A good question from a student on whether strength is becoming more important in BJJ proved quite fruitful. The first part of Rickson Gracie's answer dealt with how practicing the art is supposed to feel for normies.
In the second part, presented below, Rickson draws from his experience to tell us how it feels to train to compete at the very highest level—or at least how it's supposed to feel when it's working.
"When you put your mindset in competition, the stress ensues regarding your weight division, how much weight you should lose, how strong is the guy in front of you, how much power you have... It then becomes stressful, because you have to be a champion.
"And the champion is not just a jiu-jitsu–made champion; it has to be physically, mentally, stress... he has to handle pressure. So if you're on that road, you have to make all this suffering a pleasure. If all this suffering to become a champion brings to you some kind of discomfort, that's no good, because the guys who are there who are champions today, they're passing through hell and they're very happy with daily training, recovering from injuries, and so on.
"So, the way you approach jiu-jitsu hinges on how much pressure you wanna put on yourself. My advice for you is: stay away from pressure; have fun. And if you decide to be a champion, have fun with your injuries, with your recovery, with your super-tired moods, and with your, sometimes, disappointments. But that's the life of a warrior, man. And either or... stick with jiu-jitsu."
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Wise words from the Great Master!