I am pretty sure each practitioner's path to the Gentle Art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu is a unique story but I feel it needs to be told so that people know that you don't have to be a killer to get on the path. Being a fat white guy, the tentative steps that lead me to the gym for the first time are probably as unlikely as any but hopefully are worth either a laugh or inspiration for people who are scared to start.
Zeke is a guy who tries almost everything, doesn't really stick with anything too long (because there are other things to discover) but generally is not afraid to fail on the path to discovery. Fatboy is his younger (and larger) brother who never played any sports, was picked last for team sports (Except this ONE time he was picked first but Alyn McCauly -
https://www.nhl.com/player/alyn-mccauley-8462105- when he was 18 for a roller hockey game......gotta give him props for his 15 minutes of fame.)
Fatboy calls Zeke (knowing he spent a few months training Kung Fu.......which is awesome BTW) and says "I am bored of the gym, but wanna stay active, so we are going to take up a martial art." The first guideline we agree upon is that there should be no sparring because we don't need to be beat upon for the sport of the alpha males when we are just trying to get fit and learn something cool. The second one is that there should be no gi involved because there is nothing like a $200 mantle of shame hanging in the closet reminding you how much you suck when you quit.
So, the 2 fat white guys decide to take every free/cheap intro class for every martial art we can find. You can imagine the result. Muay Thai was fun anddeadly but we are awful at jumping rope.....and everything else. Krav Maga (should be called every-dirty-trick-in-the-book) is fantastic and I enjoyed chasing Fatboy around and beating him with a pad. Relatively positive experiences with a bunch of others including Aikido, Taekwondo, karate and kung-fu. Then it comes time for Brazilian Jiu-jutsu.
After suspending the gi and sparring guidelines, we found a club that offered free intro for a month, and also offered Dutch-style kickboxing. In the first class, we we shown how to escape the mount (the WORST recurring nightmare from highschool fights) and taught as submission (Key-lock/americana from the mount) Cool enough and then we were sat at the side of the mats, instructed to "enjoy the fights" and watched a bunch of animals grapple and appear to fight for their lives.
The rest they say is history (though not a very fantastic one but definitely a substantial one for us) and we each have a second generation training. Purple belts now but here is one of the older pics of us (starting a discipline that many 20-year olds have a hard time with at/near40) with a couple Black Belt world champions, and a BJJ hero https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-fighters/vinicius-aieta
If a couple of fat white guys can find joy and fulfillment in BJJ, you are golden.
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