Quitting competitive Judo

“If you are in university already and are not on a national team, Judo is only ever going to be a hobby. Focus on university work, which will lead to other academic and or vocational opportunities.”

Read this under a post on this thread, and man I needed to read this… it hurts so much, joined judo at 16 (actually did it as a kid too but at a McDojo), started training seriously at 18, had a lot of regional medals and some national success in some matches from 18 to 20 (my current age) but literally no comparison to the guys in the actual national time who train since they were little kids and toss me around as if I was on my trial class. It was a level of skill gap that, while motivating, was also a big reality check because no positive mindset makes me think I could ever get to compete with them, especially because while I train they do so to. I did incredible physical and mental progress in this two years, but my S&C can’t compare to those of people who’ve been competing nationally and internationally since middle school on neither stamina nor pure strength.

It’s sad because as stupid as it sounds, for those 2 years I felt like a professional athlete, training 5x a week plus morning sessions, traveling around the country to compete, my training session was named “Judo PRO” at a club where I trained… but there’s levels to this, and slowly my self lie faded and the reality that I could never catch up unless I spent another 6-7 years training to then maybe have some small international success before retiring kicked in. The truth is that I was a guy who lost way more matches than I’ve won, is still a brown belt, bought his backnumber (never competed internationally like European Cups, very hard to qualify here in Italy), and won most medals due to a small bracket (-100kg) or in minor competitions.

Came to terms that I was giving more to Judo than it could give me back, and had to dial it down in favor of Uni and Work… I’m trying to find the beauty of more traditional Kata work and chill training, but after feeling the thrill of intense training camps and high level training in general it’s really not the same thing, no matter how much I love the traditional aspect of Judo as well. I introduced some light MMA to keep some entertaining value, plus self defense benefit and integrating judo in a self defense setting etc but again, not the same thing.