White Belt

That Other Time I Tried BJJ

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(Martial Arts Nomad/Flickr/CC)

In March of 2015, I took the plunge and, after much deliberation and almost a year of kickboxing at the same gym, tried BJJ for the first time. And I never looked back. That’s the narrative I put out there in this blog and when I talk about BJJ to people I know.

But like most of us, I tend to want to sand the rough edges off my stories. I want my life to have a logical narrative arc.

The truth is, I absolutely looked back. I spent the first year of my BJJ life debating whether or not I wanted to do this, avoiding class for weeks at a time, and generally questioning my life choices. I think most people who aren’t natural athletes feel like this. This is a hard sport, and unless you’re a wrestler or a judoka, it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve done before.

But also, that wasn’t the first time I tried BJJ. The first time I tried BJJ was in early 2011. I had just gotten out of a six year, marriage-track relationship. I had also just turned 30, and was completely convinced that my opportunity to make something out of myself had passed. Oh, and I was drinking a lot. Like a lot. Like an amount that, in retrospect, seems almost unfathomable.

I was watching UFC at a Tibetan restaurant in Parkdale that also occasionally doubled as a sports bar. (Early-stage gentrification Parkdale was a weird place.) I watched as young up-and-comer Jon Jones submitted Ryan Bader, and the crowd inside the restaurant got up and cheered. And I thought to myself “I should learn how to do that.” I might have actually said it out loud to no one in particular. The details are foggy.

Two weeks later, I went to a BJJ school near Yonge and Bloor. It wasn’t particularly near my house or my job, but it was on the subway and people seemed to speak highly of it. I don’t remember the particulars of the class, except that I trained in gym clothes because they didn’t have loaner gis, and that we were working some kind of submission from side control. Maybe Kimuras? I think it was Kimuras. I was a little overwhelmed by the fact that newcomers were just thrown into the stream of things and expected to “get it,” but my training parter was a blue belt and pretty nice. He helped me along. I felt good. Sore, but good. I thought this might be for me.

On the way out, the school employee I had spoken to earlier pulled me aside, and began to launch into one of the most high pressure sales pitches I’ve ever had put on me. Like the sort of high pressure sales pitch that I think is now illegal in Ontario. He laid out a very complex series of pricing packages very quickly, then threw in a bunch of discounts that were only available then and there. I immediately felt very overwhelmed and tried to walk away. He followed me, explaining that if I came back tomorrow, it would be more expensive. I didn’t go back.

About a week later, I went to another school, this one closer to where I lived at the time. The instructor seemed nice enough, not necessarily welcoming, but certainly polite enough. He helped me figure out hip escapes in the warm-up. Once again, I was in gym clothes and kind of thrown in at the deep end. Unlike the first gym though, no one was nice. Everyone seemed to have a story about using something they’d learned in class on the street. A disproportionately high number of people seemed to be bouncers. I rolled with someone who didn’t seem to entirely respect when I tapped. It was a bad time.

I went back for a couple more classes, because there were things I enjoyed—the figuring stuff out, the pushing my body—but every time I left, I wound up feeling like I’d hurt something. And the more I heard about people choking people outside of bars, the less i wanted to be there.

So I decided BJJ wasn’t for me.

Some years later, my partner suggested I take up kickboxing, because a lack of exercise was making me weird. I wound up taking kickboxing at what was primarily a BJJ gym, because it was across from my house. After a year of enviously looking at the BJJ students, who seemed to have a great community of weirdos, I decided to give BJJ one last try.

I’m so happy I did.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d found the school I’m at now back in 2011. And I’m not sure what the answer is. I might have stuck with it, but I was having trouble committing to or enjoying anything. BJJ might have just been another thing I burned out on. Maybe I found the right school when I was ready for it?

Humans of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Leah Von Zuben

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Leah Von Zuben with coaches Jason Lancucki (in black) and Paul Zenchuck. (Courtesy Leah Von Zuben)

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.

Leah Von Zuben is a yoga teacher and East End Toronto native. She’s also studying to be an RMT. She’s trained BJJ for just under two years and is a white belt at the “small but mighty” Straight Blast Gym Toronto.

On the commonalities between BJJ and yoga

Where to start? There’s the obvious, when you’ve done yoga for a long time you have a pretty good understanding of how your body moves and your proprioception—body awareness basically—is a bit more enhanced. More than flexibility, yoga teaches you to breathe efficiently and to maintain that breathing while you’re figuring out and executing challenging physical/mental/emotional feats. The number one thing my coach emphasizes being calm while rolling. You’ll constantly hear him saying things like ‘Breathe. The more aggressive your training partner becomes, the more chill you should become.’ There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main reason is that you can’t think clearly when you’re just reacting aggressively to someone else’s aggression. If you stay calm you’re going to be more calculated in your delivery. Yoga training is wrapped up in training yourself to be calm. BJJ and yoga training are very complimentary.

On the surprising ways BJJ has made her better at massage

Techniques from BJJ, like putting in frames and using your body’s natural structure in a way that doesn’t take any effort or energy from you, comes in handy with massage. Ideally, you’re using your body mechanics well when you’re massaging professionally. It’s when you misalign your own joints to try and apply pressure that you start to break yourself down, in BJJ or massage. Tied into that is knowing how to use your weight instead of pushing with a lot of muscular force. In BJJ, you should make your opponent carry your weight when you are on top, so they tire out while you regain your energy. When massaging, you should know how to use your weight in the same way to add pressure, you should not be using the muscles of your hand or arms, because the muscle energy will definitely gas out.

On the gym as a community

BJJ is an incredibly close contact art/sport. You’re literally pulling another human in between your legs. Training is not going to go optimally if you have a training partner who is a huge creep or really rude. It’s true whether you are male or female. There needs to be a healthy social atmosphere in the gym in order for everybody to get the most out of their training. My gym has a really good vibe, it’s made possible by virtue of it being a small gym, but also by the fact that it is contained within Coach Lancucki’s home. He considers it a necessity to have healthy, happy vibes. There’s very little machismo going around, no cliques, everybody is welcoming and encouraging to everyone else, whether they are brand new or have been there since the beginning. You end up seeing people progress in their training very quickly. Social politics just get in the way and douchebags make it unpleasant to  drill or roll. The vibe of a gym is integral.

Quotes have been condensed and edited for clarity. Learn more about Leah’s yoga career here.

Training Diary: Three Thoughts on My First No-Gi Class

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This is what no-gi looks like. If I was one of these guys, which I’m not, I’d be the guy in turquoise. (Marco Crupi/Flickr/CC)

On Monday night I did my first no-gi class. It may surprise my non-Toronto BJJ BJJ friends that it’s taken me this long to get around to trying no-gi, but my school is pretty traditional, so you can’t actually train no-gi until after you get your blue belt. Also, no-gi scared the pants off of me. Or scared the gi on to me, I guess.

Finally, a mixture of a tight schedule, a desire to push myself and me wanting to be less dependant on collar-and-sleeve grips lead me to take off my jacket, get throughly uncomfortable, and train some no-gi.

Here are three quick thoughts:

It’s basically like being a white belt all over again

Like I said, my instinct at this point is to start a roll by going for a collar-and-sleeve. In no-gi though, there’s no sleeve and no collar, so instead I started the roll by staring at my hands and trying to figure out what to do with them while my opponent swept me into mount. It was a bad time.

It’s very slippery

A gi soaks up sweat. That’s why it weight like 20 kilos by the time you’re done training. With no gi that sweat is just kind of around, making everything wet. Including you, your opponent and the ground. The upside is that even if you’re stuck in a bad position, it can be hard for your opponent to submit you because you just keep slipping away. The downside is that it’s harder to get enough traction to get yourself out of said bad position.

Leg locks 

The key difference between gi and no-gi, beyond wardrobe, is that no-gi allows for more leg locks. BJJ is as much a mental art as a physical one. Having to have an added awareness of what your feet are doing adds one more thing to the checklist.

My Professor, Jorge Britto, said that traditional BJJ is chess and no-gi is checkers. I don’t ever want to disagree with Prof. Jorge about anything BJJ related for obvious reasons, but I would like to suggest that if traditional BJJ is chess, no-gi is Central Park speed chess. It’s only marginally less strategic, but infinitely faster.

Training Diary: Letting Go of Ego OR Belts Aren’t Magic

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(Photo courtesy my bad self)

Belts aren’t magic and you have to learn to fight without ego.

If you’re at a good Brazilian jiu-jitsu school, these are things you’ll hear over and over again. But it’s one thing to hear them, and even to understand them, it’s another to remember that message in the middle of a roll.

Earlier this week I got submitted by a white belt. Twice. Maybe three times, I can’t quite remember. I think I blocked some of it out.

It was subsequently pointed out to me that until a couple months ago, I was also a white belt, and that because of my concussion, I haven’t actually trained a ton since then. It’s also worth pointing out that the white belt in question was probably a decade younger than me, in much better shape, and definitely seemed like he had some sort of previous grappling experience. (If I had to guess, I’d say he was an ex-wrestler.)

Neither of these things mattered in the moment. What mattered was I felt embarrassed and stupid and useless. I was furious at myself for my inability to figure out how to out jiu-jitsu someone who’d been doing this half as long as I had. My ego was hurt.

Because really, no one cares. Belts aren’t magic. A blue belt doesn’t give me some sort of cheat code against white belts. And it doesn’t necessarily guarantee I’ll lose every fight against a purple belt. (The fact I can’t generate offense off my back guarantees that, but I’m working on it.) Higher belts get tapped by lower belts all the time. During the same class where I was submitted by a white belt, I watched one of my black belt instructors get submitted by a brown belt.

Did he get upset? No. He congratulated his opponent and laughed about it. He felt no type of way about it. Because he knows that regardless of rank, some people are better athletes, or have a killer go-to move, or are sneakier, or are just able to catch you on a bad day.

You win or you learn in jiu-jitsu. So what did I learn here?

1) I really need to get better off my back. My mount escapes are exceedingly bad.

2) More importantly, I need to not worry so much about “looking foolish” or “getting embarrassed.” Because those kinds of concerns are holding me back, not only in BJJ, but in life.