bjj and your social life

[Troy Yang]

Do you ever feel bjj has kind of made your social circle significantly shorter? Lol

[HerbChao]

Jitsu will be many things for u as time goes on, at the beginning for me it was a curiosity off of Eddie's book (and a girl I had a crush on was a huge MMA fan), then it became a workout/team camaraderie thing. When my girlfriend and I broke up, it became am anger relief/therapy/confidence rebuilder. Currently it's back to a workout/potential income potential down the road depending on how the next 5 years goes. In terms of friendships, I'll def say the folks I'm closest to these days are either from jitsu, my church, or side business. Alot of my friends from school or even my fraternity our lives have kind of gone separate ways, and it's not that we don't still care about each other, but our supporting groups have changed.

MY two cents, be interested to hear what others think.

[Kevin Hughes]

Not at all. On the contrary, my social life has grown immensely. In fact, this is something I've heard said, and it totally reflects my jiu jitsu experience, as well. I'm passionate about the sport, but if for some reason, I absolutely had to quit training, then I'd find a way to survive. It would be difficult for sure, but I could do it. However, I would never want to lose the connections I've made by training. I would give up all my skills today, if I got to keep the people in my life. But, I would never give up the people in my life to keep my skills.

[Troy Yang]

Oss

[Craig Murray]

Rolling around on the ground several nights a week with a bunch of sweaty dudes is likely to build relationships. Jiu Jitsu is a very intimate experience. Lots of touching, holding, squeezing, and resting your junk on other dude's bellies. How can you NOT make friends doing that?

[Enrique "Kiko"]

Rolling around on the ground several nights a week with a bunch of sweaty dudes is likely to build relationships. Jiu Jitsu is a very intimate experience. Lots of touching, holding, squeezing, and resting your junk on other dude's bellies. How can you NOT make friends doing that?

So basically....

[Fraser Taylor]

To be honest I'd consider some people from my club some of my best friends now, it's actually grown my social circle and with Scotland being pretty small, i've got to meet loads of great people from different clubs as well.

[Enrique "Kiko"]

You meet people wherever you're at. So whether it's online, on the mat, at school, work, a bar, a club, a park, coffee shop, etc, Just be social, fun and warm and NOT creepy/needy. Connections happen naturally with people you get along with and have fun with and share a common goal with.

[Arman Fathi]

I've found that the more I invest in it, the more it gives back. Initially, it was a rude awakening. As a new white belt, I so badly wanted to fit in and be one of the 'guys'. All the blue belts and purple belts seemed to be tight and were chatting and hanging out before class while all the white belts looked like kids at a grade school dance; just not knowing where to be or what to do. One of the purple belts told me that friendships and things of that nature happen on their own, and that I should just focus on training. We had a new white belt come in about a year later and first day, he's straight up asking half the class out for pizza or to grab a drink. It was a bit weird. Everyone seemingly happened to have places to go. I felt for the guy, but immediately understood. The nice thing about a jiu jitsu club is that you earn everything you get. I stopped caring about anything but my technique. Eventually, for some odd reason, when I started tapping people, they started warming up to me and I felt like I was part of the conversations. It wasn't hard to chat once I was a little respected. But I might be different then some in that that drives me a lot. I feel like you have to have something to offer a lot of times for someone to want to be your friend and I know that if I just keep keep keep keep training, studying technique, drilling, and improving, things will just somehow, seemingly continue to improve as they have, as long as I'm not a major douche to people. But it has had a positive impact on social life. I've kept my friends from before too. So there's really only been gains.

[Josh "Star-Lord" Leduc]

Depends on how you look at it. All the people I went to school with I'm not overly close with anymore. Kind of sucks because I don't see my best friend of 7 years anymore. But on the other hand I have way more friends and close friends in BJJ that I know will be around as long as I'm training. It's a lot healthier of a relationship too and my guys are always pushing and supporting me.