Before anyone outside the obvious places had heard of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I practiced various styles of Kung Fu, starting in 1977.
My first Kung Fu instructor started training in 1963. He was one of the rare breed that trained martial arts before Bruce Lee. Like the Dirty Dozen, who were training Jiu-Jitsu before UFC 1 in 1993.
Back then, Eastern martial arts were exotic as hell and carried a major mystique. Some lofty and hifalutin claims were made about the superhuman, magical, abilities and levels of skill that a true adept could reach, and to which the rest of us mortals could aspire. The marketers were in charge, and they had no speed limiters.
I started Jiu-Jitsu in 1998. My first Jiu-Jitsu lesson was with one of the Dirty Dozen. At the academy of my Kung Fu instructor. No magic here, just hard science, hard work, athleticism, and instant feedback. A tap meant you acknowledged that to continue beyond would mean serious injury or death. The mat never lies.
The UFC and Gracie challenges showed that many older-style martial arts were oversold. Many practitioners of supposedly deadly arts and techniques showed themselves unable to hurt anyone with them, and were unable to defend themselves against exponents of allegedly cruder and far less sophisticated styles.
As I approach 70 as a second degree black belt in jiu-jitsu, I find I have hit a wall if I continue to treat jiu-jitsu as a competitive sport.
No matter what I do, and I do a fair bit for my age, I will never be as athletic or supple as I was even 10 or 15 years ago, where the curve of my increasing technical skill intersected with that of my decreasing physical abilities, and set my career peak in jiu-jitsu.
It’s tough continuing when you realize that the best you were ever going to be at jiu-jitsu is a decade or more in your past. I considered retirement, indeed that is an ongoing process.
Plenty of people younger than me, some as committed to and accomplished in jiu-jitsu as anyone I have ever met or seen, have decided to hang it up, or at least drastically reduce their involvement in the sport, art, or whatever this is.
I met a Rickson second degree black belt recently and have trained and talked with him.
He made me reconsider jiu-jitsu and my relationship with it … taking me all the way back to the original promises and enticements of martial arts I was hearing in the 1970s.
- The ability to successfully defend against violent attackers
- The ability to prevail over bigger, stronger, faster opponents using base, structure, connection, leverage, weight distribution, timing, feeling, and distance management, over intensity, determination, toughness, strength, and athleticism
- using your opponent’s energy and intentions against them
- “moving a thousand pounds with four ounces”
- subduing your enemies without having to inflict significant and perhaps permanent damage
- Embodying both simplicity and sophistication
- Training that builds you up rather than breaks you down, and stays with you as you age. Not death matches and multiple injuries every month. Jiu-Jitsu for health!
- A soft or gentle art
- Efficient and effortless
- Moving with your opponent and the environment (that’s for you, eco-warriors) so the laws of physics and kinesiology work for you, rather than using strength, athleticism, PEDs, acai, and Jesus to try and overcome them
Internal Kung Fu. Invisible Jiu-Jitsu. Maybe they are the same thing.
If you see the way clearly, you see it in everything.
Miyamoto Mushashi
Maybe this is the start for me at my age of what Denny Crane in Boston Legal called “Mad Cow”, but I think for me these are goals worth pursuing. Perhaps the only ones left.
I hope desperately that that this isn’t just the stuff of pipe dreams, platitudes, and overzealous marketing, I really do. I guarantee I have seen as many idols with feet of clay as anyone. But I think and I hope there is magic here, and as an old man now, I want to see and feel some of that magic for real, before I transition into the next great adventure.