BJJ teaches you to fight from your back. I hope I don’t need to explain why that might be helpful. Unlike a lot of other disciplines, BJJ considers being on your back with an opponent on top of you a pretty normal position to be in. There are several submission holds that can be applied from that position, as well as numerous tricks to get out of it.
And they get a lot of practice from there. There is no kata in BJJ. You’re not ever going to walk into a class and see people ritualistically working their way through a fictional fight. Instead, they get right in there and sparring.
People might think that when a fight happens they are going to just turn on their imaginations and unleash the true power within. That’s nonsense. Most people don’t want to fight and are terrified of getting punched in the face. Every fight in a public place I have ever seen has been mostly people flailing wildly in a panic, sometimes with their eyes closed. Physical confrontation is terrifying.
BJJ gets you used to being in a physical contest of domination with another person. It takes all the fear out of the basic act of trying to move in a way where you can hurt them but they can’t hurt you. Constant practice at that not only helps avoid panic in a future altercation, it gives you a wonderful sense of what your body can do. You feel at home with your capabilities instead of blindly relying on them when it comes times to start swinging.
Girls especially don’t get to feel that sort of physical confidence. Society is still in the stage where we treat a lot of them as fragile dolls unable to handle the brutality of the world. As such, they don’t get to test themselves physically the way boys do. Putting girls on the ground in a controlled environment makes their bodies completely theirs in a number of ways, in addition to giving them the tools needed to defend themselves.
BJJ is what you use against an out-sized opponent. Granted, since the Gracie family burst onto the scene in the early ‘00s, competition has changed a lot and strict BJJ probably won’t get you far without some boxing or muay thai thrown in. That said, watch my absolute favorite match of all time, Royce Gracie versus Akebono in 2004. It’s a man weighing only 180 pounds taking on a champion sumo wrestler more than twice his size, and Akebono gets his ass absolutely handed to him. Akebono’s weight, his reach, his strength, none of it means anything except to make the big man tired and easy prey for Gracie’s shoulder lock.
This is what a fight looks like outside the ring between a person with BJJ training and an untrained opponent, which is the most likely scenario you’re likely to find yourself in. I watch that fight and I think of some hulking Nice Guy™ deciding that a woman is small enough to push around and unable to fight back. I think of a rape culture that leaves rape kits untested and elects people who boast about sexual assault, and I want woman to have the tools to pop a damn shoulder out of a socket or help said guy break the sound barrier between vertical and horizontal.
Schools and other institutions cannot be trusted to handle sexual assault correctly. It’s up to use to train our children to defend themselves until the day the system no longer excuses and protects rapists and assailants. If someone touches her inappropriately, I want them on the ground in pain immediately. It is better to ask forgiveness for self defense than to empower another rapist by waiting for official justice that may never come.
Article Source: Why Girls Should Learn Jiu Jitsu in a Rape Culture | Houston Press
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