🐝 Expanded notes on "being too nice" from Beatrice Jin

This is an updated version of some notes I circulated earlier.

I've been digging through hours of interviews with top-ranked IBJJF black belt Beatrice Jin for our new Stop Being Nice audio course.

We're trying to help grapplers of all levels and backgrounds overcome one of jiu-jitsu's most common mental hangups: “I'm ‘too nice’ to be effective in jiu-jitsu!”

Beatrice argues that this mental block comes from a misunderstanding of what “niceness” and “meanness” represent in the context of martial arts.

I thought you might appreciate some of the notes from our conversations. This is an updated version of some notes I circulated earlier. Here's what I learned from my chats with Beatrice:

There are no mean techniques, only mean applications.
Any technique can be nice, or mean. There's nothing “mean” about moves themselves; it's all how you do them.

Beatrice's 3-factor “meanness” test.
To assess whether she's being too mean, Beatrice considers three things: the injury risk of the current situation, her intent in the moment, and whether she is abusing a size or skill discrepancy.

Being “too nice” is invisible.
The consequences of excessive niceness aren't always obvious. They manifest in missed opportunities and things you fail to make happen. The mean person's problem is visible, but the nice person's isn't... including to themselves.

Hesitation may be a form of excessive niceness.
If you hesitate to “pull the trigger” mid-roll, you might be struggling with excessive niceness. Hesitation often comes from fear of engaging confidently with your full potential.

If you can't hold it, you don't have it.
Beatrice calls this the static control test: Can she hold a position or submission indefinitely, or does she feel pressured to finish quickly for fear of losing it? Risk comes from rushing.

Reframe “letting them work” as “manage your level.”
Experienced grapplers often say they're “letting them work” by turning down their intensity against junior opponents. Beatrice suggests that instead, we switch to a skill level appropriate for our partner. “Letting them work” isn't helpful because we're not giving them realistic offense.

Reward control, not winning.
This one's for the coaches: make sure you're creating the right win conditions in class. Teach your students to advance position with control and consistency. Rushing to victory often stems from a lack of confidence in the ability to maintain positional advantage. Beatrice and her coach call this “discipline in position.”

Aggression comes from the bottom, too.
Guard pulling doesn't have to be the safe or passive choice. Top black belts race to it because their guard is their most aggressive weapon. Niceness extends to thinking that certain positions are inherently passive.

Standing out is the price of getting good.
The hard truth: When you attempt anything brave, you will stand out. You will be criticized. You will be judged. When we say “nice guys finish last,” it's not because being nice is bad; it's because we often use “niceness” as an excuse for avoiding the attention that comes with doing big things.

Honesty, not niceness, is the real virtue.
Holding back pressure, technique, or intensity isn't kindness; it's dishonesty that robs your partner of a realistic look at jiu-jitsu. This is a unifying principle that runs through Beatrice's course.

The need to “feel nice” is a hangup Beatrice has had for years. She worried that: “If I'm more aggressive, people aren't going to like training with me. And that was like a big hangup I had for a really, really long time.”

What changed her mind was something a friend said to her: “If people don't like you for being aggressive and doing technique, then maybe those aren't the people that you want to train with.”

That reframe is at the heart of Stop Being Nice. Niceness on the mats costs you reps, costs you submissions, and costs you the chance to train honestly with the people who'd actually push you.

For a lot of us, this niceness was trained in long before we ever stepped on a mat. Family, school, gender expectations, and cultural values can train us to avoid conflict. We prize modesty, harmony, and not standing out. Beatrice covers all of this in the course, including her own experience growing up in an Asian American household and how those values followed her onto the mats.

Beatrice is a black belt and coach at Kogaion Academy in Arlington, Virginia. She came to jiu-jitsu from a career in journalism. Since earning her black belt, she's won dozens of IBJJF medals and currently ranks among the top 10 black belts in her division worldwide. Most recently, she took bronze in the open class at IBJJF Pan, competing against opponents of any weight class. She's not teaching this course from theory. She's teaching it from her own training.

If you've ever been told you're "too nice" for jiu-jitsu, this course was built for you specifically.

Stop Being Nice is exclusively available to BJJ Mental Models Premium subscribers. And I will give you a free month to check it out. Just use code BNICE when you sign up.

Here's the link to your free month of Premium so you can listen: https://bjjmentalmodels.com/premium

—Steve

P.S. The cultural stuff is the part I think is underappreciated. You can drill techniques all day, but if your brain has been trained for thirty years to defer and avoid conflict, no amount of mat time fixes that automatically. Beatrice's course is about retraining that.