Top 69 Matakas Jiu Jitsu Quotes
#1. The time we spend talking about Jiu Jitsu is time not spent practicing Jiu Jitsu. This is a necessary aspect of study, but it is one we mustn't lose ourselves in; we learn best by doing.
Chris Matakas
#2. The major events in our lives receive the entire spotlight, but ultimately your life will be defined by the same handful of choices you make each day.
Chris Matakas
#3. We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life.
Chris Matakas
#4. In Jiu Jitsu an inch is a mile, and a second is an eternity. Use each wisely.
Chris Matakas
#5. Jiu Jitsu can be a source of total transparency such as a mirror, but it takes a conscious choice to see what it has to say.
Chris Matakas
#6. Jiu Jitsu removes the societal walls that we have been forced to unknowingly hold up with our adopted beliefs. It removes the limits of common thought, and allows for expression of our highest ideals.
Chris Matakas
#7. Relationships formed through Jiu Jitsu are deeply rooted in respect for one another, and this is often not the case in matters of modern society.
Chris Matakas
#8. For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.
Chris Matakas
#9. All successful people live how great guard passers pass.
Chris Matakas
#10. I train because it makes every area of my life better, and it makes me better at every area of my life.
Chris Matakas
#11. Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man.
Chris Matakas
#12. Consistently failing is nothing more than an indication that you are progressing. The more we fail the farther we will see. Failure is not an option; it is the only option. A master is a master because he has had the courage to fail and the wisdom to learn from it.
Chris Matakas
#13. Wearing a black belt does not make you a super hero, and wearing a white belt does not mean you have little to offer as a person. It is what we do in the belts we wear, and not the belts themselves that matter.
Chris Matakas
#14. Yes, you have been molding your ability to perform Jiu Jitsu for all these years, but you have been more importantly molding who you are as a person. Jiu Jitsu is the sculptor, and you are the clay. It is with this art that we strive and reach for our highest ideals not as athletes, but as people.
Chris Matakas
#15. As an instructor, my goal has always been to use Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to help our students achieve their goals, whatever the case may be. I have yet to find a better vehicle for growth, and the moment I do I will certainly pursue it with the rivaled fervor that I approached Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
#16. Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life's challenges for a lifetime.
Chris Matakas
#17. Plateaus are a manifestation of the law of diminishing returns, and when we reach one it simply means that it is time to adjust our methods.
Chris Matakas
#18. This is the opportunity the fellowship of Jiu Jitsu affords us. To reach our highest potential of self, and then to offer that self to another.
Chris Matakas
#19. There is no higher calling than service to your fellow man, and to do so through your own personal mastery of a craft is a gift enjoyed by few. Cultivate this gift, and give it away.
Chris Matakas
#20. In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique "harder," rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand.
Chris Matakas
#21. On the other side of self-doubt comes a confidence from faith in the process. Even though our destination may be a long way off, each day we rise with a subtle smile as if we have already achieved it, because, when we are truly committed to a task, we already have.
Chris Matakas
#22. We are not practicing Jiu Jitsu to learn how to fight, we are learning how to live.
Chris Matakas
#23. Nothing worthwhile ever came from divided attention.
Chris Matakas
#24. Where my tendons have been torn, my psyche has been mended. This was a worthy trade.
Chris Matakas
#25. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats.
Chris Matakas
#26. Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken.
Chris Matakas
#27. The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set.
Chris Matakas
#28. Jiu Jitsu provides a place of fellowship that, unfortunately, our society has largely failed to create.
Chris Matakas
#29. Make no mistake, you earn a white belt. The belt is a physical representation of a commitment to the beginner's mind. It is a vulnerability and a willingness to learn that shines through.
Chris Matakas
#30. It is fellowship, this most fundamental need on our way toward achieving our highest expression of the human experience, which Jiu Jitsu provides.
Chris Matakas
#31. There is no concrete way to play Jiu Jitsu, and this is why so many different types of people find joy in it.
Chris Matakas
#32. Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish.
Chris Matakas
#33. We can either approach Jiu Jitsu through the lens of the "real world" or we can approach the real world through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have found the latter to be far more rewarding.
Chris Matakas
#34. I can think of no more worthwhile aim than pursuing mastery in this craft while transcending one's own limitations.
Chris Matakas
#35. My growth as a human being has been directly proportional to my growth as a marital artist.
Chris Matakas
#36. I had no desire of being professionally successful. No desire for material wealth. All I wanted out of life was Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
#37. Jiu Jitsu has given me an education in education, which I now see is the most valuable education there is.
Chris Matakas
#38. The only way to consistently perform at your potential is to ask: Am I better than I was yesterday?
Chris Matakas
#39. Jiu Jitsu gives me an ideal to strive toward. Technical mastery lies on an infinite continuum and completion of this skill is impossible. Every time I train I have something that I can improve upon, and this will hold true for each and every training session that lies between me and my grave.
Chris Matakas
#40. Your progress as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner is a direct reflection of the standards you have for yourself.
Chris Matakas
#42. After I received my blue belt, I soon recognized that the belts were simply an external representation of an inner experience, and that they mattered little compared to the person I was becoming.
Chris Matakas
#43. Jiu Jitsu gave me the opportunity to be a real human being. It opened my heart and my mind. I am kinder, more gentle and more loving due to my efforts in this art.
Chris Matakas
#44. Jiu Jitsu is basic training for life. We are training not to learn how to fight, but how to live.
Chris Matakas
#45. We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves.
Chris Matakas
#46. We must remember that science is a way of using empirical evidence to better understand our world. We are all scientists, just many of us are not very good ones. However, we are all capable of exercising our intellects in a purposeful, linear pursuit of knowledge.
Chris Matakas
#47. An arm bar in a vacuum is worthless. It is the realization of the truths which constitute that arm bar that is the real treasure we seek.
Chris Matakas
#48. I would more appropriately define mastery as the technical ability possible within the constraints of your particular existence. It must be noted that this is a subjective definition, and that this degree of mastery would be individual to each of us.
Chris Matakas
#49. We are never truly ourselves as we are mid-roll.
Chris Matakas
#50. Jiu Jitsu is a vehicle for self-discovery and growth. It reminds me of my ego, of my insecurities, and of my shortcomings.
Chris Matakas
#51. Any advanced student will tell you the best way to recover guard is simply not to get your guard passed in the first place.
Chris Matakas
#52. I train jiu jitsu because I love jiu jitsu. But I also train knowing that my practice in this art will allow me better practice in any art. If you have learned one thing, you have learned all things, because you have learned how to learn. I can think of no more worthwhile pursuit of education.
Chris Matakas
#53. Jiu Jitsu is a baptism by combat, and serves a purpose in the inner life of the individual that has always existed, but our modern culture fails to acknowledge.
Chris Matakas
#54. Jiu Jitsu uses us to express itself, and the best thing we can do to is to become a vehicle capable of expressing Jiu Jitsu with all of its perfection minus our imperfections.
Chris Matakas
#55. I believe that which you study is only matched in importance by the sincerity with which you approach it.
Chris Matakas
#56. If you can wrestle but not play Jiu Jitsu, or you can play Jiu Jitsu but not wrestle, you are not a complete grappler and lack the sufficient skills to safely subdue an opponent.
Chris Matakas
#57. All of Jiu Jitsu is finding a way to get your partner to willingly go where you want him to go in the first place.
Chris Matakas
#58. Do not seek victory, for victory in itself will not serve you. Seek to understand what made the victory possible.
Chris Matakas
#59. Autopilot is great, and removal of thought is one of the highest ideals of training. But removal of thought in the moment must be preceded by purposeful thought beforehand.
Chris Matakas
#60. By becoming a black belt, you will become whatever it is you wanted to be in the first place, and Jiu Jitsu will have served its aim.
Chris Matakas
#61. This is a trust that you just cannot find in modern society for there are no conditions to forge it.
Chris Matakas
#62. We have an obligation to ourselves to foster the environment that allows for our self-actualization. Rather than my gifts serving me, I must serve them. I want to be a steward of the best aspects of my character and assist them in their fulfillment through proper discipline and habits.
Chris Matakas
#63. We can lose the roll, we can lose position, but we can constantly strive to win the moment.
Chris Matakas
#64. To achieve anything we must grind, but to enjoy anything we must flow.
Chris Matakas
#65. The highest aim was never to master Jiu Jitsu; it was to master myself.
Chris Matakas
#66. Jiu Jitsu is cognitively-complex, so much so that there is a great barrier to entry in terms of intellect. I have never met a great Jiu Jitsu player who was not highly intelligent, and I don't think I ever will.
Chris Matakas
#67. I have never been as alive or awake as I have been through Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
#68. We must not learn to try harder. The key is to learn how not to try in the first place.
Chris Matakas
#69. When you realize you are no longer made of glass, you lose the desire to demonstrate that fragility in others.
Chris Matakas
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