I Thought Of Some Other Ones

1. It´s a handy social shortcut
I went for my first BJJ lesson in Rio´s Gracie Barra academy yesterday. The place was full of genuine badasses and people with ears that looked like they´d been sculpted out of candlewax by a clumsy toddler. As I walked in, four of them were smashing the pads like they´d just been personally insulted. But because I had a gi on and was ready to fight, every single one of them shook my hand and gave me the thumbs up.

2. It makes Not Fighting feel amazing.
Objectively speaking, the ´best´ time I´ve ever had was lying on a beach in Miami, chatting to pretty girls, drinking mojitos and listening to 80s music. But let´s face it - however much money you fling away in the pursuit of ´having fun´, there´s only a finite amount of fun to be had. Unless, of course, you´ve just spent two breathless mintes being suffocated under a gigantic man´s sweat-sodden gi as he tries to break your arm. After that, even breathing the (relatively) fresh air of the gym feels like being a newborn dolphin taking its first lungful of oxygen, and even the chlorine-tinted tapwater from the drinking fountain tastes like life. After my last training session, I was ten cents short of buying a frosty iced tea, then found an extra coin in my pocket. Subjectively speaking, that was probably the happiest moment of my life. I imagine it´s like coming out of a car crash with a newfound respect for life, only a bit less traumatic.

3. It puts my head in a terrifyingly aggressive place.
No, not necessarily a good thing. But anyway.

A quick word on forearm chokes: in jujitsu, they´re sort of frowned upon - usually used by big men against little ones (because they don´t really work otherwise), they´re one of the least technical, most strength-oriented moves you can do. They´re (relatively) easy to defend, but if someone´s really trying to put on one you, then at best you´re going to get a sore jaw, or maybe a bruised trachea. I don´t use them, because I´m a gentleman.

Anyway. During my second training session today, I got paired off with another beginner - a gigantic white belt who probably outweighed me by 15 kilos. He started the sparring session by insisting that I prop my leg up in an odd position...which turned out to be a way for him to practice the sweep he´d been working on. He ended up sitting on me and - inevitably - went for the forearm choke. And even though I was exhausted from rolling all morning, my first thought wasn´t ´Shit.´or ´Tap!´ It was ´Forearm choke, eh? You´re going to pay for that, you little bitch.´

He turend out to be quite a nice man, as it happens. But I swept him and tired him out anyway.