Several years ago, I started having pain in my hip. It would ebb and flow, come and go, and was generally more annoying than anything else. At least for a bit. Then it started hurting more often, and not with a nagging, irritating type of pain, but a genuine, screaming from the body telling me, “something isn’t right here boss, go get it looked at” kinda pain. And of course, I didn’t listen. When I finally reached a point that I didn’t have an option but to seek medical aid, I found out that it required surgery. And not a simple one. I needed a full hip replacement. Approximately a month before the surgery, my doctor pulled me off all pain meds, stopped my working out, and prohibited my Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu training. He was worried that I would stumble onto an injury that could stall the surgery and push it to a later date. So, on my last night that I could train, I couldn’t move well at all. But I wasn’t going to miss that last training session! Should the surgery not go well, I may never get to train again. I decided to simply focus on my defense, and that was all. I didn’t need to be top dog, I just needed to survive to the end. And I had one of the best nights of Jiu Jitsu in many, many years!
You see I have forgotten one of the basic tenets, the very foundation of Jiu Jitsu. And that my dear friends, is that at its core, Jiu Jitsu is about defense! By focusing on nothing but my defense, I was making my partners make mistakes that I was able to capitalize on. I think I hit more sweeps and subs that night than I had in a long time! As I was changing to go home, I was uncharacteristically quite, reflecting on what had happened, why I had such a great training session, and why I had surpassed my goal of simple survival. And it all came down to self-defense!
Training to defend ourselves is one of the reasons most people start any martial art. The ability to respond to a situation and come out on the other side of it alive, is a skill that most people have let fall by the proverbial wayside. We are often lulled into a false sense of security by the ease and comfort that most of us enjoy. And we allow that defense to slip. I don’t care if you are training Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Kung Fu or any other of the myriad of martial arts out there, almost all of them start with some form of defense. From learning proper base, stance, footwork, and self-defense situational techniques, they all have some form of defense in there. And that was the lesson that I re-learned that night!
Self defense is not paranoia. Sure, it can be carried too far on the personal level, where you don’t leave the house, have barricades and booby traps everywhere. But very few of us will fall into that trap. Being vigilant, aware of your surroundings, the people around you, the mood of the room when you walk in, and catching the out of place people, places, or things before they become an issue is that defense I am talking about. We all do it when we drive, watching out for that other driver that is going too fast, cutting us off or looking at their cell phone and not the roadway. We have simply forgotten that the true essence of self-defense, of the Jiu Jitsu that I teach, is that one word, defense. And it is past time that we add it back into our training!