The BJJ of JerryPH

The Beginning

Well, here we are, July 26th 2013.  Today, I've turned 53 years old and I decided to start up this blog about my love/hate relationship with BJJ.  I wanted a place where I could share my thoughts as I live this experience. 

I suppose that when I look back at this later, it is going to be a series of orations about how BJJ sometimes frustrates me and about how I am struggling with it.  I don't know, but hopefully there will be a couple of times that I share experiences that are positive or funny or inspirational. 

Hopefully, I am not going to depress anyone reading this to the point that they might wish to commit suicide.

Let's get something out of the way first... this blog is not meant for the benefit of anyone else other than me.  This is my forum to smile, vent, scream, yell, laugh, sing, rant, praise and cry about me and my BJJ experiences, and though obviously no one is obliged to read a single word here, I kind of hope that others do read this and get at least a chuckle out of how an old man is trying to live a bit of a kid's dream.

With that said, let's start my story.

My first look at Jiu-Jitsu

Flash back:  It's sometime in the summer of 1965, we're living in Regina, Saskatchewan  in Canada and I am 5 years old.  My father is going out with other family members to do this thing called "Judo".  I don't know what it is, but I hear them talking about it now and then.  Today, my dad is going to go do the exam for his orange belt and for the first time, I am going to see what all this Judo stuff is all about.  We are all going to the YMCA, my mom, dad, sister and me.

I also remember seeing my mom using an old style 8mm motion film camera (with no audio), capturing a few moments here and there and the short footage you see below is from that very day!

Arriving there, I see that Judo seems to be about fighting, my dad gripping and throwing lots of people wearing funny outfits and him being thrown a lot too.  The last part is him needing to fight 3 or 4 people one after another.

(1960's film of my father showing  break falls from various throws as part of his belt passage)

After a while we get into the spirit of things and the competition begins.  I remember sitting down closer to the mats, near where the officials are sitting.  I get invited to sit with the judge that is also the timer.  This man is nice... he tells me that when the clock runs out, it buzzes and that I must toss out this small bean-bag on the mat to stop the fighters.  I watch and listen... clock buzzes... I toss the bean bag and the fighters stop.  What power! 

Ok, remember, I am 5 years old here, and I think... what happens if I toss the bean-bag before the clock, will they really stop for me?  I wait... wait... (you can see this coming, right?), and toss the bean-bag early, just out of curiosity.  The fighters stop, I get a minor scolding from this nice man telling me that I have to wait until the buzzer, but the bean-bag is never returned to my tiny hands after this incident.

I wonder ...why?  I sure thought it was funny!

After a while, a few guys and my dad break away from the group of Judo practitioners to do something called Jiu-Jitsu.  It basically looks the same as Judo to my very young eyes, but what I did not understand, being only 5 years old, is that now they are adding some strikes, kicks as well as arm and leg locks and some nasty chokes to the mix  (today I realize that they were doing Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, because of the kicks and strikes that are absent from Judo and BJJ).

(The boys playing after class, doing a little Japanese Jiu-Jitsu).

My dad made his belt, but I never had a chance to see him do anymore Judo after that day, and the images are clear and with me till today.  In 1967, we moved to Montreal Quebec and dad never continued his Judo practices after the move.

I often wonder how my life would have been different had I been permitted to start training Judo and Jiu-Jitsu from age 5 and never stopped.  I bet I would be a little better at arm bars than I am now.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu storms the world

Flash forward to November 12, 1993.

I, like many others, are watching a pay-per-view event.  It's something called the "Ultimate Fighting Championships" and like many others, am in awe of this smaller guy plowing through all of his competitors as if they were twigs and he were a hurricane.  His name was Royce Gracie, but how strange, his "R" sounds like an "H"?  Must be a cultural thing?

I watched and soaked up UFC #1, then #2, then #3 and patterns started to show immediately.  People that were good at ground fighting were winning more fights than the people who liked to strike and that the best of these people who were good at ground fighting, did Jiu-Jitsu... and not just any kind, but specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  I was intrigued!

Well, the story of the evolution of the UFC is well known to people who follow this world and I won't get into it here... but how did I get into it?

My first tastes of BJJ

Flash forward a bit more:  It's 2004 and I am 44 years old. 

A lot of time has passed, I grew up, moved to Texas and married.   During all this time, I was still following the UFC events closely, I never missed one.  I also knew that I wanted to learn BJJ.  The problem was that at that point in my life, I was quite overweight, and I was no longer as young... in fact, I was also going through a very difficult personal time in my life, the kind that changes your outlook for as long as you are alive... yeah, that kinda serious. 

I decided to go for it anyway, and found a local BJJ school. 

The (at the time), small school I found was pretty close by to where I was living at the time and was called Mohler Jiu-Jitsu.  Alan Mohler was very personable and an excellent instructor and was of course Gracie trained.  Unfortunately, after no more than 2-3 classes, that hard point in my life grew bigger and handed me another challenge.  I left Texas and moved back to Montreal Canada where more years would pass before I would be able to feel the mat beneath my feet again.

By the way, I've recently done a web search on Alan Mohler, and I am happy to say that his business has grown by leaps and bounds.  His school has at least quadrupled in size and it has to be one of the nicer and most impressive BJJ schools I have seen.  Good for you, coach Mohler!

Back to Canada!

It's early 2009, I'm still living in Montreal and the BJJ bug hits me again.  I decide that I want to try once more (at the ludicrous the age of 49), and find a place not 20 minutes drive away from my house.  The place was KJS in St-Constant under Stephan Dubé.  Stephan was a good teacher, unfortunately he was not the right teacher for me.  He was a battle ready fighter with lots of competition time and for younger men with intent on competing, he was great, but unfortunately I was not some teen looking to turn pro or complete.

For me, as a 49 year old man who was still in the worst shape of his life, well... I went just two times and both times I left the school feeling so beaten up, bruised and sore that I could barely walk for 2-3 days and could not come back for over 10 days and even then not without a lot of ibuprofen in my system.  That just took the heart right out of me.  I had no desire to be so racked up and in pain on a continual basis so, badly discouraged, I just quit.

Today I realize it was maybe the wrong thing to do.  Perhaps I should have toughed out the pain, and in time it would have decreased, but though the pain was a big factor, something more important was missing... I needed a chemistry between me and my instructor and between me and the people there.  This was something that was just not there.  This is not meant as an insult to Sensei Dubé, and I am sure he understands this, but not every person that comes through his doors will be a good fit for his school and we did not fit, nothing more than that.

More time passes.

It's now early 2010, that BJJ bug has bit me yet again.  I am walking in downtown Montreal towards where my car is parked as I have finished a contract with a client.  As I walk, I see a sign across the street advertising BJJ.  The old desire kicks in again and I have to check it out.

I walk in and right away recognize the instructor from a TKO television show as being Fabio Hollanda, a Brazilian Top Team black belt.  I spoke to Fabio (who had the signature Brazilian accent and everything), and was invited to do a free class, so I changed into sweats (that I normally used when I was doing "server room" work), and joined the class.

While there, this guy started up a conversation with me and he points to a lanky kid with a shaved head and says "hey man, do you watch the UFC?", I answered sure that I was a big fan, and he points to this kid and tells me that this guy across the room was in a UFC but lost his fight.  I look this kid over... he looks a bit skinny and very unintimidating, but I am kind of wondering to myself if I am being BSed or not... I really never recalled seeing this guy on any UFC, and I was pretty sure that I had seen them all.

As the class nears it's end, the instructor calls out for people to make 2 circles, one inner and one outer and we are going to roll a while then change partners and do this for a few rounds.  Cool.  Eventually, this lanky kid that was pointed out to me, comes in front of me and I identify myself as a total beginner and to go a bit easy on me.  The kid smiles nods, we tap fists and start to roll.

First impressions are always lasting and man, anywhere I touched this kid, he was as hard as rock... there is so little fat on him, his veins show clearly on the parts of his arms and calves that I can see.  After a minute of rolling, I see he is being the ultimate in courtesy with me and I ask if I can turn it up on my end.  His response was "sure, I'll try to keep up".  That answer made me both laugh and feel a little suspicious inside, but I started trying harder... and harder... and HARDER. 

Every time I turned it up a notch, he turned it up 1% higher than me.  He'd give me an arm, but not the arm bar... he gave me mount, but not a submission and then he'd escape and again give me something else.  Within the 2-3 minutes that I rolled with this kid, I literally gave it all that I had (let's be honest, I knew I didn't have much , no BJJ knowledge, no strength and certainly no cardio), and I was left on my back breathless and exhausted.  As the next guy was preparing to come over to me, I reached up with a smile and a hand shaking from fatigue and told this kid that my name was Jerry... he said in a thick French accent "you can call me George... St-Pierre".

And that is the story of how I rolled with the many times over UFC champion whom I consider to be the greatest pound for pound MMA fighter in the world.

Many of us dream to roll with athletes like this, but to be brutally honest, my performance was so lack-luster that I did not even get him to raise his heart rate much beyond his resting state.  These special few people are far above your average person and farther above even most serious  BJJ practitioners, that it is beyond eye opening... it is humbling to one's very core, and for me, it was quite the special moment that I will never forget.  How many of you can say that you rolled with the elite of the MMA world?  Well ok, I'd not call it rolling, it was more like just being dominated without effort on his part for three minutes and me exhausting myself in the process.

I must say that the man was all courtesy and a 100% gentleman.  It is easy to see why he is at the top of the heap, even years later.  The man is simply a class act.

So, you are all expecting me to tell you that I stayed at this school, yes? I mean, Fabio and GSP in the same room has to be nice, right?

Yes, it was nice... and no, I did not stay.

Maybe life just often does not deal me a fair deck of cards, and I was again put into a situation where everything was put on hold and my entire focus had to be placed elsewhere... so I never had a chance to go back to Fabio's school, nor see or roll with GSP again.

Fate often pushes me in very specific directions in ways that are totally out of my control, so I just go with the flow (or as Rickson Gracie says, "flow with the go!").

That said... by now, this desire to learn BJJ is becoming a little stronger than a bug... it is becoming something inside me that however illogical, is something that I really want to do and it is getting hard to dismiss. 

I just wonder when my life will unfold to a point that I will be able to address this desire?

Only time will tell.

(my story continues in the next post)