 my beautiful lovely internet friends, welcome back to my channel. Did I edit that opening segment just so I could feel cool? Because I mean, frankly, anything looks cool if you clip out the good parts, then put cool music to it. Yes, yes I absolutely did. So this is a video that I have been simultaneously really anxious and ridiculously excited to share with you guys for quite a while. And something that I've mentioned in passing before but I've never really done a video on is the fact that I do jujitsu without a leg and without a prosthetic arm. There are precisely two reasons why I'm making this video. Primarily I am just so thrilled to be able to share this part of my life with you because it is a part that is such pure joy and freedom for me which we'll get into a little while later. But secondly, I really wanted to spread kind of the awareness of the sport. Anybody in my audience listening, anyone who's ever considered it, regardless if you're able-bodied or not, this is a sport that just about anybody can participate in and what it has done for my life, for my brain, for my mental health, for my body too is something I will forever be grateful for. Okay, so a few years ago I walked into a boxing gym in a really bad part of town in Colorado Springs to join a friend for a free class they were offering and from the moment I walked in those doors, it was home. Now this is actually before I lost my leg and I trained in MMA, boxing, wrestling, jujitsu, Muay Thai and then actually fighting in MMA. And that was an amazing time of my life but unfortunately my body started giving out more and more. My ankle got bad. The stuff that was going on with my brain wasn't great. Getting hit in the face, not the best thing for either of those situations. So I stopped doing all of that but occasionally I continued in jujitsu. So in particular I practice Brazilian jujitsu and if you don't know, this is a very high intensity sport. It is really good for real life situations as well. There are no strikes in this sport but it is all submission based so chokes, arm bars, wrist locks, things like that. And I really tried to stick with this sport because I loved it but as my ankle got worse and worse that became so incredibly painful to do. So after I lost my leg, it was always my intention to get back to jujitsu. I knew that you could roll and even compete as an amputee but to be entirely honest, it did really freak me out to even like go back to my gym in the first place. Previously I had some level of athleticism and knowledge of my body and now I'd be going back feeling like I knew absolutely nothing. That took me a minute to get over and though I tried a couple of times, I didn't really begin to dive back into this sport until a couple months ago. Towards the beginning of the summer, I realized that I needed something to do, to get my brain off of everything that I was feeling to distract me and so I committed, gosh darn it, like it or not, I was going to go back at least three days a week and now months later I really feel like I'm starting to get a grasp on my body in a fight without a lay. So here is the coolest thing about jujitsu. I know I'm absolutely nerding out about this but it just excites me so much. This might sound cliche but it's not about what you have, it's about what you do with what you do have. I am an amputee meaning that there are a lot of moves that I can't do or have to be significantly modified so someone might look at me and think that's a big disadvantage in the sport, right? Not necessarily. As I've worked with my coaches and continue to learn about my body, I realized really quickly that it's a disadvantage, definitely in some ways but it is absolutely an advantage in other ways. There are certain passes and moves that we've come up with that would not be possible if you had another foot on the end of this little nubbin and oh my God, it feels so incredible and empowering to be like I am now gonna use this as a strength against you to a consenting and willing rolling partner. So just a bit we're gonna head to open that, you're gonna watch me roll with some people, kind of see how I do it and then we're gonna be heading up to Denver to meet my buddy Stevie. You may have seen him in some of my recent shorts but he is a left below the knee amputee and actually competes in it and I'm gonna train with him for the first time which I'm so excited about. But first, before we properly dive in, a quick word from our sponsor. A big thank you today to our sponsor, Cometeer. This is a completely new format of coffee that I've never tried before prior to Cometeer but oh goodness, it is delicious. Their coffee is flash frozen to lock in freshness. 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If you have been wanting to try a commentator, now is a great time. Thank you so much to commentator for some delicious coffee and again for sponsoring today's video. Now let's get back into it. Of all of the things that I've been able to do since I became an amputee, this is the one thing, like I don't feel like I'm held back by the physical limitation that I have. Yes, there's a lot of additional adjustment and learning. The fact that I can learn my body so intimately to know how to use it correctly for attacks and defending in the sport, which is not a soft and gentle sport. These are oftentimes really hard battles and being able to hold my own against people in my own division and every once in a while go up against people who are bigger than me and still be able to win. Though of course that's rare. I'm very much new to this and coming back to it. So, you know, I get the 24 seven. Jitsu is also very good for your ego because it crushes it. Down to it, a very thin powder because someone's always gonna know more, someone's always gonna be a little bit better than you. Now, just speaking as someone who has experienced sexual assault and abuse, the way that Jiu-Jitsu has reconnected me with my body made me feel like it's my own again and also given me some really good real world effective tools. You know, heaven forbid that anything ever does happen, but if it did, this is something that I train over and over and over again. So I definitely at a minimum feel better prepared walking into any kind of self-defense situation. Quick note on that also, as a visibly disabled woman, the rate at which you are at risk for being attacked or assaulted you is quite high compared to national averages. Like we're just targeted more and having a history in that anyways that has always made me a little bit uncomfortable, a little concerned. And so continuing to train in a combat sport where you're not training a single move the same way every time, but it is dynamic. And based on what someone else is doing and how they're coming at you and being able to respond to that definitely provides a little bit of comfort. Now, I always wanna add the caveat here that no matter what you train, no matter what you practice, martial arts or self-defense, it is a scary world out there. And so when I say that like I feel better prepared in any situation, I'm also aware of the fact that I am still a fairly small woman. There are a ton of variables. So I think it's all about increasing your chances of being able to get out of some kind of bad situation someone else has put you in. An up to chat, let's go to the gym from a few hours ago. I wanna show you my time in open mat, how I roll, what that looks like. Navigating the gym and the mats without a leg. Is this just next to you so I can show you more jiu-jitsu footage? Yeah, it absolutely is. Let's do it. When I show up on the mat, the first thing I'm gonna do is remove my prosthetic leg. Oftentimes people ask me if I train with it on and honestly I can't. There isn't range of motion, but more than that, there's metal parts and pieces that could hurt the people I'm training with. So I take my leg off and I also switch out the liner. Because you sweat so much during jiu-jitsu, I don't like using the same liner. I'm actually walking and I kind of keep them separate. So I put on the second one and then I am ready to go. So first of all, I started with some drilling. This is just kind of going over technique slowly when someone isn't actually trying to fight back too hard so you can get the motion down. I was working on starting and then going to someone's back getting an armbar from there and kind of rolling off. This is something I can do actually pretty quickly. I'm not even sure if my leg being out of the way helps. I just know that this transition works well for me. So we're working on this over and over and over again before actually doing some live rolling. Live rolling in jiu-jitsu is when you are actually just going for it. It's a match. You are trying to choke the other person out, avoid getting armbar, find a wrist lock, whatever it might be. And this is me training with my friend Finchi. He is a black belt and is amazing. He's a great partner because he'll give me some resistance but also lets me work on stuff. So I've been working on some of these passes where I can get around people quickly because I don't have a leg in the way. This is one of my favorite roles. It's so fun. Also, you might see me wearing different outfits. One is called gi where you're kind of wearing the big pajamas and the other is no gi. In gi, you can use the other person's clothes against them. You can choke someone out with their collar, things like that. But honestly, I would much rather do no gi. In this one, you can't grab onto other people's clothing. It's a much faster game. It feels a lot more agile and speedy and I honestly just absolutely love that. So while I do train gi because it's a good idea too, no gi will always have my whole heart. After about an hour and a half of working with training partners to drill and roll, it's time to get off the mats. And I go through the same process in reverse. I take off the liner that I use for jiu-jitsu. I take that home and clean it well. Get my prosthetic leg back on and head out. And I will say it took me a while to get comfortable doing this change in front of people. I don't love showing my residual limb in real life. I pretty much keep it hidden at all times. There's always something covering it. And so to get comfortable enough in my gym to like leave it uncovered, took a minute. But now I'm at the place where I just don't care and no one ever cared anyways. That was my day to open that. But now let's head up and train with Steven. Good morning. It is a beautiful, cold rainy Colorado day which is very rare. And I'm on my way up to train with my buddy Stevie in Denver. So we connected through social media and I found out that he also does jiu-jitsu. I'm a blue ball. I've been doing it for like a lot of years but with a lot of breaks. So I'm out of practice. But I've never trained with another amputee. I'm really interested not only to see how he'll go if we're going against each other but more importantly, tips, tricks, modifications to moves, how competition goes for him because I've had some questions about that because I'm thinking about competing. Also, Stevie's like an absolute beast. So I'm a little intimidated to roll with him. Must see if I can get a guillotine chokin' but chances are I'm gonna lose. It's good for the ego though. It's good for the ego. All right, let's get some 2000s hip hop popping up in this place. I will never say that again. I will be shaking. Leave it in my heart. With a real slim steady, please stand up. Drop it like it's hot. Drop it like it's hot. So I got up here safely. We did an hour long class and then for the fun part, live rolling. I wanna make something very clear here. I'm showing you a few clips out of like 25 minutes of video and they're the clips when I look like I'm holding my own. Just to be clear, I wasn't. Stevie is a fantastic competitor, a very strong person. His pressure and passing and submissions are absolutely amazing. So yeah, he ankle locked me like seven times. I'm pretty sure he got an arm bar and a choke. I did get one lucky guillotine, but that was it. And then I got to sit down and talk with him about his experience of jiu-jitsu. I do wanna say real quick that the audio when we were in the gym was not great as there are other people around. So I have put captions on screen that should help with the understanding. Okay, so I've been up training Denver with my buddy, Stevie, check out his Instagram handle on the screen somewhere right now. But we have something in common. Both ridiculously good looking, fantastic humans, very talented, also missing legs. I've been training jiu-jitsu for three years now. Just under two years now. And did you started after you lost your leg? I did start. I started about six and a half, seven months after the amputation. Came in, tried it out, had my first glass, fell in love with it, yeah. So something that I really care about in this video is I believe jiu-jitsu is a killer sport for anybody, but also especially if you are dealing with lung loss or some other kind of disability, it can be modified for your body. Like we both train with two-leggers all the time. You don't. Yeah, you don't get jiu-jitsu. But it's like it's a strength and a weakness like literally anything. And so you just adapt your jiu-jitsu for your style. Anything in particular that you've noticed like training jiu-jitsu as like below the knee, any thing that you feel you're better at and working on kind of thing? Definitely it took a lot longer to work on my garter tension, but as below the knee and jiu-jitsu on like a single leg, now that I've practiced it a lot, I've noticed my garter tension's gotten a lot better. Yeah, it's easier to slip it in and stuff like that. I mean, obviously there's a ton of moves, like things that I don't do that often and a lot of my moves are modified, but having the like a shorter leg definitely becomes a, can be a benefit in a lot of ways. And that's another thing they always say jiu-jitsu is for everyone and that is so true because you can modify it to, you know, not even if you're like have like a permanent disability but you're dealing with injuries, you can like work around and figure out something that works for you which is pretty, pretty bad. I love that about it, but it's not like a martial art that you just absolutely destroy your body in two years. You had to go two years, but then you messed up. Like jiu-jitsu, I know people who are training in 65, you're beginning without a leg and jiu-jitsu. You have to start standing up and you get a grip on the other person, is that how that works? Yes, like you get to choose the grip you want and they have to do it even, you know? So cross collar, you get cross collar. Yep, yep. Okay, wrist grip. This has been great. Okay. That was an absolute riot. I was absolutely destroyed. Well done, Stevie, you won this one. Thank you so much for joining me to hear a little bit more about jiu-jitsu, a sport that just lights my little soul on fire. Like I said, I think it's an incredible sport for anybody to check out, look into. A huge thank you again to our sponsor for sponsoring today's video. A big, big, big thank you to all my patrons over on Patreon for making this channel possible and most importantly to you. Watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today, hearing me be a happy little nerd about something that I like. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a little bit and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.