I recently (in the last 4 months) started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is hard and rewarding. I started it partly because I like hard things and partly because my fiance has done it for 4 years. I spend each hour and a half long class getting my ass handed to me with a nice bow on it. Today, while I was receiving my be-bowed ass, I got two back to back pieces of advice.

First, I was wrestling a guy named Tommy. He was stronger than me, better than me, faster than me etc. Everything I did or tried to do got turned into my undoing. After making me say uncle, Tommy said, “You are too tense. Your rigidity gives me so much opportunity to do whatever I want.”

Second, I was still rolling with Tommy when he swept me. Right when it happened, the instructor stopped us. He showed me that it was called a “scissor sweep” and how to counter it — you simply jump over the tripping leg. This was all well and good, but I asked him, “How could I intuit that?“.

To answer me, he asked, “When you fight with [your fiance], what do you fight to do? You certainly don’t fight to win. You fight to understand.” He went on to say that in BJJ it is much the same. When you are in a physical altercation, you goal is ultimately to win, but as a short term goal this will not serve you.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu comes from Jujutsu, a japan martial art that means “yielding (Ju) technique (Jutsu)“. This fighting to understand is the yielding part of technique. The strength of the art is strategically going with your opponents plan and understanding it enough to subvert it. BJJ isn’t a show of strength, but a meeting of the minds. In this, my tension is the wrong approach; I need to learn to yield.