The longer I think about it, the harder it is for me to figure out whether my life has been more positively impacted by my move to Saigon or jiu jitsu. Both happened two years ago.
The logical answer is Saigon. It’s the more drastic change and I wouldn’t have started jiu jitsu had I not moved in the first place. For context: I grew up in Tokyo and it’s where I was living before Vietnam. Due to Covid, I was stuck there after graduating from university in England—a period spent losing hours in a drug and drink induced haze. Upon graduating and returning to Japan, I decided something needed to change if I were to save myself from the depressing routine of a university grad who didn’t know what to do with himself. I’d been an active kid growing up. Football had been the sport but age and the reality that I wasn’t going to be the next Andres Iniesta destroyed any passion I had for the game. I had to do something, so when one of my close friends recommended boxing, I figured why not.
Boxing helped. Quite literally beat me back into a state of relative fitness and made me remember the pure joy that comes from movement and sweating every last drop out of your system. Trapped in Tokyo during the Covid pandemic, boxing provided an outlet to let out all the frustration, anger, confusion at the state of the world back then: how lives were being torn apart because of a disease and how my life had essentially been put on pause as a result. In the gym you could forget about the world outside. Nothing mattered more than the beep of the timer every three minutes—Another round, another round, another round… You got out of boxing what you put in, and the more I learned the more I became curious about other martial arts like jiu jitsu, wrestling, muay thai…
Fast forward to Saigon, I visited a number of boxing clubs but never found the type of training I wanted. Jiu jitsu, however, seemed to be everywhere. I figured why not? I still remember that first session. The gym’s Google maps address hadn’t been updated so I ended up at the new location half an hour late, somewhat annoyed, then intimidated when I saw the group already training. Boxing helped me lose weight but it hadn’t exactly given me muscle—Standing 183cm, I only weighed 69 kilograms. Something of a pencil, something of a twig. Some of the fellas training looked like they could snap a twig in half with two fingers, and there I was, supposed to train with them? Thankfully the coach, a Vietnamese guy named Cain (he’s got a twin brother called Abel), introduced me around and told me not to worry—It was all going to be fine. He paired me with one of the higher belts and we went through a few drills. Coming from boxing, everything we did was impossibly new. I felt like a baby learning how to walk, a kid having his first swim—In short, a complete idiot, embarrassed that I didn’t know how to control my body like they did, didn’t know the sequence of moves that got you from a position to a submission, didn’t even know the names of those moves. Despite the rocky start, any embarrassment faded when we rolled at the end of class. Rolling in jiu jitsu means sparring, and though the word might conjure images of grunts beating each other senseless, the beauty of jiu jitsu lies in the mutual agreement that when your opponent taps, the game’s over. Nada. Stop. No more. This changed everything. Meant you could spar with a decent amount of confidence that you weren’t going to get injured. Sure, some things might hurt but the feeling I had doing my first rolls was like that of being a kid in the playground again. I was playing. I was hooked.
It’s been two years since I’ve started jiu jitsu. Its positive effects have trickled into other aspects of my life. I used to go five times a week: Monday through Friday. This meant drinking on the weekdays, something that had been normal during university and fairly common during my bartending days in Tokyo, was no longer feasible. I also picked up a weightlifting routine, a natural development seeing as most of the guys I trained with did the same, and that stuff rubs off. Once more, the question beckons: has my life been more positively impacted by Saigon or jiu jitsu?
Who knows the answer. Frankly, it doesn’t make a difference. All that’s important is that I started, that I continue. I got my blue belt not too long ago, also began mixing up training at a different gym with a group of higher level guys. I’m no longer getting crushed as much as I used to. Might even hit a few submissions and wonder where the hell they came from, how it was that my body figured out the sequence of moves and executed them without so much as a second thought. It’s nice. Feels good. While I don’t train as much as I used to—three or four times a week, owing to the fact that I lift now as well—the fewer sessions means I have to make the most out of them. And that feeling still hasn’t faded. How at the end of each session, body drenched in sweat, mind clear as if I’d just been baptised, I realise I hadn’t been thinking about anything but jiu jitsu for the duration of class. The noise faded—the traffic outside and the one in my head. It stopped mattering. Just roll.
