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We spend hours drilling a single move, figuring out how to react should our opponent put his leg an inch ****her to the right, or shift her weight forward, or, or, or.
But the blend of underdog appeal and mental challenges goes only so far to explain why practitioners flock to their gyms with a mangled finger buddy-taped to its neighbor, a swollen elbow strapped to the torso, or—as one longtime training partner of mine did while suffering a groin strain—legs bound together like a mermaid. CrossFit fanatics fade in comparison with jiu-jiteiro who consider cauliflower ear—ear cartilage so damaged by external pressure that it hardens in pale bumps—almost a rite of passage. (Draining a teammate’s fluid-filled ear using a diabetic needle is something we take in stride too.) We plan our travel around must-visit gyms and our days around training schedules. We spend hours drilling a single move, figuring out how to react should our opponent put his leg an inch ****her to the right, or shift her weight forward, or use a hand to block our foot, or, or, or. We crave the adrenaline-fueled part of class when we get to roll. In round after round of live sparring with partners of all sizes and skill levels, we test new moves, polish old ones—or just try to survive while a heavyweight rests on our rib cage.
I realize this sounds like a commitment verging on cultishness—and some degree of that is inescapable in a grueling discipline that emphasizes rituals, routines, community, and mind-body synchrony. The Gracie family definitely doesn’t hide its fanaticism: Carlos, a self-taught nutritionist with mystical leanings, urged the clan to follow a strict alkaline diet, and believed that certain letters were powerful (hence all those unusual names starting with R). Today, a pseudo-religious reverence for instructors is all but baked into the art: In many gyms, students bow to a portrait of an elderly Hélio as they step on and off the mats, and address certain instructors as “Master.”
Yet it’s precisely in ascribing quasi-spiritual powers to jiu-jitsu that Breathe misses the art’s real appeal. Rickson peddles jiu-jitsu as a way for students to discover their “true personalities,” for parents to raise good and robust children, for people of all walks of life to harmoniously mingle. But what keeps me coming back isn’t its loftiness but its groundedness. For a couple of hours each day, in a basement with leaky pipes and the heat cranked up in all seasons, jiu-jitsu demands that I focus only on the problems I’m facing right there, on the mat—or else I’ll get choked. Sparring offers brutal real-time feedback, its rhythms forcing you to bounce back from failure—if you (or your partner) “tap out,” you slap hands and start over. Anyone who trains will tell you that there is some life crossover: When you’ve had your joints bent to the breaking point, stressful situations off the mat don’t seem so daunting. And as an antidote to our distracting, screen-driven lives, you can’t beat the true absorption and slow grind of jiu-jitsu.
But Rickson offers something closer to a cure-all, rhapsodizing about the academy as a “neutral place” where the hierarchies and hatreds of the outside world dissolve—a view I’ve heard many echo. “It was hard and sometimes awkward when a pot grower rolled with a cop,” he writes, but “mutual respect” wins out in the gym. I’ve seen some unlikely friendships forged on the mats (between conspiracy theorists and journalists, between doctors and anti-vaxxers); I’ve made some of my closest friends there. But Breathe doesn’t just overpromise; it overlooks glaring departures from this creed. Rickson says nothing about racism in the jiu-jitsu world (as in the UFC, some of its biggest stars spout far-right rhetoric). He hardly mentions women, a growing presence but still a clear minority in most gyms. Recent revelations of sexual abuse of women and minors by prominent instructors have drawn serious attention to the dangers of undue reverence for black belts, whose stature often shields them from censure. Jiu-jitsu involves extreme physical intimacy and poses extreme risks—we have to trust our training partners to respect the tap and other boundaries. Does Rickson have any idea that as we women suss out a new gym, we often rely on a network to know who is safe to roll with and whom we should avoid?
As jiu-jitsu’s allure grows—a proposed police-reform bill in Michigan would require all officers in the state to hold at least a blue belt (or have equivalent martial-arts experience), as though a scrap of fabric is a surefire way to avoid the use of excessive force—Gracie-style hype becomes even more important to avoid. Thankfully, as the reckoning with the mistreatment of women in jiu-jitsu shows, plenty of its devotees are clear-eyed. The philosophical black belt John Danaher, who wears a skintight rash guard at all times, ever-ready to teach a technique, once offered an unillusioned verdict: Jiu-jitsu “doesn’t make you good, it doesn’t make you bad. It will just reinforce what you already are,” he told The New Yorker. “If you’re an *******, it will make you a worse *******. If you’re a good person, it will make you a better person.”
That is right in line with a jiu-jitsu mantra you’ll hear yelled from the sidelines during sparring: “Position before submission,” which amounts to “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Even as we’re taught to think three steps ahead, we’re encouraged to practice restraint. In the quest for a careful balance, any practitioner might at least have a shot at humility.
FROM OUR DECEMBER 2021 ISSUE
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This article appears in the December 2021 print edition with the headline “The Martial Art I Can’t Live Without.”