An Uchideshi Experience: Chapter Seven
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Non-Attachment, and Losing toward Humility
My first exposure to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was probably the same as most people in the country: watching Royce Gracie demolish the competition in UFC 2.
With my judo experience, I was familiar with the armbars and chokes he applied, and I was fascinated with his strategy as questions about different martial arts were being visually answered. My friends basically said, “Oh my God,” and sat there, dumbfounded at the reality of it all.
They had thought it was going to look like a choreographed fight scene from a movie, and to some extent, so had I. What we’re exposed to is what we expect, and movies can certainly shape expectations in the minds of the uninitiated. Now, with mixed martial art competitions booming and exposure increasing, people may expect a fight to be like a UFC match, but will again be surprised at what a street fight is really like. Friends, boots, weapons, asphalt, bottles, teeth, the element of surprise, and savage brutality are some of the variables that make street fights as eye-opening as the UFC was to movie magic.
Still, it answered a lot of questions for me. As a teenager, I had originally bought into the appearance of martial demonstrations as combat reality. I had witnessed some counter-indications to these well-crafted illusions, but wasn’t entirely sure of where to place them or how they fit into my mystical martial arts paradigm. I certainly better understand how it fits together now, but then, with little or no guidance, I could only file the experiences away.
While living in Canada, I taught a basic self-defense class with a friend after school. He passed on information from years of karate, and I taught basic judo throws. One day I found myself sparring in the class, point karate style, with a guy who was stronger, more experienced, much more aggressive, and generally a tough SOB. I was not winning.
Knowing something had to change, I just dove in, grabbed his gi, and did a quick hip throw to take him to the ground. I remember thinking, “God, he’s like a fish out of water.” This guy who was a stud on his feet was suddenly very easy to control, with only the most basic ground skills in my repertoire. I internalized that experience and filed it in the back of my mind.
Later that year a teacher at the school approached me and mentioned he had seen us working out with our gis. He asked if it would it be OK to join us for judo, and mentioned that he already had some experience. “Sure,” I said, and that afternoon we worked out for the first time. He dressed out in an unbleached gi and a yellow belt he’d dyed himself, and we began, beginning with stretching, moving into uchikomi (partial, repetitive throwing motions), and proceeded to randori (sparring).
Well, when it came to randori, he was impossible to throw, and he easily tossed me around. He also surprised me by employing more than orthodox judo techniques. Granted, he was bigger and stronger, but it was such a surprise to be manhandled so skillfully by this stranger. I asked him about his past, and he told me how he wrestled all the way through high school, college, and then in international competition. We trained more sessions and got along well.
In particular, one thing we discussed was the striker versus the grappler. “Yah,” he said, “he may be able to get me with a punch, but he better make it good because as soon as I get a hold of him, it’s over.” I also found this curious, but again, could only file it away, because I didn’t really understand how to categorize the information that had just been given. I was, however, getting an inkling of how important ground skills were.
Again, this happened before my exposure to the UFC, and before the importance of ground grappling was widely believed or supported. Now, of course, cross-training and ground grappling are viewed as mandatory for serious martial artists. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was a wake-up call to the martial arts community, and my physical introduction to the art was equally shocking, beginning with a chance encounter on the Internet.
I was cruising the Net, and went to one of my bookmarked sites, Tim Mousel’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu discussion forum. Glancing at the posts, I saw one requesting a training partner in Anchorage, Alaska. I hadn’t ever seen anything like this before in my neck of the woods, so I e-mailed him immediately and told him what my martial arts background was. He wrote back, satisfied I wasn’t a mindless bruiser, and excited about the possibility of a new training partner. Apparently, his instructor had been a local character and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu fanatic who had gone around to local dojos offering unsolicited challenges. It’s still unclear whether or not Felix had ever trained with the Gracies, or any other instructor.
Felix once came into Aikido North and told me after observing a class, “You know this stuff doesn’t work. All you need is grappling and boxing.” I smiled and nodded, but was aghast at the nerve of him actually coming into a dojo and insulting the art. He was waiting for Ken to finish teaching the class so he could roll around with him. I told Felix that Ken was good, and he agreed. “Yes, Ken is good, but I am better now.” He went on, confident his new techniques would give him the winning edge.
Ken was never against playing with guys from different arts, and consequently had to field challenges from time to time. But on this night, Ken couldn’t play because strict instructions had been left by our head instructor to not have people on the mat who weren’t affiliated with the dojo, instructions specifically tailored for our friend. So Felix left disappointed, with no one to play with that night.
Nor could Felix train with Eric, my new friend via the net. Initially, he taught Eric and awarded him his blue belt, but apparently didn’t handle it well when Eric began tapping him out. As Eric put it, Felix had not yet learned the “humble spirit,” so Eric left, scrounging training partners wherever he could, whether through work, friends, or advertisement.
Eric’s last training partner, an old friend, reacted poorly to a rear naked choke. Sinking the choke and expecting a tap, he instead felt fists on his face as his friend, in a mix of anger and desperation, mightily swung backwards. Eric, realizing that 1) this was not a tap, and 2) this was not the time for him to release his position, sat back and relaxed. His friend eventually calmed down, but clearly, this was the last training session.
Now he had a new training partner: me. We set up a time to get together on a Sunday after the open mat training session at Aikido North. I was really excited about being able to spar and hopefully make a new friend in the process, but that morning as I shared my enthusiasm with my fellow aikido students, describing how I met this guy over the Internet, I watched their faces change. They felt differently than I did. Nevertheless, they wished me the best of luck and told me to give them a report on how it went.
Eric and I met at a public recreational center on the other side of town that Sunday afternoon. He stood 5 feet 10 inches at 160 pounds, with dirty blond hair, but you could tell he was a wrestler by his sinewy, muscular frame. We paid the fee at the front desk and went upstairs to lay down the mats. Getting dressed, we both put on gis, he with a blue belt, I with my white.
There was some preliminary warming up, stretching and the like, then he went over some basic positions: the guard, mount, sidemount. Thus, having gone through the obligatory preparations, we were ready to spar.
Eric had mentioned that he liked to go at near maximum exertion levels during his training, to keep the realism high. He also conceded that this probably contributed to the high burnout rate of his training partners. I knew that this would be pretty intense, but we were itching to “get it on,” in the words of Big John McCarthy.
We began at opposite ends of the mat, with our stylistic differences classically exemplified. He adopted a wrestler’s crouch, elbows in, with rounded back; I remained upright, arms open, the natural posture of Kodokan Judo. We circled, not quite close enough for me to grab his gi, and eyed each other warily. Suddenly, he shot in, and although I tried to sprawl, it was incomplete. With a fistful of my gi pant (as I hopped to retain my balance), Eric tenaciously fought for the other leg and took me to the ground.
Immediately I went to the guard, but he easily passed it, achieved sidemount, and was on his way to mounting me. Logically, I knew that you should NEVER give your opponent your back, but for some reason, in a combination of habit and instinct, I rolled over to my elbows and knees.
Turtled up in this position, the limbs are kept in to protect against joint locks, chin tucked down and hands crossed, palms pressed out around my neck to prevent chokes. This is usually a good position in competition judo, where if you can guard against a strong attack unlikely to end in a quick submission, the referee will stand you up. There are a bunch of other defenses from this position, but that’s only if your opponent’s objective is to put your back on the ground for the pin or immobilization.
But on this day, there was no time limits, referee, or objective to pin. Eric felt me roll over, put the hooks in, and pushing his hips forward to arch my back, exposed my neck for a moment. He quickly filled the gap between my chin and chest with the crook of his elbow, and the choke was sunk. Valiantly, I tapped.
That first match took less than 30 seconds. Although the rest of the matches that day would often last longer, the positions of tapper and tappee would remain consistent. I did lots of things that make me cringe when I think about them now: giving my back, not realizing the importance of snaking my hips, and trying to choke while I was within Eric’s guard. Although I did get him in one armbar (a moral victory, if nothing else), I must have tapped more than 20 times that day, to the point of mutual exhaustion. We promised to train the next week, same time, same place, with the six days in-between sessions needed to heal my wounds.
I went over to a friend’s house afterward, and after taking one look at me, he asked, “What happened? It looks like you got your ass kicked!” I smiled, and told him where I’d been, though the scratches, scrapes, and abrasions suffered during training probably looked worse than they felt. In particular, the left side of my face had a huge raspberry; another wound impossible to pinpoint from the chaos of exertion. As for the people at Aikido North, they just shook their heads in disbelief.
We continued to train for months, and I ended up getting Chris involved, but unfortunately the other training partners we tried to recruit would either be inconsistent or, more commonly, simply no shows. No matter, we trained on, with the submission ratio balancing over time, yet still in Eric’s favor.
Eric lost this training partner when I moved down to Monterey to become an uchideshi, and I didn’t think I would have a chance at all to wrestle around since I was living in a classical jujutsu dojo. But, as fate would have it, I was sweeping the mat before class (not an unusual activity for one in my position), and struck up a conversation with the woman pushing a broom next to me.
At that time, I still didn’t know more than a handful of people in the dojo. Carolynn, as she introduced herself to me, began talking about the no-holds-barred event Extreme Fighting III, which she had just seen that weekend at her friend’s house. Hearing this, and having resigned myself to be out of the no-holds-barred fighting loop, with little or no access to that kind of information, I was ecstatic.
I peppered her with questions, most of which she couldn’t give answers to, as she was helping out in the kitchen for most of the show. I started naming off different fighters she probably saw, and she did remember that Conan Silviera had lost to a black kickboxer, later revealed to be Maurice Smith. Flabbergasted, I begged her to get a copy of the tape, which she promised she would.
Later, as Carolynn and I developed our friendship, she told me of her martial arts history, which included two black belts in different forms of Hapkido, and of her training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Claudio Franca, a four-time state, three-time Brazilian, and two-time Pan-American champion.
We set up a training time after class where she taught me the basics of BJJ as she had learned them, and then had her friend Michael come to the dojo and give me a lesson, which included sparring. Michael, a hulking 230 pounds on a 6 foot frame, was an old training partner of Caroline’s in Hapkido, and they met up once again at Claudio’s. He was an enormous BJJ fan, having spent time training in Torrance under the Gracies, and was the only other person I had met that was as captivated by the UFC and no-holds-barred fighting events as I was. We trained that day and I was once again annihilated. He did, however, think I’d enjoy training at Claudio’s, and recommended beginning if I had the opportunity.
Carolynn had told me, quite explicitly, that if I were to study the art, it shouldn’t be under anyone other than Claudio, because he was one of the few authentic BJJ instructors around in our area. In this day of increasingly easy access to information, large numbers of armchair warriors are cropping up, advertising for seminars with inauthentic credentials, with little more than a couple of slick techniques garnered from a set of videos. She wanted me to meet him, and we drove up to Santa Cruz on Friday night (the only night during the week I wasn’t obligated to train) and participated in a class.
Claudio was 173 pounds and six feet tall, with a muscular physique, devoid of any visible fat. A heavy Portuguese accent and a firm handshake warmly greeted me, “Hoy, my friend, how are you?” Claudio made sure I lived through the first class (at that time, the warm-ups were Olympian), and let me roll with Garth Taylor, his top American student. Overall, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and believed my exposure to Claudio’s dojo was no accident.
I was anxious to begin training, but first had to secure permission from Sensei. Friday night is the time he taught ninjitsu at the dojo, and was generally a day of rest for me. I was willing to give up that day to augment my training with ground grappling once a week, but had no idea whether Sensei would agree to this.
I knew it wouldn’t distract me from my regular training (which was in no short supply), and I felt both safe in Claudio’s dojo and comfortable under his instruction. If there had been any usual or particularly unsettling vibes, I wouldn’t have even entertained the thought.
Sensei himself, with his ranks in aikido, jujutsu, ninjitsu, and karate, obviously believed in cross-training and in being a martial artist, rather than a particular stylist. On the other hand, I had committed myself to a year focusing exclusively on Seibukan, so I could understand if he believed it would take away focus from the main art, and he certainly didn’t want me getting hurt at an unfamiliar dojo.
I consulted others on what approach I should take. I plotted hypothetical dialogues and prepared persuasive arguments. Some suggested that since I was a green belt at the time, I should center my pitch on having access to all the principles for the level of Shodan, or on the fact that it wouldn’t be an entirely new activity, but rather a continuation of my Alaskan randori with Eric.
Finally, I shelved all the approaches, and just told him straight out that I wanted to supplement my training by going to Santa Cruz on Friday nights. I also told him that although I felt that this would be a positive experience, whatever he said, yes or no, I would not protest his decision. I knew that Sensei, being responsible for all aspects of my training, was sincerely looking out for my best interests. He listened to me, very carefully, and said he would have an answer next Thursday, exactly one week away.
Well, that Thursday came and went with no answer. Sensei probably had an answer, but I knew deep down that if I bugged him, I would probably ruin it. I just kept my mouth shut and waited for him to offer his decision.
Another week went by and I was dying inside, I really wanted to know what he thought about it, but something inside told me, “Well Roy, here’s your chance to practice non-attachment and letting go.”
I thought that non-attachment had always been a strong suit of mine. There aren’t that many things in my life that really inspire passionate devotion: Martial arts, the UFC, music. Women are in there, too. But overall, I’m pretty even keeled.
The problem was, I was learning how difficult the whole concept of non-attachment is to practice when it’s something you really, really, really want. Here I was, having a problem just keeping my mouth shut and letting Sensei make the first move.
Finally, the next week, I was talking to him in the tatami room, and he said he had an answer. This took me totally by surprise as the conversation wasn’t related. He began:
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, and traditionally, an uchideshi is forbidden to engage in training outside of the dojo, because the objective is to focus on the understanding of one art under the guidance of a master.”
I nodded, understanding how he arrived at his decision, and a bit relieved for finally receiving an answer, even though it wasn’t the one I wanted. Then he continued:
“But I’m into breaking tradition. So this will be an experiment and we’ll see how it goes. I don’t know, you may have come down from Alaska to make a connection with this teacher, just as you’ve made this connection with me, and I want to help guide you. So yes, you can go to Santa Cruz and study Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.”
I was happy. Very, very, very happy. Either way would have been fine, but I’ll be honest: I like it when things go my way. And even though I didn’t learn the hard lesson this time, I learned about letting go of outcomes in situations that I have very little or no control over.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has helped me in Seibukan, and Seibukan has assisted me in learning BJJ. First off, there is an emphasis in Seibukan on principles, rather than on techniques, which allows a more thorough understanding of what makes the techniques work. A thorough understanding of principles gives students the opportunity to be creative and look for new or innovative ways of entering techniques, keeping an art fresh.
I believe in classical training, because many of the requirements and exercises in these older arts can help further the range and skills of a martial artist, even if they aren’t directly applicable to winning a fight. I see this in a variety of subtle ways, but ukemi springs to mind as a good example. I’ve found that it’s more often practiced , and more heavily stressed, in older judo and jujutsu traditions, and I haven’t seen this kind of time devotion and emphasis in their modern derivations, such as BJJ. Why? One reason is that in a competition, no one’s going to tap to good ukemi, no matter how polished or practical it may be. Still, there are benefits in it, ranging from real-life falling skills to enhanced kinesthetic awareness.
So, the benefits of these specialized skills may often be masked or unseen in a martial arena, but other art forms make it easier to realize the benefits of traditional training. Whether it’s exhibited in an electric guitar solo or modern dance performance, the advantage of a classical base can often be spotted through the precision of technique in both music and dance, because of the specific physical demands inherent in classical guitar lessons or the discipline of ballet. Also, Chopin and Paganini may not be dominating the current music marketplace, but that doesn’t mean there’s no worth in what they’ve created. Studying, practicing, and finally understanding this music can give a student a tremendous amount of perspective on more contemporary creations, in addition to expanding and improving technical ability. An understanding of what has gone before can deepen the comprehension why the old was altered to form what’s now the new.
BJJ has helped my classical training as well. Seibukan is a highly technical art, but the more time that’s spent on learning and perfecting new techniques, the less time there is for developing the attributes that make techniques effective. I remember doing knuckle push-ups in Tae Kwon Do class thinking,“What the hell are we doing? I didn’t come here for this!” I went there for technical instruction in kicking, not upper-body conditioning, so I can partially agree that the emphasis should be on martial techniques, not on attribute development, when I go to class. If I wanted to get stronger, I can do that on my own time, and often do.
However, there is something in the group dynamic of mass calisthenics that pushes you a lot farther than doing them at home in front of the tube. Also, not everybody works out on his own, so sometimes the only chance a person may have to develop speed and strength is at the dojo during a few weekly training hours. But that’s the nature of Seibukan. The techniques are there, but it’s up to you to bring them to life through individualized attribute training.
In addition, sparring is consistently a large part of a BJJ class. In Seibukan, of course, there is no sparring, only henka. Henka is an exercise to improve coordination, timing, matching energy, and spontaneity, as two ukes do random attacks, and variations on previously learned techniques are used to defend. But the level of resistance is never the same, and not intended to be the same, as a skilled opponent trying to submit you and you doing the same to them.
The ability to remain mentally calm during sparring in BJJ or Judo while expending great amounts of energy is a martial virtue developed through practice. Sparring, at its roughest, is still only 85 to 90 percent of the adrenalized frenzy experienced in a street fight, but pushing that window of familiar exertion does something very practical and necessary. It expands the practitioner’s range and ability to “turn it on” and increase the intensity; or “tone it down,” and simply match the energy level of the attack.
As my old judo coach told me, “Once you’ve been tortured by masters, nothing else phases you anymore.” I agree. After you’ve been choked mercilessly, had your joints locked out at full speed and power, been smothered, suffocated, and generally maligned, the tendency to panic as people are rushing in to grab or strike you diminishes. Consequently, control during exercises such as henka and tai sabaki increases in relation to your ability to keep cool.
Finally, BJJ keeps you humble. Classical jujutsu and aiki-jujutsu systems can give a person a false sense of security when technical knowledge is amassed without the necessary attributes to bring it all together. Sparring would alert people to this by revealing their weaknesses, but the nature of submissions on the body’s smaller joints doesn’t lend itself very well to sparring. Chokes and armbars can be resisted, and there is a very short but definite time when the person defending feels the transition from a good defense to a good time to tap.
Take a cross-body armlock, as a typical example. The attacker is already in perpendicular position to his opponent; he’s just trying to wrench the arm free from the defender, who’s grabbing his own forearm to block the submission. The attacker kicks the hand grabbing the forearm away; the defender’s arm unfurls and is quickly extended into lockout. The arc the defenders arm travels from curled defense to extended submission takes a certain amount of time, let’s say for hypothetical purposes, one second on a limb this large.
Then you take a wrist, with a very small range of motion, and only a fraction of a second is required to travel the arc from defense to injury. There simply isn’t enough time to properly assess when control has been lost and it would be prudent to tap. Either you go with it and take the appropriate ukemi, resist and succeed in retaining control, or resist and get a broken wrist. The nature of the technique dictates the method of practice, and unfortunately, I still don’t see how classical jujutsu can be practiced in the dojo with the intensity it was intended for in self-defense situations.
But because you can be very physical, put up maximal resistance, and wait to tap until you have ABSOLUTELY no choice in BJJ, loss in a sparring match is very definite and real. There is a profound impact on the psyche when you know and feel that despite trying your absolute best to survive, you are being massacred. You tap out, smile, shake hands and start again. The guy who just dominated you doesn’t let it feed his ego, as he has been in your position many times before, and still finds himself there when dealing with higher ranks and more skilled practitioners. The model of humility is there in front of you to emulate.
I generally disagree that martial arts promote humility. Ego is bred through the self-confidence of mastering physical techniques within a martial art. Humility is handed to you after a practitioner realizes there are beings of greater skill and mastery in their discipline, yet many of them are devoid of the arrogance often found in the inexperienced. It’s hard to have a huge ego when the person who just trounced you has been around the block a few times and realizes his own place in the scheme of things.
So whenever I see a person with an ego out of control in the world of martial arts, I just know he hasn’t been lucky enough to have the opportunity of losing with any kind of regularity or consistency.
I’ve lost so many times. You don’t even know.
But it’s nothing personal. It’s just training.
And we should all get a taste of that truth.