Today, I was hoping to have a good round or two of disc golf at my usual park. Typical central Ohio weather deemed that an impossibility. Instead, I'll share my jiu-jitsu journey. I hope it encourages you to find your own path to a sense of purpose and belonging.
It is difficult for me to pinpoint my very first encounter with jiu-jitsu. I can at least narrow it down to two instances. I'm not certain which happened first. I remember a time walking through a mall where I grew up in northern Virginia (Nova, as we call it) with my mother when I was a young teenager. There was a Kim's Karate, just outside the Target, which taught a variety of martial arts. From the outside, I could see a whole room full of people dressed in what looked like traditional karate kimonos, but they were on the ground, choking each other and manipulating joints. As we walked by, I asked someone standing outside the gym what they were doing. They said it was Brazilian jiu-jitsu. My mother quickly retorted with, "Oh, that's for much bigger and stronger people." and we continued walking. I'm very thin, and back then I was even scrawnier. I didn't have enough time to take a good look to confirm if my mother was right (she usually is, but this time she wasn't).
The other such instance, was a little blurb in the national paper. It was about the first ever UFC event. Ironically, my mother pointed it out to me, noting that the victor, Royce Gracie, was a jiu-jitsu practitioner and that he was much smaller than the other competitors. Again, I'm not certain which instance happened first. They couldn't have been too far apart though. I'm almost 31 now, and fifteen years ago, there were very few jiu-jitsu schools in North America. That one I walked by could have been one of the earliest on the east coast, if not the entire continental U.S.
After that however, the seed laid dormant for several years. It wasn't until I was 20 that I ever really saw a UFC bout, and any real jiu-jitsu in practice. I remember seeing kimuras, armbars, rear-naked chokes, and all manner of other nasty fight-ending submissions. I knew right away that I wanted to learn these things.
Finally, by the time I was 24, I had enough time and money to really give it a try. I was living in Richmond Virginia at the time and there was an MMA gym near by that managed to produce an actual UFC fighter. That was enough of a selling point for me at the time. I bought a gi and signed up for their BJJ classes. It was mostly what I had expected. An hour long class consisted of about 15 minutes of warm-up drills, 25 minutes of technique, and 20 minutes of sparring, or "rolling". After six months of only attending about twice a week, I ran out of money. But in those six months, I learned one very important lesson. I SUCKED!
Most of the rolling consisted of the upper belts murdering the white belts. The techniques that were taught were good, but disjointed for beginners with little to no grappling knowledge. There was a curriculum that explained the basic moves you needed to learn to earn your stripes and progress to blue belt, but no schedule on when those techniques were taught, if at all. Despite the seeming lack of fundamentals taught, I still loved my time there. Grappling with anyone who is far more skilled than you is a truly humbling experience. Trying to solve the puzzle of someone trying to strangle you is also an incredibly rewarding experience.
It was that rewarding experience that kept jiu-jitsu in my mind. The seed had taken root, but not yet sprouted. Several more years passed, and I finally regained some financial stability. I found myself in central Ohio, unknowingly in one of the Meccas of U.S. jiu-jitsu. A friend of mine who lived out here was always posting online about how much he loved his academy. I looked at my bank account, dusted off the ol' gi, and signed up.
This place was different. There were classes just for the newbie that really went into the art of jiu-jitsu. The techniques and drills were purposeful and the curriculum was clearly laid out with a set schedule. Self-defense was the emphasis of nearly all of the beginner lessons. I realized that there were two different types of schools out there: ones that focus on competition, and ones that teach you the fundamentals of "the gentle art". Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that one is better than the other. Just that one might be better for different people. If you're already of an athletic build, maybe have some wrestling experience, and love to compete, you'll probably thrive at a competition school. But if you're like me, physically unimposing despite my stature, you may do better at a more traditional jiu-jitsu school.
It's been nearly two years and I am so grateful for the time I've spent at my current academy. I just found out today that I'll be testing for my blue belt on July 21st. However, the most important lesson I have learned is that the belt merely holds your gi together. In jiu-jitsu, you never stop learning. There is a depth so unfathomable you'll never live long enough to discover it all. At best, all you can do is continue to grow, into the strongest and most grounded tree of knowledge you can. My leaves have just started to fan out, collecting the bountiful sunlight of wisdom handed down through countless generations.
Os!
TLDR
"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is right now."
-My black belt professor