The first time i put a gi on was october 31st 2007. It was in small gym on 4265 Papineau street in Montreal. My first coach was Nobuya Shimamoto, a brown belt instructor.
I had done karate for 5 years in my teenage years. Putting a gi on again at 32 years old was like falling in love again with a sport. BJJ was so different from karate. Learning to fight on the ground was like learning to swim. It was tough.
I look back on ten years of practice and i am so proud of what i have learned.
In the last decade, i have kept practicing in spite of becoming a father, of having a demanding job and of life in general.
I am not the expert i expected to be after a decade of practice but i understand now that the main benefit of BJJ has nothing to do with technical expertise or physical prowess, it is all about mindset. I am not this mythical fighter i dreamed about when i was a kid. I do not levitate. I do not catch flying arrows with my hands or dodge bullets. I am just a regular guy.
BJJ gave me the gift of grit: the firmness of mind and spirit, an unyielding courage in the face of hardship. BJJ is as much about fighting as it is about respect. In BJJ training, we fight with respect. In a decade, i have faced an opponent on the mat a thousand times. Often my opponent was bigger and many times, he was stronger and better than me. Grit is about facing our fears with a smile. It is the inner belief that the outcome is not important, trying and giving our best is. I’d rather fail trying one thousand times than not try once because i am afraid. One of the core principle of BJJ is “tap to learn” or roughly translated “fail to improve”. The shift in perspective from the prevailing mindset is simple: failure is not a step backward, it is a lesson learned, it is a step forward, keep trying and success will eventually come.
So i enter this second decade of training BJJ at almost 43 years old with a different mindset than i had at age 32. BJJ is not about being better or stronger than my opponent, BJJ is all about improving myself, it is about perseverance and patience.
Thank you Nobuya Shimamoto. Our few meetings together sent me on an adventure.
Thank you Hammer Hache. Our years together gave me a strong foundation.
Thank you Pat Pat Cooligan. Without the Ottawa martial arts academy, i would not be who i am today.
Thank you Sylvain Aube. Your passion and your patience are admirable.
To all of you, I am forever grateful for the gifts you gave me.
Original post Facebook, october 2017
Martin Pham Dinh 