jiu-jitsu

Jiu-jitsu seems to suit my obsessive yet fickle nature

For as long as I can remember, I have had wide varying and ever-changing tastes. While I really like, or even obsess over, consistency in certain things, in many aspects of my life my preferences are complex and fluid. Whether it’s music, food, hobbies, or careers, I have been all over the map in my forty some years of life. 

At times, this constant changing of tastes can be expensive, both financially and emotionally. I tend to get obsessed with whatever new thing I’m interested in, diving deep into every aspect of it, learning everything I can about it, and sharing what I find with others. Eventually, the day inevitably comes, however, when my interest wanes and I obsess over something new. 

Luckily, there are certain aspects of my life where this is not a problem for me. In my relationships, for example, I tend to be loyal and consistent, often to a fault. I find comfort in the stability of my relationships and, if I’m being honest, this tends to afford me the ability to be more whimsical in other areas of my life. 

My ever-changing tastes can cause problems, though. There is a cost to changing directions over and over again. I cannot tell you how many things I have collected and hoarded over the years just to end up giving them away, donating them, or throwing them away when I tire of them. Like I said, I feel fortunate that I don’t treat my relationships, especially my marriage, this way, although once someone hurts me enough and I get up the nerve to move on, I move on for good. 

With this on my mind, it occurred to me today that this eccentricity of mine is one of the reasons why jiu-jitsu has been such a rewarding practice for me. In jiu-jitsu, there is plenty to obsess over, but the art is so vast that there is always something new to give one’s attention to. In this way, it satisfies both my craving for depth and for breadth. 

When I want to dive deep into some aspect of the art, I can do that. I can stay focused on a particular technique, position, or principle for as long as I want or need to. And then, when I tire of that thing or grow comfortable enough with it that its novelty wears off, I can turn my attention and energy to something else. 

In addition to this, because jiu-jitsu is a dynamic sport practiced against a live-resisting partner, there are an infinite number of variables to face and deal with on any given day. The size, intensity, and skill level of training partners varies widely from class to class. Constraints set by the instructor such as the length of the sparring round, the starting position, or the goal of the sparring session also create new and interesting problems to solve. In short, jiu-jitsu is never boring and one is never done learning. 

This has been on my mind a lot lately because I have found myself in a position wherein I have too many irons in too many fires and it has spread me thin. Normally, jiu-jitsu is a constant in my life and something I can turn to so that I can take my mind off of the other things I have going on, but I’m presently rehabbing an old injury that has been nagging me for a while, so I have had a lot of time to think and to overcommit to other things. 

I thought I had been making a concerted effort to focus on the most important aspects of my life: God, family, and my career, which happens to be as a jiu-jitsu academy owner and instructor. But then I found myself being drawn in multiple other directions by new, shiny obsessions, and for once, it didn’t feel good. I used to thrive in this self-imposed chaos, but recently I have been craving a more focused, contemplative life and, as these things go, I have failed at achieving this on multiple levels. 

It’s all a lesson, though. This discomfort is my teacher. I can feel that I have left the ever elusive sweet-spot and I’m out on the deep waters trying to paddle my way back to safety. Regardless of how far I go in the wrong direction, however, I am certain of one consistent, never-changing fact, and that is that God will use this experience to draw me into a closer, more meaningful relationship with him if I am willing let it be so. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Work is good, creation is good, and rest is good also

This Saturday, my daughter competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament in Pennsylvania, about two and a half hours away from where we live. She had some really tough matches, but came away with a silver medal in one division and a bronze medal in the other. It was a submission-only tournament, so there was no way to win by points. Someone has to tap. 

In this particular tournament, if no one submitted in regulation time, the match goes into an overtime cycle. The overtime cycle consists of several positions intended to put one competitor in an advantageous position from which to submit the other. For the kids, if no one wins in the overtime positional rounds, the match goes to a sudden-death takedown round where the first takedown to a pin wins. 

Of the four matches my daughter had, two in the gi and two in nogi, all four matches went into overtime. Her and her opponents truly battled it out and showed immense amounts of heart. Their grit and determination was so impressive that there were multiple spectators unrelated to either child watching their matches and cheering on the kids. 

After a long day of competing about two and a half hours away from home, we drove back and stopped for dinner. We let our daughter choose where she wanted to eat and she chose Ethiopian food. So we stopped at our favorite Ethiopian spot in Baltimore, had dinner, and then went home to unpack, shower, and go to bed. 

This morning, before church, we went to the jiu-jitsu academy so that my daughter could work with a couple of the coaches and one of her friends on the weaknesses the tournament exposed in her game. This was her choice. She wanted to go and, with the help of a good training partner and several generous coaches, she got a lot done in the hour and a half we were there while still having fun. 

After church, we went to my wife’s sister’s house to have lunch and relax for a while. On the way home, my daughter asked if we could go for a bike ride when we got back to the house. Even though my wife and I both agreed it was better to rest, my daughter continued to ask if we could go for a bike ride and told us, in spite of her physically, mentally, and emotionally draining Saturday, she wasn’t tired. 

I explained to her that, even if she doesn’t feel tired, it’s important to rest. “But resting is boring,” she said. 

“Maybe,” I replied, “but resting is necessary and resting is good for you. Do you know what God did after creating the heavens and the earth?”

“He rested,” she said begrudgingly. 

“That’s right,” I said. “From the creation story in Genesis, God teaches us three things: work is good, creation is good, and rest is good. Yesterday and even this morning, you worked really hard and that is good. You also got to enjoy creation by doing jiu-jitsu and using the body and mind God gave you, and that is also good. But now it’s time to rest because God tells us that rest is good as well, and it is good for you. God willing, there will be other days to ride our bikes.” “Okay, daddy,” she replied. 

After this, we went home to curl up on the couch, hang out, and watch a movie as a family. Moments like these are as important for her as they are for me. Through her, I learn how to do better because I want the best for her and have a bad habit of accepting less than the best for myself. Together and with the help of God, we make each other better. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

There is no secret ingredient

There are no secret jiu-jitsu techniques. Well, maybe there are, but as soon as someone uses them against another person, they are no longer secret. They become part of the collective conscious of jiu-jitsu. There are, however, techniques you may have not yet encountered or details you have not yet been shown, but there really are no secrets. 

Once you have a solid foundation of fundamental principles and techniques, jiu-jitsu is mostly about strategy, execution, and timing. With rare exception, the best jiu-jitsu competitors are not doing anything different than day-to-day practitioners. They are just doing it with more experience, confidence, and refinement. 

This lesson came up recently at a jiu-jitsu tournament my daughter competed in. There were two other kids in her gi (the woven cloth uniform worn in jiu-jitsu, judo, etc.) division and she beat both of them, one by points and one by bow-and-arrow choke. These same two kids were in her nogi division, but there was also a third boy who was only there to compete without the gi. 

In her nogi matches against the kids she had defeated in the gi, she won in a similar fashion as earlier. She beat one by points and one by rear naked strangle. But the third child, the boy who was only there to compete in the nogi division, defeated her in under a minute with an armlock. In fact, he beat all three of the other kids in his division in under a minute. 

After her losing match against this boy, my daughter was upset. I tried to comfort her, explaining that there is no shame in losing to someone who is clearly better than you, which he was, as long as you try your best, which she did. Her other matches went very well and she showed more confidence and assertiveness than she ever has before. I was very proud of her. 

When the boy who defeated her was competing against the other kids in the bracket, I watched his matches and I made my daughter watch as well. It was important, I told her, to see how and why he was winning. It wasn’t just size, age, or athleticism, even though he seemed to have advantages in these areas as well. Something else was going on. 

As we watched, I pointed out to her that this boy was not doing anything special or unusual. He wasn’t using any secret techniques. In fact, he was using all of her favorite techniques, knee-cut passes, armbars, and triangle chokes, techniques she is quite familiar with. The difference, however, was that he was doing these techniques with more confidence, assertiveness, and refinement than her. I explained to her that he wasn’t better than everyone else in the division because of any special, unattainable trait or characteristic. Everything he did to win, I explained, was in her toolkit and within her reach. Like Po’s father says to Po in Kung Fu Panda, “The secret ingredient is… nothing. There is no secret ingredient.” This boy didn’t beat anyone with secret jiu-jitsu. He beat them with confidence in his plain old ordinary jiu-jitsu. 

I went on to explain to her that she has the skills and the power to win. She need only believe in herself, and train and compete like she can win. It’s not a matter of more tools, but of honing and sharpening the tools she already has, and then using those tools with confidence and assertiveness. Like Po said to Tai Lung, I told her, “There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.

Sabbath rest by choice or by force

Days like today make me realize how human I am. Once again, I have found myself overcommitted and overtrained which means that I was exhausted to the point of a migraine. Some ibuprofen, a hot shower, and an unusually long nap later, and I am still feeling the after-effects of the physical and emotional drain that a migraine can cause. 

My friend and jiu-jitsu mentor came in to teach this morning and, since he was coming down specifically to see and train with me, I didn’t want to miss it. As a result, what is normally a morning of rest and spiritual renewal for me turned into a morning of work, fun work, but work nonetheless. 

This isn’t a bad thing and I’m not complaining, mind you. I love jiu-jitsu and I’m glad I got to see my friend and learn some of his new strategies and techniques, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, and I paid the price after class. 

The older I get, the more I understand why God gave us the Sabbath rest. We only have so much physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy we can give to the world before we are drained. Once we are drained, if we keep going, instead of our labors making us stronger, sharper, and more useful, they make us weaker, sicker, and less effective for God and those around us. 

Each of us has a certain capacity for work, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, and that capacity is limited by the limited nature of our humanity. If we attempt to exceed this capacity, if we try to draw more from the well than the well has to give, we start taking from our health. Much like with finances, overdrawing from our well of health is an unsustainable way to live. 

In the past, I would have simply popped some ibuprofen, downed a cup of coffee or two, and kept going. Lacking the sense to see that my body was trying to tell me something, I have medicated my way through many a migraine over the years. While it made me relatively successful, this drive eventually led me to panic attacks and a near ruined marriage.

After several years of therapy, prayer, meditation, spiritual work, and a lot of soul searching, I have begun to see things from a different perspective than I was capable of in my younger years. The push forward is not as important as my health and longevity. And as I have gotten older and more sensitive to what God is trying to tell me, I’ve begun to see that sickness, in whatever form it takes, is my body or mind’s way of telling me to slow down, rest, and recover. 

So today, after I crashed from exhaustion and a migraine, I took a couple of ibuprofen, a hot shower, and a long nap. When I woke up, thinking about the rest of the week ahead and realizing that a decision to rest and recover now would mean that I will be more capable of doing the things that are required of me later, I rescheduled a private lesson I had set up for this afternoon and took some time for Sabbath rest. 

“The Sabbath was made for man,” as Jesus said in Mark 2:27 (NIV). It is a gift from God for us and it’s free. We need only accept it. And Sabbath rest is not only available to us on Sundays (or Saturdays depending on your belief). Sabbath rest is available to us any time we decide to set aside time for God and rest. My friend who is a pastor takes Monday as his Sabbath because, even though Sunday is a day of worship for him, it’s also a work day because he works at the church. 

Having a whole day each week for God and rest is obviously desirable. God gave it to us for us to take advantage of. But that doesn’t mean we must limit ourselves to only that day for Sabbath rest. God is happy to spend as much time with us as we are willing to spend with him, whenever and wherever we are willing and able to do so. We don’t have to wait until we crash before we rest in God, like I often do. His arms are open for us now and forever. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The jiu-jitsu mats are the third place between work and home

In jiu-jitsu class this evening, like most evenings, there were practitioners from varied backgrounds. The class consisted of men and women, people in their twenties all the way into their fifties, students and professionals, law enforcement officers, restaurant workers, caregivers, veterans, active service members, computer programmers, and more. Jiu-jitsu attracts people of all ages, as well as folks from different economic, ethnic, political, and religious backgrounds, and they all seem to get along. 

It’s almost as if, in spite of what social media and the media would like us to believe, our differences are less important and less pronounced than the things we have in common. On the mats, there are rarely ever any political debates, arguments are all but nonexistent, and, even though we are learning how to most effectively pin, strangle, and break each other, everyone tends to get along. 

Jiu-jitsu truly brings people together who normally would not mix. Where else can a person train with a veterinary technician one minute and a Secret Service Counter Assault Team member the next? On the mats, the only thing that matters is skill, demeanor, what you know, and what you can execute against a live resisting partner or pass on to your students. 

People don’t just practice jiu-jitsu to learn how to fight, lose weight, or defend themselves. The reasons for practicing jiu-jitsu are as varied as the practitioners themselves. But mainly people practice jiu-jitsu because it makes them feel better. It challenges them, forces them to problem solve, gives them a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and community, and offers a “third place” between work and home for people to get away form worries and responsibilities. 

Tonight, for example, I overheard two different people say they came to class to get their minds off of a loss in their lives. One person had to put his dog down after over fifteen years together. It had gotten old and was suffering badly from some health conditions that made it more humane to put it to sleep than to allow it to suffer. Another person lost her brother suddenly to a mystery illness. Both of them were devastated by these losses and came to jiu-jitsu as a way to take their minds off their grief and sorrow. 

Upon hearing this, I was humbled, but also extremely grateful. What an amazing thing to be able to provide an environment that feels safe, healthy, and welcoming enough that people want to be there during difficult times of loss because it makes them feel better. Knowing this fact makes me feel better also. 

We all need something like jiu-jitsu in our lives. We need a practice and a community that brings out the best in us while also challenging us to be better than we were yesterday. We need a healthy, safe environment for self improvement, connection, and sometimes even distraction. We need somewhere we belong, where they miss us when we are gone, and where they are happy to see us when we return. 

For many years, the mats have been this place for me. I’m fortunate to have a loving family as well as other communities outside of martial arts that I’m involved with, but martial arts have been a constant for me for over twenty years now. When I’m feeling good, when I’m feeling down, or when I’m feeling confused and out of place, I go to jiu-jitsu and I leave feeling better. 

Over the years, I have heard many people say that they never leave jiu-jitsu feeling worse. Even when they didn’t feel like showing up, they were glad that they did. Injuries notwithstanding, I can honestly say that I feel the same way and I’m thrilled to be able to provide an environment for others to get away for a bit, forget about their problems, and challenge themselves and grow in the process. It truly is an amazing life. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox

Don’t leave all of your ego at the door

Armlocks hurt. This is one of the first lessons a person learns in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right after they learn how to tap. Tapping is the pressure relief valve of the practice that, for the most part, keeps people safe. 

As long as the armlock is not applied too quickly, the person on the receiving end of it taps, and the person applying it respects the tap and lets go, the pain of an armlock is temporary. It goes a way relatively quickly once the submission is let go of. 

That is to say, if practiced safely, armlocks rarely lead to injuries. A person can get arm-locked hundreds of times over years of practice and competition without taking serious damage. This can cause practitioners to develop a false sense of security when it comes to submissions. There is a tendency, especially in practice, to simply accept the loss and move on. 

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this attitude, as it helps a person to not take training so seriously as to get upset about the many losses they will experience in practice. It also helps a person to continue training for a long time through all of the inevitable ups and downs that come with jiu-jitsu. 

Taking these losses too lightly, however, can become a problem. A person might grow so accustomed to losing that losing itself becomes a habit. It stops meaning anything and, therefore, offers no real motivation to improve. 

If it doesn’t bother a person at all to get submitted, they are likely to make the same mistakes again and again without being driven to change the behavior that is causing them to get put into this compromising position in the first place. For this reason, the idea that a person should “leave their ego at the door” before stepping on the jiu-jitsu mats is neither practical nor useful advice. Without some degree of ego, or at least a healthy amount of pride, a person will have no reason to improve. 

This is why, in my opinion, jiu-jitsu competitions are so important for skill development. On the mats in the academy, a person can roll, tap, and start over against the same person or group of people over and over again without any real sense of consequence. Being able to try again takes a lot of the sting off of the little losses experienced in the academy. 

In a tournament, however, a person really only gets one shot. If they tap, there are no do-overs. Add to this the money and time it takes to go to a tournament, and there are real consequences not doing one’s best. No matter what anyone says, losing in a competition match matters more than losing in practice, and it should.

The pain of a tournament loss lasts much longer than the pain of an armlock. This pain, really the effect of pride and the ego’s desire to win, is the motivational fuel for improvement. Channeled in the right way, it is a powerful tool for growth, as well as skill and mindset development. 

Of course, having too much pride, being overly sensitive about losses, and allowing this to affect one’s attitude and performance isn’t healthy either. The ideal is somewhere in the middle, where a person has just enough pride and ego to want to learn from mistakes and to improve, but not so much that one gets upset over losses. Armlocks hurt, but ultimately jiu-jitsu should be fun and something a person is able to do for a lifetime. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Being a better training partner

This past weekend, I was helping with my daughter’s jiu-jitsu class and, when it was time to roll (sparring in jiu-jitsu), I picked out a couple of kids I wanted her to work with. These two girls in particular are both new, but have been pointed out as having a lot of grit and a lot of potential. I put them with my daughter because she has been training for a long time and has become skilled enough to handle tough kids her age, but she is also a thoughtful, helpful training partner. 

My expectation, which I mistakenly did not communicate to my daughter, was that she skillfully, but mercifully submit the other kids. I did not want her to do this for the sake of winning or exerting dominance, but as a way of showing them that jiu-jitsu works, that an otherwise sweet young girl can develop effective fighting skills, and that you don’t have to injure someone in order to control and defeat them. But that’s not what happened. Instead, she just laid there in her guard and let them work. 

This is not an uncommon thing in jiu-jitsu when people are working on static drills meant to develop new skills, but this is not how rolling is supposed to work. Rolling is supposed to be live practice against real resistance. Instead of being skilled, my daughter was being nice. It’s hard to fault her for it, but truth be told, no one involved got better at jiu-jitsu because of it. 

On the ride home after class, we had a long talk. I explained to her why I paired her up specifically with these two girls. I told her that I wanted them to experience good jiu-jitsu done with thoughtfulness and care because I know that she is capable of that. I also explained that, by not trying, she did these girls a great disservice. 

By her not trying, these girls weren’t challenged, and it’s our challenges that make us better, stronger, and more resilient. Whereas she thought that she was doing them a favor by letting them work, she had actually robbed them of the opportunity to experience jiu-jitsu as it can be. Instead of inspiring them, she gave them a false sense of confidence. 

I did my best to explain this from a place of compassion and understanding. I know that she is a kind, caring girl and doesn’t like to hurt anyone. She most likely thought she was being nice. The problem with this, however, is that it didn’t help anyone improve and, ultimately, we are in jiu-jitsu to help each other improve. 

Without good training partners who are both tough and trustworthy, jiu-jitsu is kind of an empty practice. It is our partners and the skillful resistance they give us that brings out our skills and pushes us to strive for improvement. Without the tension created by good training partners, we stagnate and training becomes pointless. 

It is her job as their senior, I explained, to push them her partners’ growth. It is the senior student’s role to give their juniors enough resistance that they have to get better, but not so much that they can’t. The goal isn’t simply to beat them and it is especially not to humiliate them. Rather, the goal is to show them what is possible and to lead them by example in that direction. 

As with most lessons I try to teach my daughter, however, she wasn’t the only one who needed to hear this. As the words came out of my mouth, all of the times I was a lazy, passive, and apathetic training partner flashed through my mind. I needed to hear all of this as much as I needed to say it to her. 

In fact, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine with whom I do jiu-jitsu said something quite similar to me as I was saying to my daughter. He approached me after practice one night and said, “There are people who train here who have never felt your real skills and your top pressure, and you are doing them a disservice.” Confused, I asked him what he meant. He replied, “It’s cool that you want to work on your weaknesses and I know you are trying to be nice, but you are giving these folks a false sense of confidence. You are allowing them to believe they are better than they are. They don’t know what it feels like when you roll with intention and really put it on them, and they should. They need to know. They need to know as a student what you are capable of, but they also need to know, through your example, what is possible.” 

Once again, fatherhood proved to be a reflection upon my life and my character. It is the mirror I was incapable of staring into until this little blessing of a child came along. Much like I wanted her to do with her training partners, she pushes me to be better. She forces me to look at my own deficiencies and makes me question what I thought I knew about myself and my place in this world, and her presence does this, not in a way that is humiliating or demoralizing, but that feels true and generous. 

We are not islands unto ourselves. We have to have other people in our lives who are going to push us to become our best selves, and we have to do the same for others. This is what community is for. We are not here to lie down and let others walk all over us. Nor are we here to trample and take advantage of the weak. We were put on this earth together so that we can lovingly and thoughtfully push each other to be better, and to help those who cannot help themselves. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Jiu-jitsu and parenting

I have recently realized that one of the most important truths about parenting is that I don’t really know how to do it. Most of the time, I’m just making my best guess as to how to handle a given situation, waiting to see how my decisions play out, and then adjusting based on the results. In this way, I suppose parenting is a lot like jiu-jitsu. 

The thing about jiu-jitsu is that it’s not just about you and what you want. Your training partner always gets a say. You may think things are going to go a certain way, but your training partner has his or her own plans, strategies, and goals as well. Even if you have a specific outcome in mind, your training partner may block or counter your move, or even use your own move against you. 

In this way, Jiu-jitsu is much more of a conversation than it is a monologue. Very rarely can you simply impose your will on your partner without any resistance. Even when you can, it’s not really that satisfying or beneficial to either party. 

All of this also applies to parenting. I have certain goals and aspirations for my daughter, but she gets a say. And when I try to guide, lead, or correct her with a specific outcome in mind, it often does not go as planned. She has her own personality, emotions, ideas, and aspirations that all influence how our interactions go. I may start with a plan, but I am often forced to pivot because she didn’t react or respond the way I anticipated. 

This is not to say that I am powerless over her and that she always gets what she wants. That would be neither desirable nor beneficial for either of us. Rather, my best parenting takes into account her personality, desires, and responses. It’s a conversation not a monologue. 

Another similarity between jiu-jitsu and parenting is that, no matter how long I do either, I realize that there is way more to learn. Both jiu-jitsu and parenting keep me humble. As soon as I think I have it all figured out, I am quickly reminded that I don’t. I must remain a perpetual student. 

Both also require presence and intention. I have realized that I can neither be a good parent nor jiu-jitsu practitioner if I am not present, in the moment, and undistracted. My complete attention is required if I am going to be effective. I also cannot phone it in. If I want to be a good parent and a good training partner, I have to be intentional about it. Half measures get less than half results. They get me nowhere. 

Ironically perhaps, in spite of their similarities, I think parenting is way more difficult than jiu-jitsu. I’m way more scared of messing up my daughter with bad parenting than I am of messing up my training partner with bad jiu-jitsu. Actually, if I have bad jiu-jitsu, I’m the one who gets hurt. Whereas, if I parent poorly, my daughter has to live with the consequences. Raising another human being is lot of pressure. 

That said, I love my life. I love being a father, even on the bad days, and I love practicing and teaching jiu-jitsu, even on the bad days. I am also extremely fortunate that I sometimes get to do both at the same time. As painful and frustrating as it may be sometimes, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

If you aren’t having fun you’re doing it wrong

If you aren’t having fun, you’re doing it wrong. From self defense to sport, there are many different reasons to practice jiu-jitsu. Training can and should be very serious at times.

Violence and power are serious subjects after all, and the martial arts are, at the end of the day, the study of violence and power. But it’s not all serious.

Through the practice, we develop a camaraderie and light-heartedness in spite of all of the pain, suffering, and difficulty we put ourselves through in the pursuit of whatever intangible goal we may have.

Through the losses, the frustration, and the injuries, we make friends we otherwise would not have made. With these friends, we joke, we laugh, and we find reprieve from the outside world, even if only for an hour or so a day.

Most of us are not practicing jiu-jitsu for life and death, after all. We practice because we enjoy it.

We practice because it makes our lives better. We practice because it’s fun.