Moving Mountains

Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, like any sport is full of clichés.

“Leave your ego at the door.”

“Trust the process.”

“Drillers make killers.”

And my personal favourite “Technique beats strength.”

Now I’m pretty sure that may be the most ‘martial art’ tag-line possible.

However, it may be in BJJ’s case one of the most accurate.

I’m a 61kg (9.5 stone) male. In the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, that’s the second lowest of the nine competition weight classes. The ‘Light Feather’ weight class is a sort of an accurate description for me when I started my training (a very long time ago), feather-light is how I felt.

Many evenings I was tossed around, pushed and pulled, grabbed and turned, and thrown out of positions like I was a bedsheet that has become too troublesome on a warm summers’ night.

It was frustrating. It made me wonder if this was out of my league. Would I ever be able to compete with the ‘mountains’ I was up against each night?

Slowly but surely, by turning up over and over and practising and drilling, things started to click. The techniques work. The process works. The driller becomes the killer.

Do you sometimes need to change things up a bit, adjust moves? Of course! The same way someone 100kg isn’t going to be doing the same moves as my ‘feather like’ self would be. Adjust to your game, play to your own strengths, try different things, refine and sharpen.

The path of a small person in this martial art is a different one to many, weight does matter, strength does matter. No matter how much people like to tell you different. However, if you keep coming back and training with drive and purpose, you will soon look at any person bigger than you not as a worry but as an opportunity. Another puzzle to solve.

I may still be feather-light, but I’ve learned how to make even mountains move. You can too, see you on the mats.

Rob “Just Robert”