
WHY BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU?
For you who are familiar with this kind of martial arts, I might not give you any further info about this. For those who don’t, well, BJJ stands for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the part of martial arts that depends on choke and grapple. It looks weird, I know, but for me, Jiu Jitsu is the best thing I’ve ever tried in my 22 years of life.
Why?
Well, I’ll tell you why.
Everyone - when I said everyone, it literally everyone- always asked me “You grapple with a guy??”, “Is there any women who train that?”, “Nah, let’s go to the gym. Do combat instead”, “You learn that? What for?”. And I sighed. First of all, I won’t ever have signed myself up to the gym. Second of all, yes, I grapple with everyone.
I’m kind of obsessed with jiu jitsu recently. I mean, I’m kinda obsessed with the whole martial arts thing. Been doing martial arts since 2015, I started with muay thai back then. I encourage myself to show up to the camp even though there were only 2 girls there, most of them were guys. Yeah, what did you expect finding girlfriends on a place like that anyway?
I used to love muay thai that much until I moved to Jakarta, and that feeling started to fade away. Why? Because, first, I don’t wanna get myself injured. People seem doing muay thai just for the sweat here. As long as you’re sweating like crazy, you good to go. They don’t care about the technique and the right way to kick or punch etc., no one is watching you, not even your coach. They let you kicking and punching the heavy bag that caused your legs and feet on pain or even bruised. They didn’t teach you how to do the technique correctly in details and it pissed me off sometimes. Muay Thai is the second most dangerous martial arts to do and I don’t wanna messed with that. I witnessed my friends thumb nail got ripped off because she didn’t kick the pad correctly. There is blood everywhere man. And the second, I know I won’t develop my techniques if “almost” all camps did those kinda programme to people like me. It won’t work man, so I decided to leave. Maybe I will join back to muay thai if there’s a camp that fit me well.
So, it brings me up to BJJ. I always curios with this martial art way long before I joined muay thai. But, because the women populations on BJJ world are not much back then, I went to muay thai instead. I once had a friend who joined BJJ class on my old camp and no one wants to roll with her because she’s a girl, nobody wants to touch her. Jiu Jitsu give me the same feeling I had 2 years ago. I still feel that anxiety every time I train every week and every session. I still worried with whom I will roll on mat, did I do the technique correctly, how many bruises will I get today etc etc, I even still got the “What the fuck this girl is doing here” kinda stare. People sometimes don’t wanna roll with me because I’m a girl (there are only 2 girls in the class, if my friend didn’t come, I roll with no one or I roll with my coach instead). Let me tell you one thing, all BJJ technique is probably the worst pain that you ever did to your body. When I started my first class, my body was SORE I can’t even move. The pain is real, the choke is killer, and the guard is the tightest thing that will bring your opponent passed away. I thought jab and cross are the only way to fight people.
The other thing people keep asking and I sometimes refuse to answer are, yes, you roll with everyone. I am not gonna lie, this is also one of my concern when I decided to join Jiu Jitsu. You will roll with everyone, either you men or women, big or small. They don’t care. At first I am so anxious to roll with people especially men. I mean, to be that close with men is ridiculous. My coach even ask me in my first class “Why you join this class? Are you sure? Are you okay rolling with men? Just let me know if you are not feeling comfortable with it”. At the first month of training, I always rolling with women. But lately I sometimes roll with men. I mean, I don’t care. If they thinking the other way, I don’t care, that’s their problem, not mine. All I care about is I could choke the hell out of his neck. Because I think, if you try to defends yourself, you NEED to roll with men. Why? Because men are the one who will rape you or attack you as a woman. That’s why you need to defends yourself against the real men. What’s the point of self defends for a girl if you never learn to defends yourself against the real men? Nothing bro.
After 2 months of training, I fall in love more with this martial art. I am so grateful I met some new friends who always support me, always taught me the right way to do the technique whenever they find me struggle. Even they ask me what technique I wanna learn and what I found it difficult to do so they could have taught me right away. Another thing is, the people are very very humble here. I found this routine is kinda addictive to do. I may look like excessive telling you this but it’s the fact.
In martial arts, you will surprised yourself. It really is. You never taught to do something that extreme until martial arts do it to you. In my life, I always bad at sport. I bad at run even jog, I can’t do push up, I can’t do sit up, I can’t even do rolling. My body just not get used to that kind of activities. All I like about sport is only Baseball back then which sometimes I failed because I bad at running from one base to another. My father was a Baseball athlete, so when I was in my JHS, he always brought us to play baseball with him and his friends. In conclusion, I hate working out, until I found the other way to get the balance and healthy life without going to the gym which brings me to martial arts until I knew martial arts are way tougher and harder but I enjoy it anyway. Now, I can even do back roll (even I still sucks at front roll but I keep practicing until my shoulder bruised), I can do push up, I can do sit up, I can do skipping etc. Martial art taught you to be fearless, to be whatever you want to do. You HAVE to be fearless in martial art. That counts as a plus when you wanna be healthy and you got new knowledge within the process. That’s why I choose martial arts. That’s just my way.
I really hope my hobby towards this positive activity doesn’t fade away. Let’s say with Amin.
