressure situations, we need to hit the competition mat.
“When we train martial arts,” says Alex Huddleston, Easton’s Jiu Jitsu Program Director, “it isn’t just learning techniques; it’s learning a different way of seeing the world.”
At their roots, Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai are self-defense martial arts. If you’re training BJJ, for example, you need to know that your BJJ works in a real world, self-defense scenario – and in that world, there are no clocks.
“There are no clocks in Whole Foods parking lots,” Alex says. “We unfortunately have real life examples of this, where people do have to use their Jiu Jitsu in real life, and in that moment, maybe nobody saves you but yourself.”
No matter what we aim to get out of our martial arts practice, we want a certain level of fitness to know that if we were to need it on a moment’s notice, it’ll be there for us. From this perspective, perhaps there are actually no hobbyists when it comes to needing to use your Jiu Jitsu in real life.
“For me, the “hobbyist” term is a little bit of a misnomer,” says Alex. “It’s a misconception to think of them as not physically fit or not close to being in fight camp if they wanted to.
Even a hobbyist is someone who is, on average, in really good physical shape. I’d argue that if you’re training in martial arts consistently, you’re closer to 80 percent ready to compete anyways.”
There’s a spectrum of competition, and even those who don’t consider themselves “competitors” can benefit from putting their “hobbyist” skills to the test. This holds especially true when it comes to local fights or local jiu jitsu tournaments, when the people you’ll compete against are people like you who train a regular amount of time and have a life outside of the mats. You still train hard, and you know your Jiu Jitsu works, but you aren’t traveling out of state or international for tournaments or training full time.
[Why Competitors and Hobbyists Must Coexist]
The way we train for a competition is different from how we train the rest of the time. It becomes necessary to hyperfocus during this time to sharpen our sword and mentally prepare for the outcomes we want. But what are the key differences?
For anyone, a huge part of going into competition involves clearing the ego and embracing an open mind: we want to win, but no outcome should dictate how we feel about the sport for the rest of our lives. Still, there are ways to prepare for the best possible outcome.
No matter if it’s our first Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai competition or our hundredth, there’s always something we’re working to improve, a question we have or a specific aspect we’d like to know more about.
We’ve put together this article on every angle of the competition prep journey for everyone from newbies to more experienced players. It includes information on training – like cardio and technique – as well as how to fuel for training and competition, and mindset. We hope that no matter where you are along your competition journey, this helps shed light on the process!
Set your season and stay ready
Before you even begin the training process, how do you decide which tournaments to do? When is the “competition season” in your sport, and how long does it last?
Black Belt and Lowry Co-Owner, Amy Fidelis, tells us that with BJJ — and the IBJJF in particular – there’s really no off-season if you do gi and no gi.
For example, for someone who competes in the masters division, a full gi season could look like January all the way through the beginning of September. And even then you’d still have gi competitions in the fall and winter you could participate in before starting over again next year.
This is especially true for Muay Thai, Easton coach Chino Dean tells us: there’s no season for fighting. Chino, who rocks a brown shirt in the sport, says that opportunities will frequently come up on short notice, so for people competing in Muay Thai, the overall mindset is to stay ready so you can take that short-notice opportunity if it comes up.
“We say, be 80 percent ready 100 percent of the time”, says Chino. “That means that I’m in the academy five to six times a week to stay active.”
For Chino, this looks like taking the daily classes Easton has available, which amounts to about one to one and a half hours worth pad work and drills – and of course, warming up.
During that time, he’s focusing on making small improvements and once a fight gets scheduled, he ramps things up a lot: in addition to his six days of normal work, he has about two to three extra sessions a week with a coach. Instead of learning new skills, the mindset shifts to a focus on implementing a game plan and making your tools more effective.
Muay Thai competitors also aim to run daily, and twice a week have a strength training and conditioning session with a coach to make sure they’re able to maintain a high output throughout the rounds in fights.
That said, whether you’re competing in Muay Thai or Jiu Jitsu, you must set your own pace – especially if you’ve designated a competition season for yourself.
[From Sparring to Scrimmage: the First Step in the Muay Thai Competition Journey]
Normalize the experience
If you can pick your matches or fights ahead of time, how long of a season do you want to aim for? What can you commit the time and energy to, realistically? What competitions do you want to do? Is it an Easton Open? Another local tournament? A bigger competition?
Once you’ve identified what competitions you want to sign up for, it’s time to figure out how much focus and energy you want to put into it. This will be based on the specific competition and your unique goals.
“For example,” says Amy, “If I’m going to prepare for Pans or World Master, I’d book into my schedule some smaller competitions or Opens as practice leading up to the bigger competition if I can.”
Amy, who’d never done an IBJJF-specific tournament before the World Master where she won as a purple belt, lives by the following:
Figure out your schedule, figure out your goals, figure out where and when you’ll compete and then build your daily habits around that.
During those periods – three months or even eight months – that she’s building toward something, she tries as best as she can to focus her whole day and life around that.
“Am I getting sunlight in the morning?” Amy asks herself. “Is my caffeine intake manageable? What does my sleep look like? How is my stress load with work and family and other responsibilities? How is my general energy level? If I’m depleting my battery, am I recharging?”
Jordan Shipman, a Brown Belt and Program Director of Easton’s Kids BJJ, follows a similar process when it comes to carving out a season. He picks a season, like three or six months, which gives him a string of tournaments and trains a certain way for the duration.
“My goal for competition is to normalize the experience,” says Jordan. “Part of what makes competitions difficult to deal with is that it’s fake; it’s a construct. We try to make it more than it is. That’s where the biological reactions and adrenaline dumps come from – when all it is a Jiu Jitsu match, like in the classroom.”
One of Jordan’s approaches to normalizing the competition experience involves frequency. You may be good at Jiu Jitsu, but learning to reframe competition is another skill entirely. There’s an accumulation effect, Jordan tells us – the more frequently you can compete, the better.
This year, Jordan’s competition season was six months long. He picked six IBJJF tournaments he traveled to and spaced them about five to six weeks apart so he always had time to recover from one and ramp up for the next.
“For about six months,” Jordan said, “I tried to hold up that grind – to stay ready and accumulate the experience. And that’s typically when the results would come, when you treat it as training.”
Another benefit to scheduling out some smaller competitions is getting to fail in those scenarios, and to learn from those failures so that when the big one comes, you’re better prepared.
[3 Tips to Help Your Youth Athlete Overcome Competition Anxiety]
Comp training: A to Z
Make a plan
When should you train? When do you focus on cardio or work in strength training? What days do you rest? The best way to create a sustainable training schedule and good habits is to literally plan out a routine on the calendar and divide your sessions out. And, depending on whether you’re prepping for a Jiu Jitsu competition or a Muay Thai fight, your training will look different.
For Amy, making a plan for each day takes the guesswork and decision-making out of the week so you waste less time and maximize your productivity and focus.
The strength and conditioning coach she works with, Claus de Souza, calls it going through the museum experience as you get taken from room to room of your day. With everything mapped out, you don’t waste time deciding what to do.
This plan can include everything from drilling to flowing to tough, live rounds and even studying videos of your previous competitions.
“I find it easier to map out,” says Amy, “because then I look back and say, ‘I did everything I possibly could to prepare.’”
Finally, whether you’re prepping for a tournament in four weeks or three months, active recovery is a must. Building in a day where you’re still moving your body but taking a break from the harder rounds will make sure your training rhythm stays sustainable over the long term.
“In the Jiu Jitsu world,” Professor Alex says, “perhaps you’re doing more randoris, you’re catching more live rounds, you’re slowing down a little bit on your learning or skills acquisition just because you’re about to go into a pressure situation. Under stress, under duress, it’s hard to rise to the occasion. You’re much more likely to fall to the level of your training.”
In a competition, you have to go in knowing that you’re going to get tired – really tired, and you’ll have to come prepared to deal with your mental state in that space. Along with a plan that helps you work out the kinks in your weekly training routine, you’ll want a plan for your mental game.
For Alex, this means focusing on meeting a really tired version of himself in training, and in finding the way to push through that – a little learning and a lot of hard training.
Fight Camp
When it comes to Muay Thai, Dre Austin, a Boulder Muay Thai coach and Purple Shirt, tells us that training typically gets broken down into stages.
If you have enough notice before a fight, you’ll do a fight camp, which generally lasts 6-8 weeks. From there, technical training always takes first priority in terms of focus: drilling, sparring and strategy work.
Dre says that initially, when there’s not a fight on the books, you’d focus on pure strength – getting your base levels up, testing how much weight you can move.
Strength and conditioning that supports technical training should always be a priority; as Coach Sean Madden, Muay Thai Department Head, says, “You should stay 80 percent ready all of the time.”
As you get closer to a fight (about four weeks out), you begin to work on power. How explosive can you be? How much weight can you move quickly?
[What We Mean When We Say “Fight Camp”]
Closer to the fight, speed becomes more important, and you’ll begin mixing speed work into Muay Thai-specific movements. It becomes less about how much you can move and more about how quickly you can move. As the big day draws nearer, you will begin to prime your body for movements that translate well into fighting: knees, teeps, punches, kicks, etc.
The last week of fight camp, Dre tells us, is usually a deload to let the body recover. Fighters still do workouts but they taper those sessions. If the camp lasts 8 weeks, you’ll likely have a couple of deload weeks to let your body recover.
“Camp is no joke,” says Dre, “because in addition to the strength and training workouts which are typically 2-3 times a week, usually that’s on top of 6 days of technical work. Not every day is hard, but it’s a really big commitment of time and very physically and mentally taxing.”
Cardio for BJJ
When you commit to a competition, you need to be able to operate at maximum capacity for an extended period of time – perhaps for the entire round. This holds especially true for tournaments where you have multiple rounds.
Not to mention, you don’t just want to survive; you want to find a way to win. To do this you have to come in great shape with strong cardiovascular endurance.
A good way to treat your cardio is like an equilateral pyramid: the base of the pyramid is Zone 2 cardio (low to moderate intensity, about 60-70% of your max heart rate) and the tip is VO2 Max cardio – high intensity, about 90-100% of your max heart rate.
With Zone 2, you should be able to maintain a conversation, while VO2 Max makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to do so. You can also look at it as an 80/20 approach, Jordan tells us – 80 percent should be in Zone 2 range and 20 percent should be VO2 Max intervals.
If you have four hours a week to work on cardio, train for comp or do BJJ, then roughly three of those sessions should be at a pace where you could have a conversation but it would be uncomfortable (Zone 2.) The rest of the training can be whatever length of time your match is, and you want high-heart rate rounds.
Simply put, if you have four sessions a week, three of those would be lower heart rate and one of them would be high heart rate.
In those three sessions, Jordan recommends drilling at lower intensity – going through your competition game, working different options and keeping the connections in the game sharp.
Try this for an hour of sweep-and-pass:
- Set a timer for 2.5 minutes.
- Your role on top is to try to pass guard; whoever’s on bottom is giving different reactions.
- Switch; for 2.5 minutes your goal is to sweep.
- Reset the 2.5 minutes: you play guard and it’s the other person’s turn to find passes.
- Switch; now they try to sweep you.
- Do this for an hour. You’ll get great cardio, good BJJ training and not wear yourself out.
“Especially as an older competitor,” says Jordan, “I want to get a lot of volume in but want to be able to recover from your workouts. If you’re training too much, you are going to overtrain and get diminishing returns.”
The older you get, it becomes critical to plan out sessions that improve your cardio and Jiu Jitsu while minimizing the impact on your body.
Cardio for Muay Thai
For Muay Thai, we encourage two types of cardio: aerobic and anaerobic.
Things like running, cycling and swimming (steady state cardio) are great examples of aerobic cardio exercises – they get you into the Zone 2 level of heart rate and allow you to increase your lungs’ capacity to take in and process oxygen. Usually, you want to aim for a minimum of 30 minutes of this.
Aerobic exercises rely on sustained oxygen use to fuel moderate-intensity workouts over longer durations, strengthening the cardiovascular system and enhancing endurance. They improve oxygen delivery to muscles and allow fighters to perform at a high level without tiring quickly. Aerobic exercise also helps the body utilize fat as a fuel source, preserving glycogen for those intense, anaerobic bursts of power needed for quick strikes. (See below!)
For Muay Thai fighters, aerobic training plays a critical role in ensuring they have the stamina for multi-round fights and also supports faster recovery between rounds by clearing lactic acid and other waste, which helps fighters stay sharp and avoid early fatigue.
Anaerobic cardio involves shorter, intense bursts, like drilling, sparring, and padwork. Unlike aerobic training, anaerobic exercises draw on glycogen for quick energy rather than oxygen, making them essential for building explosive power.
Anaerobic conditioning allows fighters to perform fast, powerful strikes and combinations without quickly exhausting their energy stores. This type of training also improves agility and reaction time, which helps fighters respond quickly and stay effective during high-speed exchanges.
Anaerobic fitness allows fighters to perform high-intensity movements — like powerful strikes, fast combinations, and clinch work — without quickly exhausting their energy stores. By pushing the body to perform intense actions repeatedly, anaerobic training also helps fighters develop resilience against fatigue, which is essential for sustaining power throughout the fight.
This form of conditioning also sharpens agility and reaction time, ensuring fighters can swiftly respond to opponents and execute high-speed movements.
By blending aerobic and anaerobic training, fighters can build the endurance needed to go the distance while also maintaining the explosiveness required to deliver powerful strikes and strategic movement. This comprehensive conditioning approach ensures they’re ready for both the demands of a full fight and the energy-intensive moments that can make the difference in the ring.
Cardio, day-of competition
Several hours before the competition, (about 2-6 hours is the most effective), try waking up early and hitting the gym for a hard, 30-minute cardio session.
For Jordan, typically he doesn’t like competition to be the first time that day that his heart rate spikes or his muscles are activated. If you feel similarly, warming up this way before a competition helps burn a lot of the nerves and adrenaline out.
“I’ve found the days I do this,” Jordan says, “I don’t experience an adrenaline dump.”
Just make sure you do it early enough within the competition timeframe to where it works, but not so soon that you don’t have time to recover. You can even do it while traveling, says Jordan, who finds a local gym wherever he is for the burst of cardio before a competition.
Jordan likes to ride the spin bike, but you may find a different approach works best. You might tag in a partner for several rounds of Jiu Jitsu and get the same result. Whatever the method, it’s all for the same goal – getting your heart rate up, sweating and burning off the adrenaline.
In general, to perform at your best you should aim to achieve near heart rate max in the warm up before your matches. For Muay Thai, this is done in the hour or so before the match is set to begin.
Strength and conditioning
When prepping to show up in the best possible shape, you’re not just doing extra training on the mats; you’re doing extra training off the mats through supplementary strength and conditioning.
To compete at your weight class successfully, and to hold up to countless rounds by the end of training camp, you need to be able to physically endure the grind of the hard training. Similar to cardio, build in days where you focus on strength-building and mobility work.
“For this reason, resistance training is a big deal,” Professor Alex says, “not just from a physical fitness standpoint in terms of being a great athlete, but being physically fit enough, healthy enough or strong enough to endure the grind of those training camps.”
Advice Professor Amy has gotten from trainers like Claus include putting her hard lift days on the same day as her hard BJJ days because the stress for her body is all the same.
Along with strength and conditioning, practicing things that lead to agility, explosiveness or power will become crucial to your performance. For example, doing sprints in the park, playing soccer or getting really good, high-heart rate drilling rounds will make sure you stay in peak physical fitness and muscle activity.
In the plan you make for your training, make sure you include what days you lift and what days you train hard (if they’re different), and build in other BJJ or Muay Thai sessions around that. These other sessions can include things like positional training or drilling, and it can look different depending on what you’re working on.
Technical training
You may choose to work on your stand-up game to get that feeling of someone really going after you from the feet. Or you can work different positions with varying degrees of resistance so you can start to feel how you’d respond in those situations.
It can be helpful to fit in a competition training class like the ones we offer at Easton if you can for working through certain scenarios – like what to do if you’re up by points or down by points.
When it comes to the technical aspects of your game, you want to be mindful of your weak spots and defense. How can you patch those up? Even then, you may prepare for one scenario and have it go completely differently. Strengthen your weaknesses, but also work on things you feel you’ve got down solidly because those are exactly what you might end up needing.
Within those weak spots, if you’re working with an injury while you prep for competition, make sure you continue to train with resistance. Protect yourself, but don’t avoid certain positions out of fear. Even if you’re better by the time competition rolls around, your opponent may still be able to exploit those weaknesses if you haven’t practiced certain techniques due to injury.
Finally, data. Review older matches you filmed to find out when you’re most likely to score points versus get scored on and the mistakes you make to know what to work on. This can help you fix blind spots before the next opportunity.
Nutrition pre-comp
Depending on your goals, you may have a specific diet leading up to a competition (or fight) or no restrictions at all. Generally, you want to make sure you’re eating healthy foods and limiting your intake of trans fats. Your diet is your vehicle for the energy you need.
For Muay Thai, once fighters have an event incoming, those who generally eat clean regularly outside of fight camp but may not watch as closely now not only buckle down, but they make sure to get any extra nutrients – proper aminos, protein, creatine, electrolytes, etc.
Depending on your sport, you may not need or want to cut weight. Maybe you may find it easier to maintain a longer period of healthy eating habits over time but become more focused on it leading up to competition. As long as you’re giving your body the right amount of fuel and hydration everyday to do what it needs to do, you’ll be just fine.
[Nutrition Tips for Those Who Train]
To create sustainable eating habits, Amy finds meal prep really helpful and convenient. You have to dedicate some time up front to this, but it can take a lot of time and decision-making out of your day when you have busy training days and would rather crash on the couch than cook.
“If that’s not feasible,” says Amy, “then generally make sure that your house is stocked with healthy foods that will keep you towards your weight goal, and stay hydrated.”
Since managing weight is a necessary part of Muay Thai fighting, cutting weight is often crucial. Fighters often cut weight by adjusting their nutrition and, closer to fight time, manipulating water weight. This can include techniques like water loading, controlling salt intake, and even sweating out excess water in saunas or hot baths on the day of weigh-ins.
While these methods are standard in combat sports, every fighter’s nutritional approach should ultimately aim to fuel optimal performance.
One common mistake in weight cutting is cutting out carbohydrates. Though often misunderstood and unfairly vilified, carbohydrates are essential for maintaining the energy required for rigorous training sessions. Without enough carbs, fighters risk fatigue and decreased performance during intense workouts. Instead, a balanced approach that keeps carbs in the diet can sustain energy levels and enhance overall conditioning.
Protein intake is also vital, as it helps preserve muscle during weight cuts. When fighters cut weight, they inevitably lose some muscle, along with fat, so maintaining adequate protein intake can minimize muscle loss. While individual protein needs may vary, focusing on consistent protein intake ensures that you’ll maintain strength and power leading up to the fight.
Generally, reducing fat intake is one of the more effective adjustments for weight cutting. Though dietary fat is essential for overall health, it provides less immediate value for athletic performance compared to carbs and protein. By cutting back on fats, fighters can reduce caloric intake without compromising the fuel needed for training.
[Kick the Sugar, Optimize Your Training Fuel and Feel Better]
Mindset matters
One of the most important aspects of competition, aside from feeling good about the technical aspects of your game, is mindset. This can mean anything from your attitude day-of to how you approach the entire process of pacing, preparing for and framing a competition for yourself.
“Competition prep can mirror life,” says Amy. “How do you set up your life so you’re living it to the fullest in all aspects? Spirituality, social life, physical health, mental health, work, purpose, passion… all of it. You can look at those same elements for how you get ready for competition.”
When it comes to how you speak to yourself – are you aware of what you’re saying? Is the messaging helpful or harmful? Are you actually encouraging yourself to give up?
If you find yourself engaging in more negative self-talk than positive, practicing reframing is important to build the connections in your brain to the new thoughts and new ways of thinking, Amy tells us. The mind is a powerful tool, and how we choose to wield it can have a real impact on our performance.
“Go in there with a good mindset,” says Jordan, “with your vision broad, focused, and do all the BJJ that you know how to do. When I do that, those are always my best days.”
[The Mindset Problem]
As you get closer to the day of competition, be mindful of where you’re putting your energy. If you focus on the anxious thoughts, you may end up overtraining or even injuring yourself.
It can be tempting to start trying to learn a bunch of new things “just in case,” but the closer you get – a week or two out – the more you should just focus on staying hydrated, well-rested and getting fluid movement. Continue to flow through the things you’ve already built into your game and don’t stress about adding new things.
Other things that can help maintain a positive mindset when the adrenaline and nerves hit include practicing breathwork or having a mantra you can focus on that goes with your breathing.
There will always be things we can and things we can’t control. Focus on the things you can control, and let go of those other things – like the actual outcome. Once the outcome has come to fruition, accept the result and let it guide you forward towards the next one.
When it comes to the mindset with which we approach competition, consider who you are as a person. Do you prefer to plan out every detail or be more spontaneous? If you can frame competition in this way, you’ll normalize the experience for yourself in a way that’s integrated holistically with the rest of your life.
Find somebody you can turn to as a mentor to talk to about your fears, technical goals and progress. This could be a coach, or someone who has a lot of competition experience – anyone along your journey who can offer guidance and support.
[Mental Prep + Fortitude: How to Win Mentally at You Next Competition]
Sample training: a doctor’s approach
For Easton Black Belt and MD Vassily (Vass) Eliopoulos, competition has played an important role in his Jiu Jitsu journey – which in turn has played an indispensable role in his life, career and mental health.
We profiled him earlier this year, but we wanted to bring him back as an example of the range of people at Easton who compete. You don’t have to be a pro athlete or aspiring to make Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai your career to benefit from competition.
You can compete at any age, any rank and having come from any walk of life and the experience will challenge and reward you immensely. The important thing is, if you choose to compete, is to go into it with a mindset of sustainability.
“If you’re getting ready for a tournament and you want to train seven days a week,” he says, “you can, but you have to know how to do it without going full force days on end.”
At his peak of competition, Vass tells us that he would train five to six times a week. First, you need to stage it. Drilling then gets broken down into different types of drilling, from light drilling (flow rolling) and targeted flowing with variation, to intense drilling.
It’s important to have a partner who knows what you’re trying to work on so you can repeatedly do something until you’ve got it. These targeted flow sessions can help you clean up a move or hone into an aspect of your game you need to develop.
“For a breakdown: 80 percent of the day should be in the drilling range,” says Vass, “the flow to sparring range – with only 20 percent in live range.”
Intense drilling can look like repetition of a single move or different series of moves over and over again but with various levels of intensity, from flow roll to nearly full strength. With a partner tuned into what you need, you work to cycle through those levels of drilling together, and sparring.
Even when we cycle through those levels and have a plan, we must still adapt. If we wake up one morning feeling completely beat, that doesn’t have to mean we should take the day off. We may still benefit from going in to train at the light end of the drilling scale for an hour or two.
Other days, we might train for 3-4 hours, and these longer days should also be considered in terms of cycles. Begin with a warmup, start training light and end at a live training level where everything’s full strength.
If he were to do a four-hour training day, Vass says he would go in and warm up, then go hard, cut back to flow roll, recover and then finish with hard live training.
[Easton Open Spring 2024: Competition that Elevates Community]
When you can’t do it all… stick to these basics
If you signed up for a competition but have too much going on to dive to deep into the weeds of prep, you can focus on these basic elements and still find success:
- Rules. Make sure you understand the ruleset of whatever competition you’re going into.
- Requirements. Understand uniform and weight requirements, as well as weigh-in times.
- Train hard. Put in hard training days so you know how to push through tough spots.
- Adaptability. Work on different scenarios so you can shift quickly between strategies.
- Attitude. Adopt a competition attitude: don’t sit back and accept a sweep. Don’t stop in the middle of a pass attempt.
- Open mind. Remember, competing is a different skill set than your sport.
You may have an amazing understanding of Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai yet find that it doesn’t come through in your performance. Like anything else you’re trying to learn, you can learn just as much from failure – if not more. Nobody goes into a match prepared to lose, but losing can give you some great, fast feedback on what your body can do under pressure.
“I’d encourage everyone who’s interested,” says Alex, “to take that step and notice how going through that process, regardless of the outcome, is going to help you become a better martial artist. It adds up, you can never take it away.”
Most importantly, whatever you’re looking for in your sport – whether it’s amateur competitions or professional competitions, it’s there. With an avenue and opportunity for all ages, all ranks, all weight classes to compete, no matter where you are in your journey, if you’re drawn to competition, there is an avenue for you to chase that dream.
