‘Jiu Jitsu? I’m going to learn Jiu Jitsu?’
- Article 3 of 3
- The Tribe, January 2001
Once upon a time, whenever anyone talked about self defence or martial arts, Jiu Jitsu is what came to mind. But then along came Bruce Lee and overnight Kung Fu became the internationally approved answer to the question 'what martial art can you think of?' Yet now, it's making a comeback thanks to the growing realisation that if a martial art is taught to just about every special forces group around the world it might actually work.
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From there, you learn a whole range of defences ranging from releases from wrist grabs through to ways to counter multiple armed attackers. Jitsu takes the throws and groundwork of judo (an oft-quoted statistic is that 90% of fights in real-life end up with both people grappling on the floor), the punches and kicks of karate and the locks and evasion techniques of aikido, mixes them all together and spits out something that is actually pretty effective and will give you a knowledge of anatomy that will scare most doctors.
But what it won’t do is teach you how to break bricks, do flying kicks that put you into orbit or even fight like Keanu Reeves. “We have had some people turn up because they saw The Matrix where Keanu ‘learns Jiu Jitsu’,” says Sensei Hamer. “They soon realised that it wasn’t what they thought it was…”
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