How I Started Training BJJ

I first started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the summer of 2001. I've told this story to a lot of friends and students over the years, and I've probably told it differently every time, but after 25 years it seems appropriate to write it down here. Especially because the BJJ world I walked into in 2001 was very, very different from the one that exists today.

At the time, I was already an experienced combat athlete. I had wrestled at the Division I level, had boxing experience, and had been training San Shou kickboxing since 1995. I was spending time on an online forum talking about San Shou when a guy who identified himself as a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu practitioner started getting into arguments with people.

This was a very different era for BJJ. The Gracie Jiu-Jitsu versus the rest of the martial arts world argument was everywhere. A lot of traditional martial artists were being told, fairly aggressively, that what they were doing wasn't really fighting.

I actually agreed with some of the criticism. I had competed kickboxing, wrestling and boxing, so I understood the difference between practicing techniques cooperatively and trying to make them work against somebody who was actively trying to stop you. A lot of the traditional martial arts guys who were getting into these arguments had never experienced that kind of resistance.

But I wasn't buying the other side of the argument either. The claim that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu could simply beat every other martial art seemed ridiculous to me. I had watched UFC 3 on pay-per-view with some of my martial arts friends. I remember seeing the skinny Brazilian guy in a gi taking people down and submitting them, and my thought was pretty simple: if these traditional strikers knew how to wrestle, there was no way this guy would be able to take them to the ground and use all of his tricks. In other words, I thought I understood what was happening.

Then the guy on the forum turned his attention toward me. He told me that I sucked. Boxing sucked. Wrestling sucked. Kickboxing sucked. According to him, pretty much anybody who trained Gracie Jiu-Jitsu could easily beat me.

This was 2001.This was also before I understood that people on the internet didn't necessarily mean what they said. I didn't know that "trolling" was a thing. I didn't know there were entire websites dedicated to NHB and BJJ. I was logging onto this kickboxing message board with a dial-up modem, and I treated the conversation like it was happening in real life. As far as I was concerned, this guy had just publicly called me out.

So I responded. "Name a place and time. I'll be there. Let's find out."

To my amazement, he agreed. A few days later I drove two hours by myself to get into a fight with a stranger because, apparently, the internets is serious business.

I arrived at a park. It was actually a beautiful place. There was a duck pond, some trees, a jogging path and park benches. I sat there waiting for my opponent to show up and, looking back on it now, the whole thing was completely ridiculous.

Eventually, a very tall young guy in his early twenties walked toward me.

"Are you [forum name]?"

"Yep."

"Okay. Let's do this."

We walked over to a clear patch of grass.

And then we got started.

Or rather, I got started.

I immediately tried to box with him and close the distance. He didn't want anything to do with that. He just circled away and backed up. I pressured him and he ran. I switched things up and started kicking him. I landed a few kicks, but they were mostly glancing because he kept moving away. He tried to throw a few punches at me, but they were pretty poor, and whenever I tried to counter him, he ran again.

The whole thing seemed to last about fifteen minutes in my memory. It was probably less than five. Eventually I lost my patience. I hadn't driven two hours to play tag in a park. I came there to fight. So I shot a double leg. He went down easily.

And as soon as we hit the grass, he did something I didn't really understand. He scooted away from me and wrapped his legs around my waist. I knew enough from watching the UFC to know that the Gracies used that position as an attacking position, so I was careful not to let him get control of my head. I tried to punch him a few times, but he blocked them.

I thought about grabbing him. I thought about pinching him. I thought about hitting him in the groin. Then I thought, "Nah. That's cheap. I don't want to win like that."

And while I'm sitting there trying to figure out what the hell this guy is doing, I heard a strange noise coming from across the pond. It was a police radio. I looked over and could see a police officer riding a bicycle toward us wearing one of those bright yellow reflective vests. Apparently, somebody in the park had seen two idiots fighting on the grass and called the police.

My opponent opened his legs. I jumped up. And as soon as I stood up, I had one of those very obvious thoughts that should have occurred to me several minutes earlier:

Why the hell didn't I just stand up to stop this leg control?

We looked at each other.

Neither of us said anything.

We both ran to our cars and left.

That should have been the end of the story. It wasn't.

A few days later I saw him back on the message board talking about how he had won the fight. I was stupefied. The nerve of this guy! He had spent the entire fight running away from me. He hadn't landed a meaningful strike. I had taken him down easily. And once we got to the ground, he had basically hugged me with his legs while trying to prevent me from hitting him. How exactly did he decide that he won?

But then I started thinking about it. Because underneath all of my indignation was a problem I couldn't ignore.

I was a much more experienced fighter than this guy. I had years of wrestling, boxing and kickboxing behind me. I knew how to fight. I had competed. But once we got on the ground, he knew something I didn't. I knew that the position existed because I had seen the Royce Gracie use it in the UFC. I knew enough to be cautious about letting him control my head. But I didn't understand the position. I didn't understand what he was trying to do. I didn't understand how to pass it. I didn't understand how to attack him from there. I didn't even understand why what he was doing was working as well as it was.

That bothered me. A lot.

I could tell myself that I had won the fight. I could point out that he had run away from my striking and that I had taken him down. I could argue about what "winning" meant. But none of that changed the important part. He had shown me something that I didn't know. And suddenly the guy I had been dismissing as a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu internet asshole had become my teacher. Not because he was a better fighter than me. I'm not even sure that was the point. He had exposed a hole in my understanding. I thought I knew martial arts. I thought I knew fighting. I thought I understood what I was seeing when I watched the UFC.

I was wrong.

That realization is ultimately what sent me looking for a BJJ school.

It wasn't some grand conversion where I suddenly decided that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was the greatest martial art in the world. It was much simpler than that. I had encountered a problem I couldn't solve. So I wanted to learn how to solve it.

And looking back now, I think that's one of the most valuable lessons I've ever gotten from martial arts. Sometimes the most important thing another martial artist can give you isn't a technique. It's the realization that there is something you don't know.

That can be a difficult thing to accept when you're young and already confident in your abilities. It's even harder when you've spent years becoming good at something. Experience can give you confidence, but it can also give you a very convincing picture of what you think you already understand.

Every once in a while, you need somebody to come along and show you the edge of that picture.

For me, that happened in a grassy park beside a duck pond, with a guy I met on the internet, a police officer riding a bicycle toward us, and a position I didn't understand.

And that's how I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Twenty-five years later, I'm still learning.