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So I was thinking what made you pick up the martial art you're currently doing. Why did you choose it? Any background in other martial arts?

I've been doing FMA (Filippino Martial Arts) for the last six (-ish) years. I kind of drifted into my club and the art after having quit martial arts a couple of years earlier (did Muay Thai, Krav Maga and some MMA before) . I stayed and still stay partly because of the social dimension, we have a great team that's lots of fun both to train with and hang out with. Also, the head instructor is really, really good and it's always fun to learn from experts who are passionate about what they do, almost regardless of what it is they teach

When it comes down to the art itself, I like that it's a mix of weapon based and empty hand skills. I like the fact that the same principles apllies regardless of which weapon (or no weapon) you use. I think it can be a good fit for self defense, which is my primary interest these days, if taught with that as an explicit goal. The art can, however, be a bit treacherous. We have tons of drills, disarms and cool, "shiny" stuff and it's easy to kind of get lost in that and forget to ask yourself how it applies in a self defense context. I would guess that this varies from club to club and teacher to teacher, though. Our club is fairly traditional, while there are clubs that go all in on the self defense part.

I did judo for 4 years in my youth, then restarted it 4 years ago, and started BJJ alongside it. Now I don’t really think of them as martial arts, they are just sporting endeavours to me (i understand that I am perhaps in the minority for thinking that way).

It is a blasting full body training, it is fun, and there is the sense of social interaction. There is also remarkably little bullshit in these 2 sports/martial arts, at least at where I practice, which is fortunate as I have a low tolerance for that.

i've been training BJJ for probably 15 years now, not all of those active, but the past 8 years very consistently. currently a brown belt.

my dad was always interested in martial arts because he was skinny as a kid and picked on. he took some karate but thought it was not effective, at least at the dojo he was at. he became interested in more effective martial arts, specifically boxing, but never trained. so those interests were imprinted on me. i always wanted to do karate as a kid, because of well, chuck norris, JCVD, etc., but my dad said it was impractical and wouldn't work in real life, so i always had that in my head.

circa 1993 the first UFC was aired and we had a cheater box. i was just a kid and probably shouldn't have been watching by most parenting standards, but well, whatever. i saw royce gracie, whom i thought was a skinny indian guy, beat everybody with what looked like basically magic, and i decided i wanted to train jiu jitsu as soon as i could.

there was no real brazilian jiu jitsu where i lived until probably 10-12 years ago. it was mostly guys who watched tapes and trained together. probably the best guy in the area was a blue belt and was near god-like to the rest of us. so i dabbled in bjj for years with these guys until we got a purple belt in the area who opened a school. that's the way it was if you weren't in a major market like nyc, boston, la...not many black belts.

there was a time that i thought i would dedicate my life to bjj. but i learned a hobby that you do everyday becomes a job, and a job feels like a job. plus there was no money in bjj. so i pursued my profession and continued to train bjj as a hobby. i used to train to be able to kick people's a$$e$, but now it's just for fun and stress relief. i will probably train for the rest of my life, but always as a hobbyist.

otherwise, i've done a little boxing before bjj, some judo, some krav maga, and various other forms of "grappling" before there was real bjj in the area, including catch wrestling.

I started BJJ around 8 months ago in my mid-40s. I decided to do it after watching my 9 year old son excel at it for about a year. My son would say to me after class, "Dad, you just sit there and watch." Also, ever since seeing Royce Gracie in the the early 90s I always wondered how I'd do at grappling. Lastly, following J-Madd's log on another forum inspired me to give BJJ a try even in my mid-40s. I'm glad I did. While I'm certainly not a BJJ nut, it's a great workout and I'm learning something practical at the same time I'm sweating. I've seen old friends since starting BJJ who told me I'm looking more fit, and there is no doubt in my mind it's because of the BJJ rather than the weights or running (which I've always done).

As for other martial arts, I did a little karate as a kid, and I tried Tang Soo Do in my 20s for about a year, but left after concluding that the school where I was training was not preparing for me self defense. It was more like taking a dance class.

Excuse the long read and punctuation. I am on an iPad overseas.
TLDR- I love BJJ


My father Used to take me along to whatever martial art he was doing as a kid.
I was exposed to various forms of karate and similar before he settled into Muay Thai. I did that on and off for a few years depending on where we lived.

At about 15 my dad got into the UFC’s and found a guy who wanted to do some grappling. I eventually joined in and we would pRactice bjj on puzzle mats in our lounge room and doing stand up sparring in the garage.we also did stand up clinch rounds and drills to escape from cage walls. We couldn’t do proper takedowns but made do. I also started going to a bjj gym at this time to do more training. I did this for about a year training a couple times a week.

I joined the army and sporadically would train for a month or two in bjj or Muay Thai before quitting again. I left the army and I am finally settled and training again.

It’s about 11 Year’s after I first started bjj and I have been training again for most of this year. I started again in January and some weeks I train once while others i train 3+ days on the mat.

I am just on my final day of a 20 day grappling trip where I have been training 2x a day in both gi/no gi and absolutely loving it. I am also looking at getting back into Muay Thai and improving my wrestling when I get home. I would love to get back into lighter mma sparring and eventually assist with coaching.

I am effectively a 11 year no stripe white belt in bjj and I absolutely love it. I usually get to roll with higher belts because I am happy to treat training as training and don’t try to win every roll like it’s a competition. I also like to feed new people the technique from class to both teach them and learn counters myself.I have good fundamentals but I started mostly in no gi and prefer it though the gi is growing on me.

I am not much of a competitor but I might have to give a few tournaments a go soon just to force myself to go a bit harder and see how my bjj is when not in a training environment.