The 7 Stupidest "Traditions" in Jiu-Jitsu

I used to think I was the problem.

Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash

I’ve been sitting on this post for a minute, and this one might ruffle some feathers.

In my early days of doing Jiu-Jitsu, I used to hate all of the odd formalities that we to do in the sport.

I came from a wrestling background, and in wrestling, the only real formality is a handshake between you and your training partner/opponent to signify the start of a round/match.

That’s really it.

In Jiu-Jitsu, as I started to train and travel and see different places, there were so many weird things that I was expected to do at certain gyms I went to:

• I had to call some random guy I just met “professor” as “a sign of respect”

• I had to bow a bunch

• I had to move for higher belts

• And much, much more

I didn’t like all these things, but I thought that it was because I was young and naive and that I didn’t understand respect. I thought that because I didn't like all the dumb traditions at different BJJ gyms, I was the dumb one.

Nowadays, I am not so sure.

Here’s my definitive list of the most problematic “traditions” in Jiu-Jitsu: