Competing in tournaments can help you push past your limits, confront and conquer your fears, blast through your barriers and take your confidence to a whole new level. One category of competition doesn't even involve sparring. During form competition, you'll go up against others on the performance of your patterns, much like a gymnastics event. You're judged individually on your accuracy, strength, balance, and coordination.

Most students are often hesitant to enter their first tournament, but the benefits cannot be understated. Here at Strickland’ Martial Arts we encourage all students, at all levels, to participate in tournament competition for a variety of reasons. Here are 10 reasons that all of our warriors here receive for challenging themselves to compete:

1. Testing Your Skills

Tournament competition is an opportunity to take your training and put it to the test. Competition tests your physical fitness, your technique, your stamina, your timing, your mental strength, and your determination.  Just like in belt grading, tournaments offer an opportunity to show that your training has made a real difference in your ability level over time.

2. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

When we train in class, we get comfortable. We get comfortable with our training floor, our instructors, our peers and our sparring partners. We can even get comfortable with our complacency. Competing in a tournament – be it patterns, sparring or board breaking – puts us in a new environment where we’re forced to perform in front of new eyes, in a new room with people we don’t know. It’s this act of stepping out of our comfort zone that pushes you to work that much harder.

3. Challenge Yourself Against New Opponents

When we continue to spar with the same people over and over – as we often do in class – we learn how people move, what techniques they throw the most and where their weaknesses are. We learn to adapt to each of our partners and anticipate their moves. When we step out on the competition floor we have no such insight. It’s a true test of skill against an unknown competitor – an opportunity to gain a new perspective and find out how sharp our instincts really are when we have to think on our feet.

4. Overcome Your Fears

Martial artists must learn to stay calm in stressful situations. Tournament competition creates jitters for sure. We need to learn to channel this useful energy. Learning to stay focused and relaxed under the stress of competition and perform is a skill that is only developed in a tournament settings

5. Build Confidence

At our tournaments we break the competition down into small fields by age, gender and belt level, where competitors get a chance to see how they really stack up against others their size, age and rank. By comparing yourself to others on a more level playing field, you can really see your skills. Furthermore, whether you win or lose, one thing is virtually guaranteed: you will finish feeling empowered knowing that you did what you set out to do – compete!

6. Build Team Spirit

Tournaments give you a chance to grow closer to your peers. When you travel together, compete together and spend a couple of days in close contact with one another - cheering for one another and giving hugs and high-fives for performance and effort - the natural outflow is a more cohesive team spirit. Everyone wants to belong! Tournament competition specifically gives our students the opportunity to belong to our tribe and to bond with like-minded warriors who share a same love of martial arts.

7. Build Character

Winning and losing is part of any competition; and healthy competition is good for you. It creates opportunity to build mental strength and determination but it also offers a chance to learn humility. Compete often enough and you will see that there will always be someone who is a stronger competitor than you are. Tournaments give you the opportunity to test your skills, recognize your weaknesses and congratulate others for their successes regardless of how you place.

8. Get Motivated Watching Top Level Competitors

When you’re moving up through the belt ranks, watching top level black belt competitors and the demo teams can be very inspiring. It motivates you to want to not only continue your training but to take it up a notch and focus more on areas where maybe you see room for improvement: conditioning, flexibility, speed, accuracy, self-control or power. It can motivate you to aim to master a new technique or combination.

9. Give Yourself a Short-Term Goal

Registering for a tournament can help shift your focus towards preparation in advance. As that date draws near, you can use it as a short-term goal to seek to improve your focus on your training. It’s an excellent motivator for ensuring those patterns don’t get overlooked at home, workouts don’t get skipped and class attendance remains regular.

10. Have Fun

Tournaments are fun… and you might just win a medal!