Felipe Pena. Photo: Dan Rod
Black-belt Felipe “Preguiça” Pena is one of the greatest competitors today. But, in order to reach the top and stay there, he had to dedicate himself completely to training. The Gracie Barra athlete trains at his gym in Belo Horizonte, at the Gracie Barra BH HQ, and always does his camps for important events at Romulo Barral’s gym in California. In a talk with Graciemag, Preguiça pointed out the two most common mistakes made by the average BJJ fighter during training. Enjoy his wisdom below.
1 – Run over your ego. This is one of the most important things for those who want to compete. Sometimes you are dead from training and there is a tough guy waiting to roll with you. There are people who avoid training with that guy, afraid of losing or getting squeezed. That is the silliest thing. What matters is the championship. The training is made for you to tap out, get run over and go through every type of complicated situation. So you have to seek out the toughtest guy to train with, to make the training as hard as possible.
2 – Overcome fatigue. When you are tired, you want to stop, you want to rest. Get over that tiredness. Think only of continuing on. I put it in my mind always that I’ll keep going. That makes me always explore my limits and reach my training goal.
