The Rise and Rise of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu
Dave, whom I’ve only known for a few minutes, is kneeling between my thighs as I lie with my back on the floor, his hands on my hips. This might seem compromising, but in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, this is “the guard”: an ostensibly defensive position that, in reality, presents an array of offensive options. It is also – as my first lesson at martial arts gym Fightzone in east London is teaching me – a great icebreaker.
From here, I can dislodge one of Dave’s hands and tug on the lapel of his gi while bringing him forward with my hips, so that his weight traps his arm against my chest. I can then reach around to grab his back, while getting hold of his trouser leg on the same side. From here, I can lift my own leg up as a lever and “sweep” him, so that I’m on top (“the mount”). Then I can grip his other lapel and, bringing my hands together like a pair of scissors, cut off his air supply. That is, if I can remember the sequence of moves that was demonstrated to our class moments before, never mind execute them.
“It’s like chess,” says Dave, a 26-year-old computer programmer who’s shorter and slighter than I am, but sweeps me with surprising ease. We’re not sparring or “rolling”; we’re just practising moves. He encourages me to choke him harder by pushing my wrist bone into his throat.
To paraphrase Tyler Durden, even if this is your first day at Fightzone, you have to fight. As we slap hands to signal that we’re ready, I’m apprehensive, even though Brazilian jiu-jitsu doesn’t involve much punching or kicking. I needn’t have worried. Dave and I spend most of our time locked in stalemate, barely moving but sweating buckets. The class tires me out in a way that even my twice-weekly five-a-side can’t match. It’s clearly a crushing workout. But that doesn’t explain why people are so fixated on being asphyxiated. So what else is getting them so gassed?
Brazilian jiu-jitsu descends from a martial art originally developed in feudal Japan, before being exported to Brazil on a wave of Japanese immigration around the turn of the 20th century. Jiu-jitsu roughly translates as “the gentle art”, which, to the uninitiated, might seem inappropriate. An alternative interpretation might be “yielding”, the idea being to redirect your opponent’s force, rather than to meet it head-on. It’s about taking your opponent down to the ground, where you can oblige them to submit with limb locks or chokes.
“Jiu-jitsu is learning how to control another person,” says Fightzone co-founder James Roach. “It’s not aggressive. There’s no anger. It’s not like boxing, where you’re trading punches, toe to toe. In a lot of ways, it’s worse than that. It’s like being attacked by a snake, and the snake is slowly moving up your leg, going up your torso, working its way towards your neck...”
Best of the Best
Roach greeted me with a warm smile when I finally girded myself and entered Fightzone. But that doesn’t make rolling with the 6ft 2in, 88kg brown belt – one below black – in my second lesson any less intimidating. I’m 5ft 10in, 80kg and currently beltless because Fightzone has run out of the white novice ones; my lack of a waistband feels emblematic of my ability. Roach manipulates me at will, like a child playing with an action figure. He sportingly lets me out of his guard, before pulling me back in with his hands and dexterous feet. Though I know I’m doomed, there is something compelling, even fun, about trying to delay the inevitable. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube of limbs.
In 2012, Roach opened Fightzone with Marco Canha, a Rio de Janeiro-born black belt and former British Open champion, running 34 classes a week. They’ve since expanded that to 120. Boasting “the busiest martial arts schedule in Europe”, Fightzone also teaches MMA, Muay Thai, wrestling and boxing. But Brazilian jiu-jitsu has always dominated, and its classes are the best attended.
Ten years ago, Roach was working as a surveyor on building sites and staying up with his mates to watch UFC. The first-ever event was won by Royce Gracie – a scion of a legendary dynasty that developed, then popularised, Brazilian jiu-jitsu – settling the debate about who’d win in a bracket-style, single-elimination tournament out of a boxer, a kick-boxer, a karateka and a sumo wrestler. (Royce’s half-brother, Rickson Gracie, also choked out Chuck Norris on another occasion.) After meeting Canha at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament in Sweden, Roach sold his house to fund Fightzone and now lives in the gym in a space he’s converted upstairs. His girlfriend often works on the front desk, while Canha’s children attend the kids’ classes.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu has many passionate, often high-profile adherents, some of whom I’ve interviewed for this magazine: Jason Statham (who rolled with Guy Ritchie while on the press tour for Lock, Stock…), Henry Cavill and Kelly Slater. More recent converts include Justin Bieber, conscious, perhaps, of how many people want to strangle him, and Russell Brand, who interviewed Ryron and Rener Gracie for his Under the Skin podcast. It’s a club in which the first two rules (“You do not talk about Fight Club”) are regularly flouted. But, while celebrity endorsements may get members through the door, something else is locking them in.
Origin Stories
While, in most martial arts, there’s a natural hierarchy – stronger, fitter men tend to fare better – Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a great leveller. As Roach puts it: “There’s no fat or thin, rich or poor. Everyone’s the same on the mat. Everyone wears the same £60 gi.” That many of
the men I roll with are a good few kilos heavier than me would matter far less, too, if I had even a modicum of technique, because Brazilian jiu-jitsu was devised to counteract just such imbalances.
Carlos Gracie is often regarded as the father of the martial art, having founded the first academy in Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s, but his younger brother Hélio should at least be considered its uncle. A frail child who was often excused from school on health grounds, Hélio adapted the techniques he had learned to compensate for his weakness, leveraging, well, leverage instead of strength.
The Gracie brothers earned renown in their native land with a series of “vale tudo” (“anything goes”) challenges. One of Hélio’s sons, Rorion, opened the first American Gracie Academy in LA, where – as the legend goes – he offered $100,000 to anyone who could beat him or his brothers. Recognising the first-ever UFC as a major marketing opportunity, Rorion cannily put forward not himself or his brother Rickson, who resembled a bald Marlon Brando on steroids, but his smaller sibling Royce, dressed in white to look innocent. Rorion knew that Royce’s victory against bigger men would highlight Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s supremacy.
Today, MMA fighters consider Brazilian jiu-jitsu to be indispensable. “For me, it’s everything,” says Mackenzie Dern, a former world champion with a Phelpsian haul of golds. Dern says she switched to MMA because she’d hit all her goals in Brazilian jiu-jitsu by 21 and was encouraged to by the guys at her academy, where she was always the only female until she was a black belt. (I’ve seen women roll with men at Fightzone too.) She joined the UFC in 2016, and her record stands at seven fights, seven wins. Striking isn’t easy, she hastens to add, but you only have so many punches and kicks to master: after that, it’s simply about refining your technique. “But jiu-jitsu is chess,” continues Dern, echoing Dave. “You make one move, and there are about 10 different options after that.” And those options are always evolving with the addition of new techniques.
Arizona-born Dern started training when she was three. Her father is Brazilian martial artist Wellington Dias, who was taught by Hélio Gracie’s son Royler. Only later did she realise that not all the other kids did Brazilian jiu-jitsu after school, as they did in her dad’s homeland. But over the years, she’s witnessed the sport explode in popularity in the US. “Now, it’s crazy,” she says. “I see kids with sponsors.”
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is not something you do purely for money, however. Even after more than 20 years, Dern – whose parents once grounded her from training when she lied about going to a party while in high school – still hates to skip a session. “It’s so fun: getting choked out by friends, choking them out,” she says cheerily. “It’s definitely relaxing. It takes your mind off stress.”
Close Combat
Sam, the second person I roll with at Fightzone, works in music. Having run a few marathons, he was looking for a new challenge as 40 loomed and was inspired to take up jiu-jitsu after listening to a podcast by Jocko Willink, a Navy Seal commander-turned-life coach who extols its benefits for wellbeing. “I’d never done any combat sports, so there was an allure to testing myself,” says Sam. After a year and a half, he has gained self-confidence, strength and mobility: “I stretch now, because I’ve got a reason to do it.”
He also points to another potential motivator. With each new stripe on his white belt (four denotes the stage just before blue), Sam gets the same satisfying sense of “levelling up” that he used to get from computer games, minus the empty feeling with which the latter left him. “Besides, if you’re feeling nervous about something, having some fat guy sit on you really puts it in perspective,” he says.
I can vouch for what he calls “stress inoculation”: in my third lesson at Fightzone, I’m trying to escape from the guard of a bald, trim guy called Rich, who is 51 but could pass for much younger. I make the mistake of leaning forward too much, allowing him to choke me. I’m not prepared for this but, to my surprise, I don’t panic and somehow wriggle out. When my wife messages me later to ask how my day’s going, I reply, “A guy tried to choke me. But I handled it.” For modulating a chronically overactive fight-or-flight response, it’s hard to beat a bona fide fight. “It’s a mortal struggle with no consequences,” says Sam.
Rich, who runs an art gallery, joined Fightzone at the same time as Sam, and they’ve become friends. He heard about Brazilian jiu-jitsu through The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcast of the comedian, UFC colour commentator and black belt. “I knew it would be a bit scary to be in a fight, and I wanted to battle that frightened part of me,” says Rich. The low-impact nature of Brazilian jiu-jitsu makes it accessible even for older men. (Chuck Norris became a third-degree black belt at 75.) When Rich was forced to take six months off because of a freak neck injury, his “happiness rating” dropped significantly. “I’m uplifted when I’m doing this,” he says. “It gets all the aggression out. It’s fun, too. Trying to strangle your mates, giving them a hug afterwards.”
This is, perhaps, where Brazilian jiu-jitsu has a real hold over other, less tactile active pursuits. As uncomfortable as the prospect of close physical contact with a stranger might be to many, research suggests it’s something we all need more of. Studies conducted by the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami have connected “touch therapy” to reductions in depressive symptoms and pain. Touch also lowers heart rate and blood pressure, while boosting immunity. Oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone”, promotes bonding and social behaviour. Cuddling and choking are not quite the same thing – but maybe they’re not always so different.
Rolling Thunder
The competition-only class at the Roger Gracie Academy in west London is more serious than anything I’ve experienced so far. Instead of a gi, the students wear compression gear in the gym’s monochrome livery, or rash guards and board shorts. At the far end of the room hangs a row of solemn-looking Gracie family portraits. Over the course of the session, the floor becomes slick with sweat and blood from an accidentally contacted nose, which splatters over a pair of trainers discarded at the edge of the mat. The humid air fills with the sound of slaps, grunts… and laughter.
Some of the laughter is emanating from Roger Gracie himself, a 14-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion, the chairman of the UK Jiu-Jitsu Federation and widely held to be the sport’s greatest of all time. The master offers his head to his students so they can tighten up their choke games. As he invites, then evades, their takedown attempts, he grins like a 6ft 4in schoolboy. “Jiu-jitsu is play-fighting,” he says. “You have fun. At the same time, you learn to fight.”
Like Roach and Dern, he speaks of how wanting to do better in training engenders positive lifestyle changes: eating better, sleeping more, drinking less. I hear Edward Norton’s narrator in my head: “Fight Club became the reason to cut your hair short or trim your fingernails.”
The explanation for Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s growing popularity, in Gracie’s view, beyond the fact that you can be any size, shape or age, is that it allows you to engage in a full-blown fight – but without the blows and head trauma. “You still try to win, to control your partner,” he says. “But you don’t have that aggression.” You can go all out, 100%, and if it becomes too much to handle, you can tap out before any lasting damage ensues. “‘The gentle art’ – that’s the meaning of it,” says Gracie, who also fought in the UFC. (There’s a picture of him in the academy’s entrance, smashing another guy’s nose with his fist.) “It’s the only art where you can be gentle with your opponent.”
“Opponent” isn’t quite the right word. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you need a willing partner, not just a human punchbag. “You can’t be unfriendly with someone you’re having to learn with,” says Gracie. “That’s why the community is so friendly. Some of the best friends I have in my life came from jiu-jitsu. We try to beat each other up, but in a nice way.” Gracie moved to London more than 16 years ago, and some of his students have been training with him ever since. He’s watched them get promoted in belts and jobs, get married, have kids and open one or more of his 14 affiliates around the country. “You have greater intimacy with people,” he says. “It’s not like you walk into the gym, don’t say hi to anyone, train and leave.”
Brazilian jiu-jitsu builds self-confidence but, crucially, it’s also humbling – even for the great Roger Gracie. “I’m used to losing,” he says. “I wasn’t amazing from day one. I’ve tapped a thousand times in my life.” Whether sparring or training, Brazilian jiu-jitsu forces even the most rampant ego to occasionally submit, and not hang self-esteem on the outcome. Some days, you’re on top; some days, a guy called Khaled kicks your ass. You learn how to win, but more importantly, you learn how to lose – and keep rolling.
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