A popular meme doing the rounds lately goes like this: “Friend: What’s BJJ like? Me: It’s like Fight Club but you talk about it all the time.”Įvery day you can be choked, arm barred, sat on with such force you cannot breathe, foot locked, kimura-d (an effective shoulder lock with almost mythological history). Figures are hard to come by, but it is estimated there are 15,000 practitioners in Australia today.įor the hooked, it seems obvious that everyone would love it if they just tried it. The sport was introduced to Australia in 1994, and interest in it has been on the rise lately. If you are friends with a BJJ practitioner, they’ve likely tried more than once to coax you to try a class at their gym.
We wear funny-looking outfits (either a gi – jacket, pants and belt – or, for no-gi, spats and a tight-fitting rashguard). To those outside, it can appear to be a cult.
After that first class, it soon became all I could think about. But over time, jiu jitsu has sunk itself deep into my veins. Though the nerd vs jock trope is as old and tired as most clichés, as a book editor and poet I definitely over-identified as the nerd my whole life.
