"The Gentle Art"

One of the things they don’t tell you about jiu-jitsu is that it hurts. Whomever called it “the gentle art” clearly did it as a dark joke; while the odds of you suffering a life threatening injury is slim to none the true pain comes from the “death by a thousand paper cuts”. It’s that armbar that someone tries to get on you that you fight to get out of, flexing your arm and taxing your shoulder. It’s someone getting you in a headlock and you reflexively tense up and use your arms as a brace to escape from so your air isn’t restricted. It’s trying to transition from half guard to side control and the guy on bottom switches their hips so it tweaks your knee. 

I’m still trying to figure out why, exactly, this forms friendships. It’s really funny; you meet these new guys and girls and it is a guarantee one of them is going to give you a “paper cut”, one of them will smack you in the face or accidentally drop you too hard. You will get your ass kicked. A lot, if you’re a white belt. And yet, as the months pass you see the same people and you get all sorts of teachers and you know who kicks your ass in what way and all of a sudden you want to have a beer with that person and laugh about it off the mats.

I won’t lie, sometimes jiu-jitsu scares me. Sometimes there’s a guy (or girl, know that when I use the term “guy” it can be unisex) who is quicker mentally, or stronger, or faster. You’re going to get those paper cuts. And I guess I just answered my question from the previous paragraph: literally everyone who walks through the door has that guy or guys who cut them morethan others, who push them to that limit. Those who keep coming back immediately have something in common; that they’re pushing through those cuts and those limits to become something better than what they are.