I might have never started jiu-jitsu if it weren’t for my little brother. In fact, I had never even heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu until he told me that he was doing it and asked if I wanted to go to a tournament he was competing at.

In spite of having practiced traditional Korean hapkido for many years, it was the first tournament of any kind I had ever been to. It made an impression on me, not all good, but not all bad either. I loved watching Matt compete and I loved being there to cheer him on (I was the idiot yelling “Hold on!” to something that probably should have been let go of), but the idea of competition was so far outside of my comfort zone that I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I earned my black belt in hapkido while Matt was in Korea. He and I would email back and forth and, somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to learn how to grapple, mainly to get out of my comfort zone and primarily for the sparring. I asked him if he could recommend any BJJ academies near me. He pointed me to a Pedro Sauer affiliate near my house and, after much procrastination, I went to a class.

It was so foreign, so difficult, and so humbling that I went back again, and again, and again, determined to master this thing. After my hapkido teacher passed away, I made the difficult decision to resign from hapkido and to focus on jiu-jitsu and my other holistic practices.

It’s often easiest to forget those closest to us, especially when you are as self-centered as me, but, whether he knows it or not, I owe a lot of where I am right now to my brother because, if he never invited me to watch him compete, I might have never started jiu-jitsu.