Learning how to choke people can be more profound than you think
I’ve spent quite some time rolling on the ground trying to choke people lately (or rather trying to not get choked) and it’s been genuinely transformative.
WARMING UP
Picture this:
The sound of the timer goes off.
You have three minutes to try to get the human being in front of you in a position where you could either break a limb or knock them unconscious, getting dangerously close to killing them by restricting oxygen flow to their brain.
Your heart rate elevates, you’re hyper aware of their movements, you’re eager to make a move but also feel a heavy weight that makes it hard to pull the first one. A concoction of fear adrenaline, anticipation and excitement starts to boil through you… and then you’re in the weeds… your leg’s in trouble, you escape… they pass your knees and you’re suddenly under a lot of pressure
All of their weight on your body, you can barely breathe, they get to a mount (their full body weight on top of you) you’re in trouble.
Fear starts to really kick in.
The urgency to breathe takes the front wheel and you panic… but anything that you do bares no consequence, you're also getting tired. You keep on going till you pass out or you tap out…
The timer goes off again and its all over. You shake hands and look for someone else to repeat this with.
WORKING IT OUT
Why would you want to spend your valuable time grappling?
Getting uncomfortably close to people you might not be familiar with to try and put them in a position where you could harm them but not actually getting to that point? Or worse yet, to put yourself into those vulnerable positions?
To the naked, untrained eye it may seem aggressive and dangerous, unnecessary even.
Why don't you just hit the gym?
I grew up training karate, the practice ingrained in me things like discipline, attitude and perseverance. But this has been very different…
Catch wrestling and BJJ came to me recently, almost ten years after I left my karate gym, at a moment where I set out to intently work on my self confidence; who would’ve known I would come full circle to where it all started: a mat.
LESSONS: FROM THE MAT TO EVERYDAY LIFE
The main point of grappling is to learn to position your body in relation to the other person in different ways, where you can find opportunities to submit them by threatening a limb, or restricting air or blood flow.
Here’s 4 important grappling and life lessons I’ve felt deeply transformed by:
LESSON#1: THE CALM IN THE STORM
Say someone much bigger is on top of you, all of their weight falling on your body like a heavy wet blanket. You can feel a panicked voice inside of you saying “this is bad, we need to get out”. If you're not an experienced grappler your response most probably will be to exert as much power as you can to lift them up and flip them over. But every attempt will do very little. They go on to put their chest and all of their weight on you to squish your face. Now you can’t breathe.
Fear made me tap immediately in situations like this countless times and quite honestly left me feeling helpless and really tired.
Constantly rolling and watching other people I noticed experienced grapplers engage in what I can only describe as a dance between burst of movements and calm pauses. Rolling with them also felt like they were floating from one position to another. Calm, collected, focused. Even when they got into a disadvantageous position, they would take their time to regroup and respond.
Rolling and getting in these uncomfortable situations teaches you that the best strategy under high pressure circumstances is to slow down, calm your heart rate while you figure out how to escape. I don’t see how this is much different than life. And so I found myself out of the mat recognizing that when the pressure mounts, you just need to remember three simple things:
Calm down, take stock and work on a response.
LESSON#2: ENERGY MANAGEMENT
During the first few months grappling, my nerves would dictate all my responses, leaving me short of breathe and depleted of energy. Much had to do with my physical condition but most of it really was inefficient energy management.
My BJJ teacher explained really early on the importance of being intentional with your movements. It’s not something you fully understand with your brain though, your body needs to feel into it as well.
Exerting force frantically when you’re under someone’s weight is really a waste of energy, specially if they are heavier than you. If you protect your arms by having them close to your body, you can hold off until an opportunity arises. Rolling and getting into this situation annoyingly enough times teaches you that if you wait for them to try something, then most of the times, if you’re focused and fast, you’ll find a window to get out and counter attack.
The ability to see these windows only gets sharper by showing up to the mat and deliberately seeking the discomfort of the position. You can’t control what your opponent will do but one thing you know for sure is that they will try to submit you as as best as they can. You can trust that they will move you around and try different attacks on you, creating space between your bodies, and opportunities to retaliate.
It’s up to you to manage your energy in a way that will get you into an advantageous position in response and in harmony with your opponents actions.
Anything we do in life requires the management of energy.
Grappling shows you that the best way to roll is by managing your energy efficiently while sharpening your vision so that you can identify opportunities and take them with confidence when you see them.
Mastering your energy levels, orchestrating defenses and attacks requires you to understand when it’s time to let go and when it's time to really go. It is a dance between calculated surrender and directed strong action.
It’s only like that that you learn to flow.
LESSON#3: REDISCOVERING AGGRESSION
When it’s time to go, you need a few things to be successful:
an intended direction (basically to know what you’re doing, where you’re going)
the power to get there (in many cases this takes the form of speed and explosiveness)
and the willingness to do it.
The first one has to do with the mental, the understanding of the mechanics of how an arm bar works, where you need to put their arm in relation to your body so that you can threaten to break it. The second one has to do with the physical, how you can tell your body to get there, in many cases against a strong push from your opponent. The last one seems like a given but I think it's the most important one.
Do you really want to get to a place where you could harm someone?
If the answer is yes, and you can muster the power and technique to get there, you will get there. And so: why would you want to get there in the first place?
We share the power and ability to be very dangerous, in so many different ways…
I find that acknowledging that it is necessary to live as an integrated human being. Yes, you may be a nice person but the fact is you also have within you the capacity to be mean, violent and nasty. As hard as it may be to admit it, the reality is that it is a spectrum of spectrums. You’re both nice and mean, strong and weak, wonderful and awful at the same time, it just depends on the situation. It's your actions that define what lines you walk on.
How can you know how to navigate this fine balance if you never encounter opportunities to deal with your internal darkness?
“You can’t truly call yourself “peaceful” unless you’re capable of great violence, if you’re not capable of violence you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless.”
- Jocko Willink
Grappling has shown me I have the capacity to both experience and inflict great pain, and that is why it is really worthwhile to harness that power in a controlled way; for the betterment of myself as a human being. In this light, I’ve come to see aggression as the fire that ignites inside, the burst of energy that gets me places. If it’s lined up with a meaningful direction and a strong will then you can really trust that sooner or later this type of directed aggression will get you to wherever you want to be.
LESSON#4: COMMITMENT & TRUST
This is an easy segue into my last point: grappling is a great platform to cultivate commitment and trust.
CONSISTENCY IS KEY
Nothing new here.
I’ve come to realize that every time I show up to the mat I’m doing so much for myself. I’m mustering the confidence needed to face the discomfort and invoking the fire within me to respond to pressure. At the same time, I’m making space for the humility of accepting my limits by tapping out when I need to, and the openness to learn when rolling with those that are both far ahead and behind me in skill.
I get that it's not like that for everyone, but I genuinely believe that any commitment to confidence and humility brings about a balanced expression of your human potential. This can and does percolate to other areas of your life and I like to think that ever since grappling came along, I have brought so much good energy into mine.
My teachers salute and thank everyone for showing up at the end of every class. It’s a small gesture but I see why they do it every single time.
Whether this is their intention or not I think that on some level all good grapplers understand that getting better at this sport means so many things: getting physically more fit, mentally more sharp and spiritually more humble; all of which should be encouraged and celebrated.
TRUST: JUST GOING FOR IT
One of the first things our catch teacher taught us was takedowns. I remember very distinctly hearing him say something like:
“the first thing you need to do a takedown is to believe that you can do it no matter how big or strong your opponent is”
At the beginning I thought that was silly; how could a 140 lb woman take a 200 lb strong dude down?
Training teaches you to become resourceful, pushing you to ask different questions, get creative and take matters into your hands. My mental discourse changed from “I can’t possibly take him down” to “what do I need to do to make it happen?”. For obvious reasons, I can’t pretend to do it based on force alone: my technique, angles and timing should be intentional and precise.
Once you’ve worked on getting everything you need to succeed on the table, that’s when blind trust should come in. You can’t pretend a takedown will work if midway you start doubting yourself, this will slow the momentum, affecting your angles and timing; ultimately spoiling your attempt and even putting you in dangerous situations. Once you’ve prepared you just
Go. For. It.
And push till you either get there or something else changes that requires you to change the strategy.
TIME IS UP
Not even half a year into the practice of this sport, language and art, and I recognize there’s a long way to go, a lifetime really. Which makes me feel not only excited but also honored to be sharing space and time with people that seek and appreciate the value in this process.
I’m sure there’s other sports and languages to speak of, I just happen to have really good chemistry with this one. I’ve also been really lucky to have stumbled upon teachers that are really intentional with their practice and genuinely care about their students’ personal development. Like one of my them always says:
“let the mat be a true companion and teacher on the journey to develop your soul”.
I hope you have already found or someday find a practice and community that can give you the opportunity to explore and practice maintaining calm under pressure, efficiently managing your energy, expressing controlled aggression while cultivating commitment and trust in yourself.
And if you haven’t maybe you could give grappling a chance.
Cause if you can learn to wrestle with people you might be able to learn a thing or two about how to wrestle gracefully with life.
Learning how to choke another human being never seemed as beautiful.
Till next time,
-N
Ps. A big shoutout to my friends at Macua Fight Academy for opening up such a cool space for people in Antigua Guatemala to go and develop themselves.