Where I am from, we always judged a man by his patience, his wisdom, his mental capacity, and his ability to protect and provide. My grandfather once told me pointing at his biceps saying, “We don’t measure a man here”. He then pointed one of his aged, bent fingers above his ear “We measure a man from here” then again at the top of his head, and remarked, “to here.”

That always stuck with me but growing up as a skinny kid who lacked confidence going into high school, switching schools on the regular didn’t help me maintain a friend circle. It wasn’t until my senior years that I met the boys I call my brothers today. Of course, my school years were normal, until they weren’t. I realised quite quickly as I progressed into my teens that socialising in boys schools casually and minding your own business comes with its complexities.

Like with most environments people will test you, and I didn’t take some of the banter that others took. This led me down a road of some very inconsistent bullying. I was a very compassionate individual who tried to be friends with everyone, but of course, some people who had some healing to do would convey their internal issues and lack of self esteem by making other people’s day unnecessarily difficult.

Towards the age of 14 and 15 I was a bit of a hot head, and even though my marks were good, I had a bad behaviour problem. Naturally I began hanging around the wrong crowd, and this led to drama and schoolboy antics. At this point in my life, I was super into martial arts movies, especially IP man, undisputed, and anime such as Dragon Ball Z. Nothing too fancy but I was truly obsessed with fighting and naturally shared this, and it just complicated my school life. Eventually I started boxing after school, and like a miracle, when we got a new PDHPE teacher, he was a sarcastic don, but told me to come down to their gym and try some grappling. I was cocky but intrigued by the UFC at the time and mixed martial arts and all that comes with it.

Let’s just say as soon as I attended, I was quickly humbled by some of the people I trained with. But I wasn’t an overly egotistic person, my passion for the sport outweighed my youthful cockiness swiftly. And as they say, the rest is history. I developed a strong bond with the team there, by 16 I moved from the teenage class to the adult class and really began improving. I competed many times before graduating high school and made some lifelong friends. In the early years of training, scuffles at school ramped up, and I had issues with my jiu-jitsu coaches because of it. But after one long term suspension at school, I never had another issue again. Its insane how peaceful life becomes when you learn how to fight. Naturally the better you get, the less you need it.

My coach echoed many times to me that because of many factors including my body type, explosiveness and bone structure that I had a natural affinity for the sport of grappling. Hearing that as a young man really installs an insane hunger in you. I just didn’t stop, trained through injury, trained through exams, trained through stress, trained through everything. I had my down periods where like an idiot I would play football for extended periods instead of doing jiu-jitsu. But I always came back around, and 10 years and a purple belt later, the man I am today I can only thank God and my family and this beautiful sport. I can write for days about the lows and triumphs of this sport, and what it has done for me as a man, as a student, as a brother, as a human, but I will leave that for another time. Those mats are my safe space, and I hope one day I can be a mentor for teenagers like me going through their own coming of age shenanigans, and especially for my kids if I get to have some one day, God willing.

All the best

H