What I Learned From the Toughest Martial Arts Tournament of My Life
What a wild weekend.
I’ve been competing in grappling for a really long time.
I did my first wrestling tournament in the 7th grade when my team's 112-pound starting wrestler couldn’t make it to weekend competitions because of “previously scheduled commitments”.
His reason for not showing up didn’t matter to me because, after my first wrestling tournament, I was hooked. I didn’t even like wrestling and I lost my first match at my first tournament by more than 10 points, but I knew that wrestling/grappling was something that had to get better at.
A little over 12 years later, here we are. Grappling is my job, and I just competed in the toughest tournament of my life — the 2022 ADCC West Coast Trials.
For those who don’t know much about grappling, ADCC (Abu Dhabi Combat Club) is the most prestigious grappling tournament in the world, and the “Trials” are qualifying events that happen all over the world in the lead up to the tournament.
The North American Trials (particularly the West Coast Trials) are generally considered to be the most challenging trials because of both the popularity and competitive level of grappling in North America. In other words, 256 people signed up to compete in my…
