What is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?
Let’s start out with what it’s not. It’s not karate chops or air kicks. You can still do that hand motion thing, and make those culturally inappropriate whatchata sounds, we’ve gotten used to it. It’s also not Aikido, practiced by everybody's’ favorite pony tailed mid 80’s movie star. There’s no kicking or punching, biting is accidental, and eye gouging is decidedly frowned upon.
At it’s simplest it’s a grappling based martial art. In theory, we start standing up, try to throw or drag our opponent to the ground,. Then the fun part starts, and we wrestle him or her until one of us decides that things have gone terribly wrong and our joints don’t want to bend that way, or the blood flow to our brain has decreased enough that the world is getting very small. At that point we tap out, and start over.
But, confusion seems to persist, so we’ve tried other ways to describe it. Some of the best:
Mexican Ground Karate
Involuntary Yoga
Murder Cuddles
Pajama Wrestling
Scrappling
Aggressive Hugging
Judo for people who can’t Judo
Submission Grappling
Catch for guys under 60
You get the idea. We wrestle, but with different rules. It’s what happens in Judo after Judo is over.
