What Happens When You Try Jiu Jitsu Without Googling It First
The first time I attended class, I had no idea what Brazilian jiu jitsu was. I hadn’t even Googled it. That’s just how easily motivated I am by free things. (This is a pattern in my life.)
It had been advertised as a “Free Women’s Self Defense & Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class”. I read the first word and put it on my calendar, read the other six words and decided I would figure out what it was once I got there.
The academy was simple: one small room with wall-to-wall padded white flooring. The back wall was emblazoned with the Christ the Redeemer statue. The sum total of furniture was a tiny block of cubbies and a water cooler.
“Welcome! Do you have a gi?”
I wasn’t sure if I did or did not have a gi because I wasn’t sure what a gi was. The instructor took note of my confusion and handed me what appeared to be a thick bathrobe with equally thick pajama pants.
I was cozy in my PJ’s, enjoying the friendly atmosphere of the room, happy to be trying something new, when the instructor began class with this: “Jiu jitsu only ends one of two ways: a joint lock or a chokehold.” Excuse me what.
I emitted a strange sputtering laugh. I should’ve Googled it, but it was too late. I had borrowed her bathrobe. I was in this for at least the next hour and a half.
We started by warming up, which is very easy to do in the aforementioned bathrobe. This included “shrimping”, which the instructor described as simply “placing your butt where your head is”. I’ve been called a butthead many times, so this felt intuitive.
The time came to start drilling techniques, and that night we were focusing on triangle chokes. A triangle choke is an adorable move where you hook your ankle and knee in a figure four around someone’s neck and choke the air out of them with your thighs. Cute, right?
I kept awkwardly chuckling that I had gotten myself into this situation, but there were real nerves under the laughter. Like a lot of people who have survived difficult things, I deal with panic attacks that can be triggered depending on the environment or situation I find myself in. Sometimes these triggers are obvious, other times I’m not even aware of what they are. Watching the demonstration of moves we would be drilling that day, my spirit sank. This was a minefield of obvious triggers, and I was supposed to walk directly on the mines.
But even as my heart started beating faster, and my chest tightened slightly, I found myself wanting to face the fear. Or maybe wanting to want to face the fear. I had been on a healing journey for five years by then, and I wanted to give myself a chance to face what felt like the biggest test. I started giving myself a pep talk as my eyes tracked and memorized their body movements. You are strong. You are a survivor. You can choose to do this.
And the thing is, as I scanned the room, I could tell that night it was a room of survivors. Women who had battled and fought. That part of me recognized that part in them, in the unique design of lines on their faces, in the particular way they smiled, in their interactions and reactions, and it gave me the mental support I needed.
So I paired up with a woman who happened to resemble an Amazonian warrior, and tried to choke her with my thighs.
I’d like to let the record reflect, before I tell what happened next, that I am not a violent person. In fact, I’ve never even played team sports. I punched someone in the face, one time, by accident. I’ve donkey-kicked someone to the face, one time, also by accident. I’m very clumsy, but I’m not violent. Wrapping my legs around someone’s neck with the intention of choking them is not my first impulse.
And yet there I was, and she was not letting me back down. In fact, she was chastising me. “I can still breathe!”
“Well, I don’t want to hurt you!”
She rolled her eyes. “You won’t hurt me, I’ll tap out before I lose consciousness.”
“Geez!”
“Tighten your legs!”
“Are you sure??”
“Do it!”
I tightened my legs, and she Violet Beauregarded.
“Oh my god, you’re turning purple!!” I yelped and eased my legs muscles.
“No, you have to cut off my carotid arteries!” she insisted.
“I don’t want to hurt you! Cripes!”
“They’re not cut off yet, you have to do it!”
“This is awful!! Aaaaaaaa — ”
She tapped. I had cut off her carotid arteries.
She smiled at me as her face returned to a nice, human, non-blueberry shade. “Good job!”
The woman I had just choked with my legs was congratulating me. On successfully choking her with my legs. What kind of cult was this?
When class was over I walked in a daze to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and shut the door.
I looked up into the rear-view mirror and made eye contact with myself. “You’re a monster!” I accused my reflection. “Who even are you??” I shook my head the whole drive home, horrified that deep inside me was someone who could choke someone until they turned purple.
The next week I went back out of sheer determination. I wanted to know that I could put myself into the worst possible situation again and again, and be able to fight through the panic.
The week after that I went back because I started to like it.
The next month I signed up for a Rape Aggression Defense class, and for the first time in 25 years of living, I yelled. I mean, really yelled.
The first time the instructor demonstrated authoritatively shouting the word “no”, I peed a little. I’d never heard a woman use her voice like that before.
By the end of the class, I was yelling “no” like I was making up for all the no’s I hadn’t said.
We yelled “no” so many times that when I got home the second night of class after 10:00pm, and my husband asked if I wanted to cook something quick for dinner, I whipped my head around like a banshee and screamed “NO!!!” and then, registering his look of terror, had to adjust with “I mean, no not really, it’s too late, I don’t want to cook right now.”
Shouting “no” felt amazing.
I also punched as hard as I could for the first time. I mean, really punched. And kicked, and kneed, and elbowed. Aggression felt amazing.
So when I was in the midst of a third-life crisis last month on my lunch break, and a notification popped up on my phone for a women’s jiu jitsu seminar, it took me all of 30 seconds to sign up. I did not consider my qualifications. I did not consider that I’d only been to roughly 10 mostly self-defense oriented jiu jitsu classes. I did not consider that I didn’t own one of the bathrobe sets. I considered only, desperately, that it might give me assurance that I wasn’t wasting the last 2/3 of my brief life.
The problem about signing up for things in the midst of a crisis is that you’re still signed up for them once you’re out of the crisis.
And that’s how I found myself at a high protein breakfast hosted by my jiu jitsu instructor on Saturday, the morning of the seminar. The muscles of the athletes around the table had clearly earned this extra dose of protein. I’m not sure where in my body the protein went.
“I told my co-workers I was going to a jiu jitsu conference,” I began.
The table started laughing. “Conference! Should we wear suits and ties?”
I’m horrifically bad at blending. “Oh. Ha. What’s it called?”
“A seminar.”
Seminar, seminar, seminar.
We carpooled to Jacksonville, and I hastily changed into a borrowed gi and stepped into the gym.
What I saw there left a profound impression: 150 women and girls who were present and strong and took up space. 150 women who had undone or were in the process of undoing the toll that a lifetime of sexism leaves on a woman.
Our whole lives, women are taught to take up less space. Physically, verbally, emotionally.
Roughly 90% of people with anorexia and bulimia are female.
Girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sports in the US than boys have.
This experience of being female in a male-dominated society, of learning to take up less space, crosses racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines.
But this was a room full of women claiming as much space for themselves as they wanted. This was a room of broad shoulders and loud voices. This was a room of easy laughs and big gestures.
I witnessed women farther along in that journey helping other women claim the next foothold: cheering them on through difficult warm-ups, helping them spot the errors in their technique, going easy on lower belts so they could gain confidence and practice, encouraging them to overcome fear and roll.
I memorized the light I saw in the eyes of the younger girls: a light of confidence, bravery, and strength. Little girls with straight spines and forward-looking eyes. My lungs inflated with hope.
This was a room of freedom that had been fought for and won, and it left me in awe.
I came to that seminar expecting to laugh at myself for my crisis-driven predicament, but found instead that I didn’t laugh. I drilled and rolled like I wanted it.
And I do. I want to be like those women. I want broad shoulders and a loud voice. I want an easy laugh and big gestures.
I want freedom, and I’m ready to fight. Let’s roll.
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