Interview - BlogChat #2: BJJ Grrl Talks About On/Offline Communities

Here's the second part of my interview with BJJ Grrl. This time, she talks about the amazing community of bloggers in BJJ, which crosses over with the equally amazing community of women in the sport.

Can: Yeah, I am always telling people there is a really awesome community of female bloggers online. You mention the women training page – which is amazing by the way, I love that page.

BJJ Grrl: I should probably revisit it, I would have more to say now.

Can: Yeah, definitely! Again, out of all the bloggers on the internet, you are the one who I think has the closest mindset to my own. The same kind of idea, putting all your experience down.

BJJ Grrl: Some days there are things I don't want to talk about, but maybe it will help somebody. Suck it up and write it down anyway. But yeah, I definitely need to revisit that page, especially the aggression section, because I need to talk about the new thing I'm going through in my head. If I did the technique right and it sucks for you, well, I did the technique right. It's supposed to suck for you. Instead of, "Oh, I don't want to hurt you. Is that uncomfortable? I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be choking you unconscious right now, but if it hurts you I'm not going to do it." I've got to get past that. Still working on it.

Can: Have you thought of building that page up into a more expansive FAQ, like the one I did, or was it that you had a specific set of questions you were interested in answering and you've achieved that?

BJJ Grrl: I kinda just wanted to do it very general questions, the big ones that come up, especially for new women that start training. But yeah, I do need to revisit that one, I'll probably make a list.

Can: A number of bloggers have found they've gone from doing those kind of blogs, the articles you've done, they've proven popular – and I know you've gotten a lot of hits on that page, a ridiculous number of comments – then the blogger has progressed from that to writing articles for websites, magazines etc. Is that something that interests you?

BJJ Grrl: I guess I would kind of like to, but I haven't gone looking for it. I guess for the most part, I still think "Nobody else feels about this the same way I do, no-one else will have this experience," then of course they all say, "I felt exactly the same thing." But I still feel like the oddball out.

Can: Have you had any internet fame, as 'BJJ Grrl'?

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes. I've shown up at women's open mats and people have gone "Gasp! You're BJJ Grrl!" Occasionally somebody from my academy, I'll say something, and they'll be "Oh yeah, I read that on your blog last week." They read it too: crap! It's not anonymous! [Laughs]

I can totally get how people go on the internet and post terrible things, because when they're posting, they're thinking "These aren't real people. They don't know who I am, I'll never meet them." But people are real. I've had people at tournaments come up to me and be like "Oh hey, I commented on your blog!"

Can: Do you see a separation then, between your online and offline life?

BJJ Grrl: I think it's just my brain is kinda weird.

Can: For example, a number of times online friends have become offline friends, like in my case and indeed this trip and this conversation we're having now, with Adrienne sitting right there next to us.



BJJ Grrl: I'm trying to think how I even heard about that first open mat, when I met Chrissy, Adrienne and the others. I don't even know now. I may have read it on a forum, maybe NHB Gear. I think I had done a tournament, with US Grappling, and Chrissy had invited me to the forum. Once I met everybody and kept coming to tournaments, that's how I met most of the women around here.

Although there was a funny incident, a women posted on my blog. It was a comment, asking for advice. So I gave her some advice, then she made another comment about where she trained. It turned out she was thirty minutes from me. I was like, "Come up on Saturday! We'll hang out, do jiu jitsu."

That actually happened twice, from opposite directions. Two different women came in, because they'd found me on the internet, then found out I lived very close to them. "Oh, I'll come train with you."

Antwain: Did they ask you for a lot of pointers?

BJJ Grrl: They were both beginners in jiu jitsu, so asked things like "How do you deal with guys that go way too easy on you and you know they are going too easy? How do you get them to see that you want to train?" Or one of them, I think she didn't know what to do, she was getting beat up all the time, because they were all bigger than her: they were going too hard.

It's weird when people ask me advice, because when I need advice, I'll ask Chrissy mostly, or Addy, or Val. So I ask questions: why are people asking me questions? Ask the people who know these things. [Laughs]

Can: That's a good point: do you guys have any questions?

Adrienne: Actually yeah, I do. How much time a week do you spend? Training is one thing, but then taking your experiences and putting it down in blogs, this and that, I'm just curious to know how much that hobby takes over your other time. To me it seems very consuming.

BJJ Grrl: And it used to be, I used to spend a whole lot more time on it. I would agonise over my post, it had to follow almost a format but not quite. I'd need to talk about this, get the whole class in there, did I miss a technique, did I miss this. Now I do it when I get to work the next morning and I'm drinking my coffee. I'll write it up. That's one of the reasons they are so much shorter now, because I'm writing them at work as I'm drinking my coffee.

But yeah, I was spending a whole lot of time doing it. I would do it immediately after class, so I was staying up until midnight, writing posts. This is kinda silly. So, now I agonise over it far less. Sometimes I look over it after I've posted it and find a glaring typo...meh. Whereas before, I'd re-edit it, I've thought of something else, I should add that.

Adrienne: Like over-analysing it?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, though it seems to me I haven't been doing it as much now, over-analysing. In fact, last week I trained on Friday, I completely forgot to write anything until Monday. Part of it was that I'd been out of the habit because I'd been injured, so kinda forgot about it.

Adrienne: So have you always blogged? I know you talked about the weightlifting, but is that something which accidentally happened? Or did you set out with "You know what, I want to start blogging," an active decision?

BJJ Grrl: Total accident. Yeah. Just that the online journal for the weightlifting program I was doing led to it. Although I've always written, so it's a natural thing. I also learn really well when I write things down. It helped me, going back after class and writing down everything that I'd done.

Can: Do you ever revisit posts?

BJJ Grrl: I do sometimes. If I feel like I'm having trouble with something that I've had trouble with before, I'll see what happened the last time. [Laughs] Or if I notice a spike in traffic on a certain post, I'll go back and read it. Sometimes it's interesting, I'll think "Oh, that's why somebody might be reading it."

Can: So you're not obsessive about stats, checking page views and the like?

BJJ Grrl: I used to. I really used to, but I made myself stop doing that. It just seemed silly. I'm competing to be best blog? I should be training jiu jitsu, or working or whatever I'm supposed to be doing at the time. That was part of the staying up til midnight thing, obsessing about "well, if I said it this way, would more people come?" At some point I decided, that's just silly. [Laughs]

Interview - BlogChat #1: BJJ Grrl On Her Blog Beginnings

I have 'known' the blogger BJJ Grrl for many years, having first encountered her online back when she was still writing a weightlifting blog. Since then, she has become one of the most important people in the BJJ blogosphere, consistently putting out posts every week. Leslie was a big part of the reason that Virginia was high on my list of places to visit in the US, so I was thrilled to get the chance to finally speak to her during my trip last month. I'll be putting up this interview in two parts, kicking off this week with a chat about how Leslie got started in both blogging and BJJ.

Can: How did you first get into martial arts and jiu jitsu?

BJJ Grrl: I started doing taekwondo in college, because I'd always been interested in doing martial arts. I got injured playing soccer and couldn't play soccer anymore, so a friend of mine offered to beat me up.

Can: [Laughs] Literally like that?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah: "Come to my apartment and I can beat you up, or you can come to taekwondo class with me." She needed a sparring partner her size. So, this was how we were going to get started. Of course eventually she quit, but I kept going. Through the taekwondo, I found jiu jitsu.

One of the guys from the club came back to do a self-defence seminar. After the seminar, he taught a short jiu jitsu seminar – he was a blue belt at the time. I actually really liked it. At the end, he said "Does anybody want to try rolling?" I said "Sure!" and rolled with another guy who was my size. I usually can't tell if somebody is my size, but he was really my size.

We rolled and I was able to sweep him, so I was thinking "I'm able to do this stuff, this is awesome!" Around that same time, I had started lifting: in my parents' basement they had some weights. I began blogging work-outs from that. I was following a program and a lot of people were doing it, so that was my online journal along with all of them.

But I was starting to outgrow the weights, there weren't enough plates for me. I looked around for something else to do and decided I'd probably go do CrossFit. It was coming up to the end of the week: on Monday, I was going to start CrossFit. Saturday was the seminar. I got introduced to jiu jitsu and thought "this is really fun."

Then my Dad came home that night and said he meant a fella named Tim Mannon, who was a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu and they were moving into an academy just down the street. So my Dad said "I know you like martial arts, what do you think about that?" So I replied, "I'm going there instead."

I already had the online journal for lifting, so I started added my jiu jitsu work-outs on there: we were supposed to track everything we did. I began phasing out taekwondo, as it wasn't nearly as much fun. Then as I was doing jiu jitsu more, we actually started lifting. The first gym we were in had some decent weights and a big tyre out back. As we were lifting there, I stopped lifting at home: I'd get home, do one dead-lift, I'm done.

Those things started phasing out, so I was just doing jiu jitsu on my blog, on the weightlifting blog. I realised I should switch it to a jiu jitsu blog.

Can: What was the incentive to do it online, rather than just keeping your journal in a book?

BJJ Grrl: When I started, it was with an online community of people who were lifting, so we were all posting on our threads. I couldn't always log into the site, so I would keep it in a Wordpress site, just for me.

Can: How have you found that has influenced your training, in either positive or negative ways?

BJJ Grrl: I'm not sure if it's either, but I think about what I'm going to write, particularly when I was writing more of the technique down. I would have to think through it, line by line, how am I going to write this, explain this, remember where that goes. How can I remember this by the time I get home so I can write it down.
I think it helped me pay a lot of attention to what I was doing, as I was basically going to have to reteach myself when I got home so I could write it down. But then there were times when I'm rolling with someone and I'm thinking how I'm going to write it down: I'm not paying attention to the fact that he's about to choke me. [Laughs]

Can: This is why I wanted to talk to you, this is like hearing myself. That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm thinking! [Laughs]

BJJ Grrl: Sometimes I'm thinking "Just shut-up in there and roll, we'll dissect it later."

Can: When I'm watching a demonstration, when they're teaching technique, I'm thinking "Ok, their hand is there, so what do I describe that as? Far arm, the opposite arm, right arm?"

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, I think it helps sometimes with technique too, taking notes. The seminar today [with Dave Jacobs, back in April], I'm really thinking of things like 'far side armbar', or 'far side arm', not just watching him do it. You know those people, I see this in class all the time, they will watch it, they go back to do it, and then they're "Wait, which arm do we start with?"

I'll answer, "We start with this one," because I've already written it down in my head. So in that respect I think it really does help. But yeah, the part where you're writing the roll in your head as it happens? Trying to remember the cool things?

Can: I find when I write it down, I want to have something to work on. I'll normally have a specific goal in mind, thinking about how I can progress that and what can I take from the roll. So you're finding it's more just interesting stuff that sticks in your head, it's not particularly "I did this, and it helped me with this technique"?

BJJ Grrl: Yeah, it's usually things that happened, or "I hit this armbar we drilled this morning, isn't that awesome?"

Can: Your blog, and we've talked about this before, does a great job of building a community. It seems a lot of people really felt engaged in your journey through jiu jitsu, which also helped them: you were saying things that they related to. Did that act as a motivator to change the blog or indeed just keep it going?

BJJ Grrl: To keep it going, as sometimes I would say things on that blog and think "I am on the only person in the world who ever has this problem. No one else ever gets in this situation, everyone else is breezing right through it."

But so many people would come back and say "That's exactly what is happening to me too!" So, I'm like "really, I'm not the only one who has that problem? Ok." Especially when it comes back from higher ranks who've been through it sometimes.

When I first put up the training with women page, so many people, like Jen Flannery and a couple of black belts even, Hillary Williams commented on it. There were a whole bunch of women commenting on it, saying "That is exactly what it's like."

"It is? Ok. I was right, it's not just me!" That's why sometimes I will post about how I had an absolutely horrible day, totally could not get this one technique to work. People will post comments, "I have days like that." People who have been training longer still have days like that. We all have days where we think, "Why don't I take up table tennis, this sucks!"

Part Two now up, here