Kimuras, CrossFit and COVID-19: How Jiu Jitsu Can Survive Quarantine.
Covered in sweat and panting like an overheating French bulldog, I’m crouched in my best wrestling stance in front of a rickety IKEA dining room chair draped in a Jiu Jitsu gi jacket.
A voice from my desktop barks,
“Boa, Blake, shoot for the single leg! Sprawl! Sprawl! 30 seconds left, you need the takedown to win! Let’s go!!!”
Even though my legs are totally torched from 45 minutes of shrimping, squatting and shadow sparing, I dig deep and try to imagine myself back in the finals of my last tournament.
I change levels, cut the angle, fake once, fake twice, make a grip in the collar, then do my best Gui Mendez guard-pull to ankle pick seconds before the round closes out. The chair topples into the adjoining wall with an affirming thud that I am fairly confident wakes up my napping newborn in the next room.
“…annnd time! Let’s cool down, everyone.”
On my computer screen there is a video conference running. I unpin my Jiu Jitsu professor to reveal about 20 participants, each, like me dressed in varying levels of training attire — a mosaic of rash guards, gi pants and boardshorts next to chaise lounges and lazy boys.
In the final minutes before the call runs out we coalesce in front of our cameras for some post-training commiseration and small talk, signing off with a now routine salutation, “Everybody stay safe and healthy, see you here on Tuesday — Oss.”
This is what a Jiu Jitsu class taught over Zoom looks like, and while it may be a little awkward at first, it just might be the most critical tactic in the battle to keep our sport alive through COVID-19.
In 2011, I wrote my honor’s thesis at UC Berkeley on a small but rapidly growing online fitness community called “CrossFit.” You may have heard of it. Unless you’re a giant fitness nerd like me, you probably would never refer to it as an “online fitness community.” And why would you?
With more than 15,000 affiliate gyms and an estimated value of $4 billion, CrossFit is generally considered the largest gym franchise in the world. However, when I started doing CrossFit in 2007 it was nearly impossible to find a proper “box.”
Instead, CrossFitters would go to crossfit.com every day, read the daily workout (WOD), cobble together the equipment they needed (either at their homes or at a commercial gym) and do the workout, usually alone. When they were done, they would post their results to the comments section of the workout’s post.
That’s it.
No apps or fitness trackers or $200 monthly memberships. For the crossfit.com community, posting about their WOD and interacting with the message board was the central and defining behavior to their existence as crossfitters — they looked forward it to and built structure around it.
The workouts were no-bullshit, designed for minimal equipment and intended to be performed at maximal intensity. There was no one to validate the results posted on the message boards and as a result, integrity and honesty were highly valued characteristics of the community.
It was a libertarian approach to building a fitness empire, and it worked. CrossFit didn’t exist in a physical space, rather it existed in the collective thoughts, beliefs and actions of a group of people who rarely met in the physical world, forming what political scientist Benedict Anderson called an “Imagined Community.”
My research showed that crossfitters weren’t simply working out, they were performing a ritual that made them feel connected to a community bigger than themselves — just like singing a hymnal or reciting the pledge of allegiance (if that sounds grandiose, I’ll send you my literature review).
Mundane exercises were co-opted and reframed to mean something more. They weren’t simply doing squats and overhead presses and pull ups, they were doing “Fran” and suffering along with thousands of other people all around the world.
My thesis argued that the crossfit.com community thrived because of this fact, not in spite of it.
So, what does this mean for Jiu Jitsu and the COVID-19 lockdown?
Our sport is facing an unprecedented existential challenge. We have long prided ourselves on the fact that live, full-contact sparring is the cornerstone of our martial art, and we don’t earn belts by practicing choreographed attacks against imaginary opponents…yet, here we are ( I literally made a video about how to build your own imaginary opponent).
Within all of this there is actually true opportunity.
I believe that instructors who are able to adapt to a digital format will not only survive the lockdown, but develop a deeper, more meaningful culture within their academies. Just like crossfit.com, they are creating an “imagined community” in the minds of their students which transcends the boundaries of the gym. When this is over, the bonds we create now will withstand. Though it may not feel like it, we are actually creating momentum.
The same way that early crossfit.com reframed what it meant to workout, Jiu Jitsu is evolving what it means to train, from something that is bound to a physical space, to something that is defined by our intention. It’s something we do in our living rooms and nurseries, it’s something we can do on our phones and with our minds just as much as our bodies. We are literally rewriting the rules and growing the potential of the industry.
Most importantly, instructors who are using virtual training (be it Zoom, hangouts, facetime, ect) and sticking to a schedule are providing much needed structure to the bland malaise most of us are experiencing under quarantine. They are creating central, defining moments to build our days around and feel good about. It is an opportunity to connect with our friends and the lives we had before this all started.
Ryron Gracie tweeted something that stuck with me the other day, and it sums up what I am trying to say pretty well,
I sign out of Zoom, peel off my sopping rash guard, and wipe up my sweat from my mangey puzzle mats. My wife stands in the doorway holding our very drowsy newborn son and asks, “did you have a good Jiu Jitsu class?”
“Yes,” I reply, “yes, I did.”
