Are You Ready to GRAPPLE?

So my wonderful sister in law calls me last week and asks me to go to this jiu-jitsu class with her. She wants me to go because she doesn't want to be the only female there so I think O.K. that could be interesting and I was betting I could get a pretty good workout too. So we meet up and she has a Gi that you're supposed to wear for me and we go in this practically fully padded room. There is a bunch of guys warming up, oh and I went to high school with some of them. Anyway she told me we would probably watch for the first couple of hours to kinda get the hang of it.

WELL then the warm up started....... This is how it went, first imagine I have some workout clothes on, then a Gi on, which is white pants and a full like coat with a large belt. O.k.. So jog around this room couple laps then drop, push-ups, jog some more, jog while doing high kicks, jog while doing back kicks, drop for push-ups, jog some more then do some fancy slap and roll on the ground, jog, some hops and slaps, a special move called the shrimp (which is like writhing on the ground a bit), sprint, jog, Like a hundred sit ups ect..... Anyway I could go on and on. The whole time I'm looking at her like what the %^#^. She says oh they've never really do this it must be because of their tournament coming up. HELLO!!!! I should be in the super beginner class, I didn't even know what jiu-jitsu was. OK so after the workout I take a seat on the floor by her and we watch them do some of their technical moves.

First of all if you don't know what jiu-jitsu is, it is pretty much the art of submission. These guys are laying on top of each other just kinda rolling around. It is not like a violent fighting thing. All you do is like roll around on the ground wrestling with someone until you either Choke them or get one of their joints in a position to where you could actually break something. The point is to TAP out when you cant handle the pain anymore or you pass out. The TAP being a nice pat on either yourself or the person your grappling or the ground.

Now when I saw the positions these guys get into I could understand why she wanted me to be her partner. It took me the whole 3 hours to actually figure out what the whole point was. Needless to say I wasn't quite gutsy enough to start pulling some moves on her in front of all these guys. My sister in law and her family is very into all these things, Like Judo and Ultimate fighting, and her oldest son who is about 12 has been doing tournaments for a while now. This class was his regular class which there is only one other kid who is 11. So today I'm trying to recruit her and her son to come over with their mats and we can practice a bit. I definitely got a good workout on the warm up alone. I think I'll try it a bit more and see how it goes. It can't be much different from when I wrestle my husband. Ok maybe a little different!