After graduations in December, I was shocked by the realisation I was a four-stripe white belt. Then in January, I was assisting at a beginner’s course. Coach was explaining why some gyms put strips of tape on student’s belts and referred to me as “approaching blue”. So this Spring, I dealt with the concept of possibly not being a white belt one day by doing 3 competitions in 4 weeks. It was a very eventful April.
I can’t say I prepared all that diligently. I was already training four times a week and kept doing the little bit of strength work I do. I made sure I started more rounds standing. I’m not great on my feet and can attest outweighing everyone in your bracket (or the open class) is not the guaranteed route to easy takedowns it is sometimes portrayed as. I figured the least I could do for my confidence was to get more minutes of stand-up practice in before the tournament. My highlight of this was going for a low single at the exact moment my training partner pulled guard and kneed me in the head. It was the night before the first competition that April and felt like a fitting metaphor for the entire thing. Even if you try properly, you might end up with an achy temple.
An April Fool’s gym tournament
Perhaps ironically, results wise I achieved the most success at the first tournament I attended, at a gym in the neighbouring city of Vantaa. It was Saturday April 1, and I won a match.
You read that right. After 4.5 years me, fat, uncoordinated, disabled, mostly non-competitive me won a BJJ match. It happened after so many losses that it just felt nice to learn winning was an actual possibility for me.
My performance was far from great BJJ. My opponent was leading by 10-0 after I’d fallen straight into quarter guard and opened my points shop. Then I remembered we were actually competing here. I crawled out of back control, opened closed guard, passed with a very inelegant smash pass and had to fight for an Americana. Coach Miia and gym mates cheered. I was both glad and worried I’d damaged my opponent’s arm, but it was all fine.
“Juuti, I won!”, I exclaimed incredulously to my friend, amusing her. Can’t lie, winning felt nice. I had a weight advantage on the opponent and gave away all those free points, but I’d only lost before, always to people smaller and sometimes newer than me. So maybe we can call this progress.
Of course, the win meant I had to do the final. I pulled guard in 0.1 seconds after getting my grips in. The opponent in that match was someone assertive on their feet and I like the bits of my spinal cord that are still fine. I was choked from mount pretty quick. I held my silver medal and still couldn’t really understand it was really me who it now belonged to.
I like to suffer, so went on to lose a match in the open weight category as well. However, in that match I was very proud of a one-handed torreando pass I did, as I used to be the worst at any passing that isn’t a smash pass. There were only 4 people signed up for that category, so I was handed a bronze medal as well. The two medals now hang from a lamp in our living room.
Two steps forward, etc.
Another Saturday, another gym tournament. I had decided that even if I was not able to do a takedown, I would do everything to make the other person feel so unsteady on their feet that they would pull guard.
I started with facing one of the opponents I had already fought the week before. They got the takedown points, and I lost the match 22 to 0 if I remember correctly.
I walked away from the mat and said to Miia: “That really sucked, I don’t want that to happen ever again.”
I had done pretty much the same thing I did in all my matches the week before. I had been both too passive on my feet and so lousy in my defence that any advantages I technically had unravelled. Of course, there was a real photographer present, so my suffering is now saved for posterity.
To the open weight we went. I faced an excellent teenager whose half guard was better than my passing. She was half my size and still managed to armbar me under 3 minutes. After that, I had thought there were no matches left, before realising that me and my teammate were supposed to fight the bronze match. My teammate, another teenager many stones lighter than me, has developed one of the best guards I’ve seen in a white belt. I was very happy to lose to them fair and square. At one point, me and the teammate hit the mat a bit awkwardly.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, forgetting the rule of not talking during a match.
“No”, they said and mounted me.
Served me right.
Later, Miia said that I had competed well. That felt hard to believe, as I hadn’t succeeded in anything I had tried to achieve in my matches. But the tournament did remind me that under pressure, even the things you think you have been decent at can become unreliable. I had forgotten to control my opponents’ pelvises better when trying to pass half guard, for example. And I still needed a better plan for the start of matches. I still had two weeks until The Big Game, Finnish Open, and decided to do something else I had not done since 2019.
Comp Class Calamity
I attended competition classes in my pre pandemic BJJ life and was 100% the nail there every single minute. My major reason for showing up now in April 2023 was to make myself think I’d done something extra for Finnish Open.
I was terribly nervous, jumpy and screechy, and probably a nightmare to coach. Speaking of Coach, he tried to remind me how to escape from a triangle in positional sparring.
“Sohvi, push Alex’ knee against the mat.
“What knee? WHAT IS A KNEE!!!” I hollered like a deeply offended banshee.
I might have told Coach not to look at me at some point. However, I spent many rounds facing two teammates from the male ultra heavyweight bracket. I pulled guard a lot and was passed a lot but still, it felt like good exposure therapy for the female heavyweight category. I can’t say I loved competition class, but I have now made a conscious decision to show my face there a bit more.
Finnish Open BJJ 2023
So I lost both of my matches at Finnish Open as well.
I had thought about attempting a takedown in the first one. Before the match I overheard my opponent’s coach saying something I interpreted as “A girl that big isn’t going to pull guard.”
So I pulled guard right after securing grips in all of my non-binary finery.
The bad news is that I had attempted to pull straight into a lasso guard, exactly like I had been practising for weeks. My opponent just pulled their hand away, and I ended up with a pretty standard open guard with hooks in.
The good news was that I actually managed to hold on to a guard for two minutes. It was the first time my guard wasn’t passed straight after pulling it in competition. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any sweeps to work, so I got choked from mount again eventually.
An open weight match against a tiny person followed. I spent quite a long time pulling them around, trying to excecute a poor man’s osoto gari. After a while, I was tired and frustrated enough that the opponent basically ended up pulling me to my knees. I small mercy was that I remembered to stop the takedown point being awarded by protecting my bum. We finished it off with a guillotine choke, as my neck made a bit of a crack and I decided to just tap. I will always have spinal cord injury and must pick my battles if I want to keep rolling in the long term.
After that match, I dealt with everything really well by going to stand at the edge of the mat and having a bit of a cry.
It’s not wrong to have emotions, but I I still don’t really understand what I cried about this time. I remember whining something along the lines of: “Everyone says big people just dominate small ones like nothing. I can’t even get a takedown to work.” Miia and Saara had the good grace to look understanding. Miia said something about those people never having been the bigger person (literally) who tries hard and still fails.
Not a very mature reaction, but it is what it is. Later, I thought the tears might have been disappointment. I felt I could have been able to win both of those matches if I only had concentrated better. Plus for a sensitive soul like me, the actual competing still feels very intense. If I must cry, I still prefer doing it after the matches and not before.
“Maybe you care more about this than you would like to admit to yourself”, Coach said. He’s gotten into all sorts of psychological personal growth stuff this decade and it’s mostly endearing.
I stopped being upset pretty pronto and could really appreciate the bits I’d improved at. At these two matches, I didn’t let the opponents get any easy points. Even at the match I won weeks before, it wasn’t the case. And at least I had learned that doing one of the major tournaments in my country isn’t that scary after all. I’m glad I put myself out there. And I will be back if my body lets me.
Double Bonus: The Friends me Make Along the Way and other Saccarine Platitudes
We have a good gym. Most people say that about their place, but I think we are good at having fun and respecting each other while still striving towards improving in our BJJ. Apart from the nervousness competing causes, I had an excellent time at all the comps I attended. Not the least because teammates came along to support and help and giggle at torn gi bottoms or me accidentally stabbing myself in the hand with scissors before one match (don’t ask). I’m especially humbled by Miia, the coach who keeps showing up at so many competitions for cornering and pep-talk duties.
Plus, you get to see friends from other gyms at tournaments. I’ve got to see Juuti, who is all no-gi all the time, collecting medals in gi comps this spring. And hang out with Stella and to lift Mari into the air after she won gold and to cheer Anna and her friend, another Mari, on at their first competition. And even though Suvi and me both lost our matches, we could still revel in the joy of not getting injured.
I want to remain the person who gets happy about seeing cool people at tournaments and makes new friends. I want to become the person who has a solid game of their own and is able to pull it off without faffle one day.
