A new student’s perspective

Here is a blog post from Mark Hopkins on his first couple of experiences trying Jiu Jitsu.  Enjoy!

 

“The instructor breaks my finger in the first three minutes. It’s my first private Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lesson and we’re not even training yet, he’s just showing me the pictures of the Grand-masters and explaining the lineage. So powerful is this art that my finger is crushed in an instant. No, in reality we were doing some kind of standing technique and he was perhaps just a tad over-zealous in demonstrating the grip break. Testosterone fueled douche-bag destroys newbie? Well maybe. I didn’t really get the sense he was being overly rough but still there we were, both looking at the interesting new angle my finger had achieved. I’m not sure it should be able to bend like that.
There’s no pain. Not yet. The shock is arriving from somewhere around my knees though and I have to have a little bit of a sit down on the mats. My instructor is beside himself with worry. I’ve never seen anybody so embarrassed. Three minutes has to be a new record. We improvise a splint with a pen and some sticky tape. Absolutely no charge for the lesson he says as he waves me goodbye.
I walk through the cold streets of Vancouver, the fine sleet thankfully numbing my hand a little as my body presents the check for services rendered and the pain begins to arrive. An hour later and I’m sitting in the consulting room of doctor Briggs, the perpetually cheerful Englishman who examines the splint, smiles broadly at me and says there’s nothing I can do now except wait. Merry Christmas he jokes as I leave. Bastard.
Six week go by and I find another school less known for its finger breaking. In Jiu Jitsu, there is one family known the world over for inventing the UFC and developing the art to the advanced form of physical chess it is now: the Gracies. As luck would have it they have a center near me. It’s a bit out of the way though and perhaps I wouldn’t have found it but for the broken finger and enforced rest period.
By now I’ve enlisted the help of a friend. I’m slightly scared of Toni who is Finnish, tough as hell and already has a black belt in several other martial arts including knife fighting, so I know I’m going with the right guy. If this new instructor tries any funny stuff with my fingers I’m unleashing some righteous Finnish Viking on his ass. It’s a tough world out there and it pays to keep a few scary friends around at all times.
As it turns out my fears are completely unfounded. Marc is one of those super-competent, super-chilled martial artists you run in to from time to time. They are the mirror image of the usual tough-guy persona and somehow their preternatural calm is even more terrifying. Some deep part of you knows that here standing in front of you is a man who just knows an awful lot more about how your body moves, bends, locks and squashes than you do. There’s no ego here and Marc’s focus is entirely on  helping his students advance and the Gracie style itself, a masterpiece of pedagogical detail and emphasis. Toni and I are soon training three days a week and it’s not long before we find a pub nearby to serve as the venue for our post-game analysis. A few weeks in and I’m sitting by the fire with a pint in my hand realizing that my evenings have now been transformed into fighting followed by beer. Toni’s Viking ancestors would approve.
This week I got my first stripe. That’s about thirty hours of rolling since finger-gate and about as many hours of theory again. This stuff is hard and my body hurts all the time still but it’s very addictive. The combination of both the physical and mental games is absolutely engaging. I’m not going for black belt. That’s ten years away and I’ll be old by then. We’ll try for blue though which is about a year. I’ll keep you posted”