Toronto BJJ

Training Diary: We Need to Talk About Ginastica Natural

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Alvaro and Raphael Romano doing some Ginastica on the beach in Rio. (Screenshot/YouTube)

Every so often, I go to train BJJ, and either because I really want to push myself more than usual—or, more likely, because I’ve forgotten what day it is—I wind up training Ginastica Natural instead.

So, what’s Ginastica Natural? Great question. The easiest answer is that it’s like what would happen if Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and yoga had a baby, and that baby was a bit bonkers. It takes a lot of the jiu-jitsu movements, and works them into sort of a yoga-like series of poses, with a yoga-like focus on breathing. For me, it’s like yoga in that I’m usually losing my balance and two moves behind everyone else, and like BJJ in that I’m almost immediately very tired and medium confused. It also takes a lot of the things I’m good at in BJJ—physical strength and a good ability to read people—and throws them right out the window.

(If you actually want to learn more about the history of Ginastica Natural, go here. Alvaro Romano is the inventor of Ginastica Natural, a Gracie black belt, and a guy who seems to know a lot of things about the human body.)

The first time I trained Ginastica Natural, I kind of hated it. I spent most of the flopping around like a fish on land, hoping it would all be over soon. After I got over the initial burning embarrassment, though, I realized it could be a really helpful tool in my quest to get better at jiu-jitsu. It highlighted some real weak spots—flexibility, mobility, breathing—and gave me a tool to help fix that. And so over time, I’ve grown to have a respect and understanding of Ginastica. Do I like it? No, not really. Do I understand why it’s important if I want to get better at BJJ? For sure.

But also, maybe it’s growing on me.

Last Friday, I went to a class that was a mix of Ginastica and BJJ. A quick warm-up, about 40 minutes of BJJ, and two rolls. And it felt amazing. The Ginastica was just short enough that I didn’t start to think “please let this be over soon,” and the rolls were amazing. I was aware of my body, I was calm and focused and present, and my breathing was great. I was fully Ginasticaed while doing BJJ. I think that’s how this is supposed to work?

 

Humans of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Aaron Broverman

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(Photo courtesy Aaron Broverman)

One of the great things about Brazilian jiu-jitsu is that it’s allowed me to meet all types of amazing people. Humans of Brazilian jiu-jitsu is an opportunity to talk to and about a few of them.

Aaron Broverman is a journalist, podcaster and comic book nerd from Surrey, B.C. He’s also a BJJ purple belt who trains at Toronto BJJ, a Jiu-Jitsu for Life affiliate in Toronto’s Bloorcourt neighbourhood. He started training BJJ in February 2012. He has lived in Toronto for 13 years, and has lived with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy since birth.

On adaptive jiu-jitsu

All Brazilian jiu-jitsu is adaptive jiu-jitsu. Hélio Gracie adapted traditional jiu-jitsu because he was a small, frail guy who was always breaking his legs. True adaptive jiu-jitsu, though, is two people with disabilities facing off against each other. There aren’t many of us, but we do exist. The nature of my disability is that I can’t do every move, but the thing about jiu-jitsu is you don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to be able to Berimbolo effectively or De La Riva effectively to beat someone. I can beat someone just as well using the simpler moves.

On the difference between fighting able-bodied people and other fighters with disabilities

When you’re a person with a disability fighting an able-bodied person, you basically know what they’re going to do. They’re going to pull guard, they’re going to try to pass in a certain way from a certain position. What’s really scary is when I fight another person with a disability, because I don’t know what they know. I don’t know how they’ve adapted. Let’s say I’m facing a dude who is a paraplegic. So his upper body is fine, but his lower body is just his legs flopping around. I don’t know he’s going to do. I don’t know what his weapons are.

On able-bodied people ‘taking it easy’ on him

I love it when able-bodied people give me the benefit of the doubt. When they think I’m not going to be able to do things at a regular speed and they’re like ‘Oh I’ll do him a favour.’ That’s awesome. If you want to take me lightly, feel free. I’ll take that opening and I’ll win. And I don’t care if you ‘let me win.’ The result is the same and all that means is you defeated yourself. You still lost. Whatever narrative you have to have in your head, because you feel weird about rolling with a dude with a disability, I don’t care. Cool, I don’t have to work as hard. I’ll just have more energy for my next match. Because most of the time you’ll never know if someone ‘gave it to you’ or if you’ve earned it. So, in order that I don’t drive myself nuts thinking about it, I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. That’s their issue. It’s not my issue. I’m just gonna roll the way I roll.

(Quotes have been condensed and edited for clarity.)

You can follow Aaron on Twitter at @Broverman. You can read his writing here. You should definitely listen to his podcast, Speech Bubble, which you can download here.