Last night, one of my younger teammates said goodbye to us. She’s moving to another city. She told me in the middle of one of our rolls, so I wasn’t blindsided. Still, hearing it while you’re trying to defend a pass is one thing. Watching her say goodbye to everyone is another.
There was laughter, because that’s what happens when our team gets together. Then tears. I was happy for her, but I also knew the gym would feel different without her.
To someone who doesn’t train, that might sound strange. People leave gyms all the time. They quit (blue belts, I see you), switch schools, move away, or get busy with life. I get it. But this one hit me harder than I expected.
When people talk about Jiu Jitsu, they usually talk about the physical parts like self-defense, submissions, competition, discipline and learning to stay calm when someone is trying to strangle you. That’s a big part of why I train. I want to get better, and I still get excited when something we drilled finally works during a live roll.
But technique alone doesn’t explain why I keep coming back after all these years. The people do.
It’s walking into the gym after a long day and seeing familiar faces. It’s getting paired with someone who knows when to push you and when you’re running on fumes. It’s laughing with the person who caught you in the same submission twice last week, then asking them to show you how they did it. Sometimes you stay after class to talk, even though you’re sweaty and should have gone home twenty minutes ago.
Jiu-jitsu also puts people together who might never have met anywhere else. A police officer and the guy who cuts meat at Publix might become each other’s favorite training partners. A teenager and a middle-aged man can give each other their toughest rounds and still be two of the people most glad to see each other at class. Rank, age, and whatever you do for work matter a lot less once you’re on the mat trying to get out of side control.
You don’t usually notice a friendship forming. You just keep showing up. Eventually you notice when somebody isn’t there. You ask how their tournament went, even if you couldn’t make it. When they get promoted, you remember the rounds when they struggled with the same things over and over. You know how much work, sweat and maybe even blood and tears went into that belt.
That kind of closeness doesn’t require anything mystical. We spend hours together trying to solve problems while we’re tired and uncomfortable. We see each other do well, get frustrated, lose positions we thought we’d figured out, and come back to try again. I’ve had people see me roll well, and I’ve had them watch me get wristlocked by the same guy every time. There’s no hiding the rough days.
Over time, you learn things about people that have nothing to do with their guard retention. You hear what’s going on at work, what they’re excited about, what they’re worried about. Someone you once knew only as the person who always went too hard becomes someone you look forward to talking to. The training gives you a reason to be in the same room. The relationship grows in all those moments around it.
That’s why last night was both sad and special. I’ve watched my teammate grow as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner and as a person. She’s making a move, and I’m proud of her. I hope her new city is good to her. I’ll also miss seeing her walk through the door, sharing a round, seeing her smile or hearing her laugh. Those are small things until you realize you won’t get to count on them every week.
We call our gym a family sometimes. I know that word can get thrown around too easily. Nobody has to be best friends with everybody, and showing up to class isn’t the same as knowing every part of someone’s life. But I’ve trained with some of these people long enough to care what happens to them after they leave the mat. When someone has a good day, I’m glad for them. When they’re going through something, I notice. Last night, a lot of us stayed together for a goodbye that mattered. That’s what I mean when I say I’ve found community here.
She’ll be in another city, and we’ll still be here training. We’ll complain about hard rounds, laugh at each other, and probably keep falling for the same setups we should know by now. I’ll look around some nights and notice she’s missing. I hope she finds good people to train with in her new city. I hope she visits and gives us all a hard time when she does.
I started jiu-jitsu because I wanted to learn how to grapple. I’m still working on that. I want to improve, compete, and see how far I can go. But somewhere along the way, the people who help me do that became a reason to show up, too. Especially on the days I don’t want to.
Last night made that pretty clear. We said goodbye to a teammate. We laughed, we cried, and we made sure she knew we’d miss her. Then, like we always do, we’ll come back and train.
