Where Are You Sandbagging Yourself?

In the locker room the other day, a brown belt and a black belt were giving me the usual ribbing about getting beat up on the mat.

“You’re getting beaten up out there, Chuck.”

“Semantics matter,” I said. “You’re not beating me up. I’m building resilience.”

Everyone laughed.

And I meant it, mostly.

That’s been my lens forever—hardship builds capacity, adversity is useful, getting smashed is part of how you learn to stop getting smashed.

It’s a true story.

It’s just not the whole story.

Because here’s the half I don’t talk about as often:

Being small has advantages too.

Small Comes With Its Own Weapons

For many of these articles, I’ve written about the downside of being roughly 5’2” and 120 pounds.

Thirty-five years in construction alongside men sometimes twice my size.

Martial arts against heavier, stronger partners.

I’ve got a thousand stories about surviving disadvantage.

I spent years learning how to survive being smaller.

What took me much longer to admit and own is that small came with its own weapons.

In Hapkido, I did a lot of footwork—happo undo (8 directions) drills, moving in every direction, changing angles, repositioning constantly.

And somewhere in all that practice, I got quick.

Genuinely quick.

Working with larger partners, I could sometimes move around them so fast they had to keep turning to face me, and a couple of them admitted they’d start getting dizzy trying to keep up.

They had mass, reach, and strength.

I had quickness, angles, and the ability to change position before they finished their last thought.

That wasn’t cheating.

That was using the body and the attributes I actually had.

Bony Is a Feature, Not a Bug

At 120 pounds with not much padding, I’m lean in a way that has consequences.

Sharp elbows.

Bony forearms.

Hard shins.

Hard knuckles.

Training partners would occasionally run into one of those edges and pull back grimacing, shaking something out.

I’d apologize reflexively, because nobody likes being the guy whose body hurts you.

But there’s a story there I used to tell with some embarrassment, and now I tell it honestly.

In Hapkido, if a partner was trying to bully me with overly hard punches and kicks, sometimes I’d stop giving them the soft redirect.

Instead of the palm deflection, the sidestep, the gentle blending, I’d let their strike meet a forearm, elbow or a shin.

Just structure.

Not driving into them.

Letting them drive into it.

If somebody chooses to come hard into solid structure, they may discover the smaller person is not necessarily the softer target.

And then there was the stupid punching game.

You’re going to love this, because it’s exactly as intelligent as it sounds.

Back in the day, on jobsites and occasionally in bars, some buddies and I would play this game where we both threw punches at each other’s incoming fists.

Fist against fist.

Over and over.

That’s the game.

That’s the whole game.

I’ve got small hands, but there’s not much meat on them, the knuckles are hard, and I’d spent years conditioning them on a makiwara and learning how to form a proper fist.

So the bigger, stronger, younger guys would eventually stop, shaking out their hands.

Small wasn’t automatically worse.

It was a different structure.

Different advantages.

I could see that plain as day standing up.

So why was I so slow to use any of it on the ground?

I Didn’t Want to Be “That Guy”

When I started BJJ, I held back.

Deliberately.

I didn’t want to be that guy.

The training partner who hurts people.

Throws elbows carelessly.

Spazzes.

Uses speed without control.

Creates pointless pain.

Becomes a danger through ego or recklessness.

So as a white belt, I slowed myself down when I was faster.

I pulled away from sharp frames.

I removed uncomfortable pressure.

I avoided my bony structure and certain kinds of leverage because they felt mean.

Some of that restraint was genuinely good.

White belts create enough accidental chaos without adding elbows to the mix.

But I think I threw out more than I needed to.

Use What You Have

Recently, my more experienced training partners—brown belts and black belts—have been telling me the same thing over and over.

Use what you have.

They use their size.

Their weight.

Their strength.

Their reach.

Their pressure.

They don’t apologize for it.

Because they're using it with control.

And they’re telling me I shouldn’t voluntarily surrender my speed, my frames, my angles, my sharp structure, or my ability to make someone genuinely uncomfortable.

The issue was never whether I use an advantage.

It’s how I use it.

And that distinction matters more than anything else in this article.

Speed is not the same as spazziness.

Spazziness is movement without control, awareness, timing, or intent.

I don’t need to slow myself down just because I’m fast.

I need to develop controlled speed.

Pressure is not the same as striking.

If a much bigger partner is crushing me from the top, I can put the structure of my elbow against their floating ribs or use a hard forearm frame near their throat.

I’m not driving it into them like a punch.

I’m creating a frame.

Now they have a problem to solve.

They can keep pressing into it.

Or...

Adjust.

Back off.

Change the angle.

I’m not trying to injure anybody.

I’m giving them a decision to make.

That’s controlled grappling, not me jamming elbows into people out of spite.

There’s a big shift happening as I move into blue-belt territory, and it’s this:

The game is finally slowing down.

Not because BJJ got less dynamic.

Because I got less frantic.

I’m learning to feel.

To pressure.

To cook.

To wait.

To conserve energy.

To stay intentional.

To respond instead of react.

To use structure instead of explosion.

And here’s the quiet gift in all of that:

At white belt, using an advantage carelessly just looks like recklessness.

With skill, the same advantage becomes part of your game.

Where Are You Sandbagging Yourself?

Okay.

Let me turn this around, because this was never really about me and my joints.

I think a lot of people spend so long learning to overcome their disadvantages that they start refusing their advantages.

They sandbag themselves.

They make progress harder than it needs to be because getting it the hard way starts to feel like the only honest way.

Maybe you know someone like this.

Maybe it’s you.

• The naturally charismatic person who downplays their charisma.
• The analytical person who stopped trusting their own analysis because somebody once called them an overthinker.
• The person with supportive parents or a strong network who secretly feels like their success “counts less.”
• The fast learner who pretends not to learn fast.
• The calm, persuasive, disciplined, creative, or perceptive person who keeps all of it dialed down.

And listen—I’m not saying privilege doesn’t matter.

I’m saying almost the opposite.

If you have a real advantage, pretending you don’t is not the same as being humble.

It’s not more virtuous to waste a strength than to use it well.

The ethical question was never whether you have it.

It’s how you use it.

Resilience Isn’t Supposed to Shrink You

Here’s the line I keep coming back to because I think it’s the middle of the whole thing:

Resilience is supposed to expand your capabilities, not convince you to throw half of them away.

You don’t get extra points for making the game harder.

You’d never tell a tall basketball player to stop using his reach.

Or a fast runner to slow down.

Or a socially perceptive person to stop reading the room.

That would be absurd.

And yet people do the equivalent to themselves every single day.

They turn down their own volume out of guilt.

Fear of arrogance.

A need to prove themselves.

Or some idea that difficulty equals virtue.

Now, to be fair to the sensible version of this, advantages can absolutely be used badly.

Strength can become bullying.

Speed can become recklessness.

Intelligence can become humiliation.

Charisma can become manipulation.

Wealth can become entitlement.

And resilience itself can become tolerating bad situations for too long.

Flexibility can become surviving terrible positions instead of developing better technique.

So the answer isn’t to abandon the advantage.

The answer is to develop enough skill and judgment to use it responsibly.

That’s the difference between having an advantage and being dominated by it.

Put It on the Mat

This is the part worth doing, so let’s keep it small.​

There’s a natural progression in martial arts that applies to everything else.

When you’re new, you over-rely on your natural gifts.

The strong beginner muscles everything.

The fast beginner explodes.

The flexible beginner survives garbage positions.

The smart beginner tries to think their way out of everything.

So a good coach says:

“Stop relying on that.”

And it’s good advice.

Because it forces you to build the skills you’ve been skipping.

But that’s not the final stage.

Eventually the advantage comes back.

Now with technique.

Timing.

Sensitivity.

Judgment.

Strength plus technique.

Speed plus timing.

Pressure plus sensitivity.

Confidence plus listening.

Intelligence plus humility.

The advantage stops controlling you and starts belonging to you.

So here’s your rep.

1. Name one real advantage.

Not aspirational.

Actual.

Strength.

Speed.

Patience.

Money.

Network.

Calm.

Pattern recognition.

Humor.

Persistence.

Empathy.

Reputation.

Experience.

Something you have that other people may have to work harder to develop.

2. Notice why you’ve been holding it back.

Guilt?

Fear of looking arrogant?

Fear of hurting someone?

A need to prove yourself?

A belief that hard equals good?

Old feedback that’s no longer true?

3. Name the reckless version.

What does misusing this advantage look like?

Naming it is what keeps you honest.

4. Run one controlled rep.

Use the advantage deliberately in one situation this week.

Not maximally.

Not aggressively.

Skillfully.

Then notice what happens.

Did it get easier?

Did the quality improve?

Did you create more value with less wasted effort?

That’s it.

One advantage.

One rep.

Use the Tools You Were Given

Personal leadership isn’t only about overcoming what makes life harder.

Sometimes it’s about finally accepting what makes life easier.

Whether you call them God-given gifts, genetics, temperament, upbringing, luck, experience, or earned capability, some things came to you more naturally than others.

Whatever you call the source, pretending you don’t have those advantages doesn’t make you more virtuous.

The work is to use them well.

Put responsibly to work.

So yeah, I’m still going to get beat up on the mat, and I’m still going to call it building resilience because it genuinely is.

But from here on, I’m also going to use my speed, my frames, and every sharp corner I was born with.

You don’t get extra credit for tying one hand behind your back.

Use the tools you were given—and learn to use them well.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The 1% Drill

Big improvement is often the accumulation of tiny adjustments that don't look impressive in isolation.

Today's job isn't transformation.

It's finding one useful edge.

Your drill:

• Choose one activity you perform regularly.
• Ask, "What would make this slightly easier, cleaner, faster, stronger, or more effective?"
• Make one small improvement.
• Notice whether the change is worth keeping.

You're not looking for a revolution.

You're looking for the next repeatable improvement.

📚 Leader’s Library

​The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama​

Why?

The Art of Happiness keeps returning to a simple idea: beneath our differences in culture, religion, politics, and personality, people share many of the same basic desires—to be happy, to avoid suffering, to feel safe, connected, and understood.

That doesn’t mean we have to agree with everyone.

It means that when we remember the human being underneath the position, it becomes a little easier to respond with curiosity instead of contempt—and a little harder to pass our own hurt forward.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck