Hey, Mark Zuckerberg, if Elon Musk’s mom won’t let him take you on in a no-holds barred mixed martial arts cage match, call me! After all, I spend just as much time sitting in front of a computer on social media as you guys do — albeit, I don’t actually own the platform — so how hard can it be to out-point you in three rounds of MMA frenzy?
And, best of all, I’ve been practicing Brazilian jiu jitsu just to see what actually rolling around on a mat with another human being on top of you is like.
This week I was the guest (victim?) of Emerson Doyle, 38, owner of south Arlington’s EvolveAll studio, a four-year-old, 9,000-square-foot warren of padded gyms and a fitness center with names like Peace Room, War Room, and Wave Room, located on the ground floor of an apartment building off Columbia Pike. The facility is the culmination of Doyle’s ambitious dream, which started some 15 years ago with teen training at the Thomas Jefferson Community and Fitness Center.
A giggling gaggle of martial arts kids was departing as I arrived for my “no-gi jiu jitsu” session. One of the things you learn at the MMA gym: A “gi” is the familiar loose fitting two-piece garment often worn during martial arts training; “no-gi” classes are taken in tight workout clothing. The fabric of the gi actually becomes a tool for controlling opponents and is more useful for advanced students, Doyle explained. I was in a beginner class, although some of my classmates have been coming several times a week for a year or more.
The hour-long session started with warm-ups — running in circles and loosening limbs — and finished with “shrimping,” a fundamental movement using legs, shoulders, and hips to move backward across the mat.
From there, classmates paired off and followed coach Killian Byrne as the former Marine guided us — with Doyle as my patient partner — through the moves of a “rear naked choke,” a basic and wonderfully effective Brazilian jiu jitsu “submission hold.” The idea is to lock the opponent from behind with your legs, and with your arms strategically placed around his neck, apply pressure to either neck veins or trachea until he passes out (or die). Happily, for the purposes of this drill, the opponent “taps out” to let his partner know he’s successfully achieved the move.
Our next move was to learn how to escape the choke by removing said arms from around said neck and winding up on top in a “mount” position.
Forty-five minutes flew by before Byrne shifted the class into rotating partners who spent the next 15 minutes testing their skills and knowledge on each other in timed sessions. I’m told the mental element of BJJ is like a game of chess as you try to think several moves ahead of your opponent; much of that was on display as the paired combatants rapidly changed positions on the floor, from top to bottom and surprisingly silently.
When the final whistle blew, classmates bowed to Byrne and lined up for smiles and handshakes as they left the mat, after bowing to the room, a BJJ tradition.
So, am I ready for a Zucker punch? Probably not, but I’m happy to tweet it anyway.
Feature image courtesy EvolveAll/Brian Samson
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