Jesse and Scott

Just this I got to see two perfect examples of Jiu-Jitsu in action.

By this, I do not mean that I saw high-ranked students defeating one another, or some kind of street fighting.

What I saw was safe, and controlled, but clear as day.

The first involved two of our White Belts warming up by rolling around for a few minutes. Jesse has been attending classes for a good long while, and is easily the most skilled student we have at that level. Even more than skill, he is quite comfortable with the whole idea of Jiu-Jitsu. The other is a considerably larger and stronger guy, who has also been training for a fair chunk of time. He is close to the other guy in skill, but nowhere near as comfortable.

They started to free-roll, which White Belts don't normally do. The bigger guy went a bit crazy and was doing everything he could think of to control and dominate his partner. Jesse went onto the defensive, just like he is supposed to do in that type of situation.

For a while, it looked like size and strength would prevail, but every time the bigger guy started to achieve a superior position, Jesse would scramble just enough to wrap him up again in the guard. This happened over and over. Jesse never freaked out, and this in turn made his partner try even harder.

About 60 seconds in, it was clear who was going to eventually “win”. The big guy was turning a shocking shade of red due to the intense effort he was putting in. Conversely, Jesse remained as fresh as a daisy.

By the two-minute mark, the big guy was starting to flail, and could no longer control the situation. He was ripe for a submission, that he was too exhausted to prevent.

The only thing that “saved him” was the call for class to begin. They both got up smiling, and shook hands, but one of seemed to have a little trouble walking over to the lineup for the start of training. He could barely stand.

This is exactly what Jiu-Jitsu is about; becoming skilled enough and confident enough to be comfortable in a very, very uncomfortable situation. The plan is let an attacker largely defeat themself.

The other example was much faster.

One of our instructors, Scott, has invited a few people to come and roll in a sort of wager. If they want to roll with him, they get a free month of training. For every minute they last, they get an extra month. There is an upper limit, but I don't recall what that is.

So anyhow, in comes this guy, who has actually done a bit of Jiu-Jitsu training. There is a rule about the challenge being grappling only (no hitting), and staying on the ground (no dangerous take downs).

Scott didn't want to embarrass the guy, so didn't make a production out of it. Only a few of us knew what was going on.

Anyhow, they started on their knees.

The guy grabbed Scott, who wrapped him up in his guard. One hand latched onto the guy's collar, then the other... squeeze... tap. The whole thing lasted just under 16 seconds.

After the surrender, they rolled on for a bit more just for enjoyment.

The guy got his automatic free month of training.