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Trigger warning: one of the questions received was about suicide ideation. If you or anybody you know is struggling, please find it within yourselves to seek professional help.

In the meantime, here are some helplines that could be of some use…

National suicide prevention (UK🇬🇧) - Call 0800 587 0800

Samaritans (UK🇬🇧) - Call 116 123

988 suicide & crisis helpline (US🇺🇸 and Canada 🇨🇦) - Call or text 988

Crisis text line (US🇺🇸) - Text HOME to 741741

Lifeline (Aus 🇦🇺) - Call 131114 or text to 0477131114

Beyond Blue (Aus 🇦🇺) - Call 1300 22 4636

1737 Need To Talk? (NZ 🇳🇿) - Call or Text 1737

Lifeline Aotearoa (NZ🇳🇿) - Call 0800 543 354 or text 4357

if it’s shit, blame - it was her idea 😉😬 (I joke. Please don’t).

Get involved 🫵🏼❤️

Get involved 🫵🏼❤️

get involved 🫵🏼❤️

get involved 🫵🏼❤️

Its at this moment I take stock of what I really look like.

I already look defeated before I start this venture and the moment I wrap the sweating palm of my hand the cold, chrome door handle, I beg the question to myself…

How have I found myself here?

Well, lets dive into that right now.

Lets rewind about 48 hours… Picture this idyllic scenario… it’s a beautiful summers day on a Friday afternoon.

You’re in a pub garden having a catch up with a dear friend whose also got the afternoon off work. The beers are in full flow. Sunglasses are on. The sunshine is beaming down on you and your pal, and the good times are here.

Sounds great so far, right?

And now picture this…

The friend you’re sat with is telling you about the mixed martial arts classes he attends, and has been attending for several years. Really bigging them up, unknowingly trying to sell the experience to you.

They suggest you come to the next class on Sunday after you’ve had 5 beers on the Friday afternoon. They fill you with false confidence and tell an outrageous lie to you about the high level of your current natural ability.

“Go on, you know you’d like to have a scrap. You’ll love it there, I promise” (Wrong)

“I really think you could comfortably walk through 50% of people in them classes. They’re honestly not all that.” (Wrong again)

“you already do a physically intense job, so your natural strength should be as good as anybody that’s in that gym. I don’t see why you couldn’t hold your own” (One more time… Wrong).

You take the bait. (You gullible twat).

You’ve fallen for the bullshit, and now you’re intertwined with a verbal agreement to attend a mixed martial arts class for beginners/ intermediate level skilled participants on Sunday… In a class that is going to be mainly focussing on the Jiu- Jitsu and grappling aspect of MMA.

Sunday arrives. Now I find myself facing the consequences of saying yes to something I didn’t give a second thought to, until now. The nerves have made an appearance and I’m not even ashamed to say I was riddled with fear.

Upon registering to be a part of this brutal torture session, they request I sign a waiver… im already fearing the worst and this is really just a very formal way of telling me “you could well be killed here and you gave it the go ahead”

I cant say it was the most reassuring of introductions.

30 seconds after this, I reunite with the familiar face of my friend who suggested this ridiculous idea to me.

He introduces me to a few people attending this particular class. Who I have to say, were nothing but warm and really welcoming people… except for one. A polish man named Pawel.

He took an instant disliking to me. I cant put my finger on why this is as the other 12-15 people attending this class didn’t have this problem with me at all.

There was a brief warm up and then I was explained that as this was a Jiu-Jitsu heavy MMA class there wouldn’t be so much of a focus on striking, it would be more about grappling technique and ultimately – try to submit the opponent.

For those that don’t know - Jiu-Jitsu is known as ‘The Gentle Art’ because you’re not looking to knock the challenger out.

You’re looking for them to optionally quit the exchange by ‘Tapping Out’ … the idea is that you give the opponent a choice of giving up or face being choked unconscious or having a limb snapped/ dislocated.

Every 5 minutes, the buzzer would sound and we would stop the sparring and have to change opponent.

The first two guys I sparred with were extremely helpful and full of patience. I explained to them both that I have zero experience and pleaded with them not to rip me apart like a hungry fat kid with the first chicken wing of a fresh batch.

They instructed me on what to do in certain situations, how to avoid a ‘Rear Naked Choke’ as well as how to pull it off. These 10 minutes were incredibly useful and educational for me as opposed being in a more competitive mode. In hindsight, I probably could have done with several hours of that before throwing myself to the wolves like this. Actually being taught, as opposed to thrown in the deep end learning the harder way.

Then onto my third partner – Pawel… the staunch polish man that took a strong disliking to me at the start. Who I was just now learning, was a blackbelt and had been doing the martial art for almost 20 years but attended amateur/ intermediate classes to teach. (As far as im aware, this is something blackbelts have to do in order to achieve Dan’s on their blackbelt or become “professors” of the discipline)

And this is where things got turned up a notch.

Pawel was maybe around 5ft7 and weighed about 160lbs, so he was smaller and lighter than me.

He made some backhanded comment about me not taking it seriously because I was learning and trying to be somewhat sociable with it rather than treating it competitively, and promised to “educate me differently” as he put it…

I wasn’t aware you weren’t allowed to interact with other people and try to have fun whilst you learned a new skill that could result in serious injury, or worse. If I signed away the right to potentially die, I thought I could try and make the best of a hard situation, but there we go.

As we start from a standing position, he comes forward immediately, and we end up in some kind of clinch.

Before I can grasp what he’s actually doing, I feel him trip me backwards to the floor.

The previous people I was paired with all started from a position already on the ground, so was this sensation what I needed to be educated on? Did I need to learn what the mat felt like against the back of my head?

Pawel is treating this like we really are having a competition.

He came crashing down on top of me to end up in a ‘full mount’ position.

For those of you that don’t know what that is, imagine me flat on my back, with Pawel essentially sat on my diaphragm like I’m some kind of fucking show pony in the fashion of spoilt child that’s trying to get it to get it to fly.

He’s got hold of both of my wrists so I can’t go anywhere, as I’m fighting this he pivots downwards with the additional force of his bodyweight behind it, as he’s already in a top heavy position. He landed an elbow on my just above my eye, whilst he’s still straddling me in the most non-erotic way I’ve ever been straddled.

The next 3 minutes was spent on my back trying to avoid an elbow coming down onto my face from above again. In retrospect, I did well to defend not having my eye completely wrecked, because he definitely went for that strike 3-4 times. Not in such a way it was an “ok, so get ready to defend it” either, it had venom and the element of surprise behind it.

So much for “we won’t be focussing on striking today”. What a load of bollocks that turned out to be.

The thought of burying my finger in his eye became super appealing. I won’t lie to you. In a street fight, if I had someone scrambling over me like that, they’re getting an eyeball gouged out. To fight that idea was just as hard as fighting this vicious Polish pitbull.

As I’m wriggling about on my back like a fish out of water, Pawel then decided to change his game plan for the final minute of the round.

He’s proceeded to lean forward and wrap an arm around my neck.

Im trying to work out what it is he was trying to achieve, and then as I exhaled; I discovered what his tactic was… he waited to feel me heavily exhale. The moment I did this, I felt him drop his entire bodyweight on my empty lungs. His sense of weight distribution and weight placement was definitely something that hadn’t crossed my mind.

I know this was designed to make me feel uncomfortable, and it fucking worked. I couldn’t catch a breath and the sensation of what I imagine drowning on land feels like. That overwhelmed me enough to make me want to tap out on its own. No choke required.

He’s then switched to a ‘Side Control’ position.

For anybody reading this that’s unaware of what that looks like… I’m still on my back like an upended turtle, and I don’t have his bodyweight on me now. But, I now have to contend with the pressure of his arms pinning my one of my biceps to my head whilst he reaches around with the other arm to clasp his palms together and start squeezing.

He began to restrict my breathing and blood flow from of the grip his arms had around my neck and windpipe.

The buzzer sounded to signal the end of the longest 5 minutes of my life, as I was tapping out in the fashion of a drum roll.

Pawel promised to “educate me differently” … I think it’s safe to say I didn’t learn a single thing other than what it felt like to be choked, crushed and have an elbow slammed into my orbital bone… none of which I felt needed being “educated on” and none of which I’d recommend to anybody if they don’t already know what them things feel like.

The harsh reality is, he did go easy on me. I firmly believe he had the capability to kill me if he wanted to and there wouldn’t have been a single thing I could do about it.

I finished that round feeling violated. I paid £40 to try and learn something and all I got from Pawel was a half a BDSM session that left me an unhealthy shade of blackcurrent purple in the face, and I wasn’t even close to being aroused.

The 4th opponent I had was a Portuguese guy who was training a certain sequence for a competition he had coming up. He asked if it was ok to go over certain drills for his benefit… which I didn’t mind at all, at least he had a valuable reason to be that repetitive.

After about 3 minutes with this guy, he was good enough to go through some submissions with me… sorry; I meant go through me with some submissions.

In the remaining 2 minutes, he crawled over me like some kind of hungry 200lb spider with an attitude problem. Within them 120 or so seconds. I think he tapped me out 8 or 9 times with various chokes and arm locks.

Even when trying to fight back as instructed by him, I was rendered completely helpless.

Before entering that gym, I would have said I could handled myself amongst any of them in some kind of street brawl without rules… having been there now, it’s probably safe to assume all of them would comfortably deal with me if we got into it outside of the gym.

(Or even in the gym, for that matter)

I would also admit that I left that session with a big, thick slice of humble pie to chow down on whilst I reflected on the last hour.

Before that day, I saw jiu jitsu as people rolling about in pyjamas that wouldn’t have a clue how to apply their skill to someone that just didn’t want to play their game.

Well. I am living proof they definitely can… I would recommend it to anybody though.

If you have never been and arrive there with any preconceived idea that you fancy yourself in a scrap with these people, you will be seriously humbled.

It certainly bought me down a notch or two and it made me respect the challenge of that martial art in abundance

.