The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Club is branching out and becoming more competitive. It sent two senior members to the ICON Sports competition last weekend, one of the largest Jiu-Jitsu tournaments in Maine. Phil Koch ’15 and Dan Navarro ’16 represented the club in the blue belt division and placed second and fourth respectively, a strong outing especially considering their limited competition experience.
"[Phil] and I were not sure how we were going to do going into it because we were fighting at blue belt, which is a pretty difficult division and neither of us had done that before," said Navarro. "The only people we fight are other Bowdoin students, so it was a little hard to judge how we were going to compete against these men, a lot of whom are professional MMA fighters or amateur boxers or whatever, coming from all sorts of martial arts experiences, and we did really well."
Jiu-Jitsu is a submission-based martial art that focuses on using your opponent's weight to your advantage and pushing them past their comfort levels. While the matches start standing up, most of the fighting is done on the ground as the fighters use chokes, holds and locks to make their opponent so uncomfortable they tap out or are "submitted." Gaining this advantage over your opponent is more about leverage and tactical maneuvers than brute strength.
"Part of what I love about the sport is that it teaches you to use your opponent's weight against them, so one of the points of it is that you can beat someone who is bigger and stronger than you are," said Elizabeth Miller ’18. "Strength is important in this sport, but it's not necessary per se. So it's just nice to know the ways you can handle yourself and have that awareness so that if someone comes up to me in the street, especially with everything that's been going on this year, I could hold my own."
Miller first started Jiu-Jitsu to learn some basic self-defense moves, which is a common motivation for newcomers as the sport's technique focuses on defending yourself from a larger attacker. However, Jiu-Jitsu can feel odd and unnatural at first, especially for those without any wrestling or martial arts background.
"It was really scary at first and I felt very awkward, but as you learn you just get more comfortable with it and more comfortable with being uncomfortable," said Miller. "Everyone is so supportive and so nice and they're just there to help you. I love it, I'm so glad I did it."
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the club is keeping new members. While the club has grown substantially since it was first founded with two members in 2011, for many newcomers the sport can be daunting and the process of improvement long and demanding.
"When you come into Jiu-Jitsu, it doesn't matter how tough you are, it doesn't matter how big you are, the first day you hit the mat someone's going to submit you and you're going to feel like you're in danger of getting hurt and that's a pretty humbling experience," said Navarro.
"Then to get good at the sport, you really have to drill it and like any other sport, you have to do some boring things in practice and the fun stuff comes after," said Navarro. "My biggest recommendation would be if you're really interested, come to two or three practices to try it out before you really give up, because the people who do that have all stuck with it."
The club practices three days a week in the Sargent Dance Studio on the third floor of Smith Union and welcomes newcomers of all experience levels to contact Navarro if they're interested.