I think the last thing a woman wants would be to roll around trying to escape a headlock position, but what can I say, I am a victim of my own rash decisions.

I recently received an email offering a month of free women’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes. As someone delusional and likes to think that I would magically become an amazing fighter after 1-2 classes, I pounced on the opportunity to choke out other women.

Cue Rocky’s training montage.

Except, it wasn’t actually the Rocky training montage.

I walked into the training center and was immediately hit with the smell of sweat and the stench of humiliation from defeats. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, thinking to myself that I didn’t belong here. What was I thinking? Who let me out in public and why did they let me think I could stand a chance at close contact combat sports? I turned around to leave, but as I had my hand on the door, I decided that I wasn’t going to succumb to my fear of failure.

I asked someone for directions to the beginner’s jiu-jitsu class and tried my best to swallow the lump of anxiety in my throat. I made it into the classroom and was greeted by the instructor. While she was kind and welcoming, it did little to calm the nerves jittering all through my body.

Class begins and the instructor demonstrates the escape techniques we’d be learning today. She had another woman mount her and put her into a headlock while she explained how to escape the mount. Watching this did not help me with the uncomfortable feeling of inadequacy and I was ready to leave the class at this moment.

“One, two, break!”

Great, now we just broke from the demonstration circle and I had to find a training partner. A girl was sitting beside me who offered to train with me. She was extremely kind and walked me through some basic steps of the mount and head-locking someone, and then something changed.

We were rolling on the floor and she was trying to escape my grip as I fought tooth and nail to keep her subdued. At that moment all the adrenaline came rushing in and I understood why people enjoyed this sport. The rolls became more intense and I became more aggressive as the adrenaline was flowing through my body. At one point my partner jammed me in the throat hard enough to make me throw up in my mouth, quite literally. The hour of the class passed too quickly and I was exhausted by the end.  I left the training center battered and bruised, but weirdly empowered because I proved to myself I was able to step out of my comfort zone and try a sport that I never thought that I would touch with a ten foot pole. I’m already signed up for my next class, and I would highly recommend it to anyone else who would like to try it. However, before you sign up for the class, there are a few things of note.

1. Please cut your nails. The girl that I was grappling with did not cut her nails and I ended up with multiple cuts on my body from grappling with her.
2. Shower before class, and shower after class. This is a close contact sport. If you smell bad, people will know, and they will be disgusted. Unfortunately, my grappling partner was a smoker and I could feel her breath in my throat every time I went down to put her into a lock. I threw up in my mouth and I was gagging on her stale cigarette and coffee breath, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
3. You’re going to be sore. You’re going to discover muscles you forgot you had. Why are my abs sore from rolling around on the floor? I can’t tell you, but I couldn’t move the next day.
4. Wear clean clothes. This goes hand in hand with the showering aspect. While you’re at it, brush your teeth.
5. If you roll with a partner who smells, you will end up smelling too. I left the class smelling like cigarettes just because I was rolling around with my grappling partner for so long. I had to go home immediately to scrub off the stench.
6. You’re going to be showering a lot for this sport.
7. Did I mention shower?

Overall, I would rate this experience 8/10.

While it was fun, entering the training center was intimidating and I felt immensely out of place. While I wasn’t expecting rainbows and butterflies, and I knew what I was walking into, that doesn’t help diminish the fear or anxiety. While I could handle the amount of close physical contact with strangers, their stench could ruin the class. This is beyond the control of the instructors, but it still affects the experience nonetheless.

I would recommend Brazilian jiu-jitsu to anyone who wants to learn close combat and is okay with the huge amount of physical contact. I will note that the classes and memberships are quite costly and if it weren’t for this month-long free trial, I would not have ever strayed into this endeavour.