The Wost Muscle to Strengthen

Most Jiu Jitsu practitioners know that strengthening our muscles will help us on the mats. Not so that you can use strength instead of technique, but to give us an extra edge when we're rolling.

And there are lots of ways to add strength and build our muscles, Sport Specific Conditioning, Crossfit, HIIT Workouts, Yoga etc... However there is one muscle that we strengthen quite often, sometimes without knowing it.

It's not our biceps, our quads or our abs, it's our Quit Muscle. If you've studied anatomy& physiology, or even if you haven't, you know that our Quit Muscle is nowhere to be found on the human body. Our quit muscle is found deep in our minds.

It's that little voice that says "don't worry about it, it's only 1 extra day off" or "I'm stuck in this position and I don't see a way out, so I'll tap".

With most muscles the more you use it the more it tends to grow and strengthen. So if you do squats a few times a week with the same weight, eventually those squats seem much easier and you're barely braking a sweat. Unlike your other muscles, the more you use this one the harder things get.

Sure, in the short term quitting seems easier. It's easier not to do that extra set, it's easier to tap just because you're uncomfortable. But in the long term, it makes it much harder for you to be successful. The reason for this is that you don't just use your Quit Muscle on the mats or in the gym, it starts to show up in other parts of your life.

Before you know it, 1 day off turns to 2, and 2 turns into "it's okay if I miss this deadline at work, no one will notice". And that's how the quit muscle gets stronger, it grows little by little in very subtle ways.

Recently I've found that my quit muscle is getting stronger. I've been sensing it for a while, but I've been justifying it by saying "I testing alternative ways to work out". It all came to a head a few days ago. I was rolling with a guy at my gym that constantly beats me up. After a few minutes of fending him off he pinned my arm across my chest and started to slide from the mount to side control for the arm triangle.

I tapped before he got his second foot on the ground and he gave me an odd look. It was only for a split second, but I recognized that look: "Bro, why'd you give up"?  We started rolling again and again I found myself in the same mounted position with my arm pinned against across my chest. Guess what, I tapped again. Not because I was in pain or because I couldn't breathe, because I quit.

If you're familiar with David Goggins, he calls it "taking souls" and on that day he took my soul. It's a shitty thing to say about yourself and it's a shitty thing to feel. So maybe this isn't a letter to you, the person reading this, maybe its a letter to me. Either way I have some advice for both of us "Don't Fucking Quit".

The great news about having a Quitting Muscle is that, like any other muscle it will atrophy if it's not used. So the less we use it the weaker the desire to quit will be. I'm not saying don't tap if you're experiencing real pain or if you start seeing stars, of course you should tap then. I'm saying there's a difference between your training partner getting into a good position and tapping you vs. you feel a little uncomfortable or tired so you tap.

My final thought comes from my daughter's favorite book Rosie Revere Engineer: The only true failure comes if you quit.