This past weekend in Chico, the American Judo and Jujitsu Federation held its 33rd annual Brown Belt Weekend at the Five Mile recreation area in Bidwell Park.
Action Sports was there and gives us an in depth look at one of the more unique sports around.
Jujitsu is a martial art which reflects the movements of an attacker back upon him or her. The ultimate aim of jujitsu lies not in victory or defeat but as professor Geoff Lane puts it, in the pefection of the character of its participants.
Geoff Lane says, "we're not really training fighters although we want people to be effective, we want people to certainly defend themselves and use it. The real goal is to teachers and so there's a lot of personal growth around this and learning about who you are and where you're going."
During this particular weekend, fifty brown belts from all over the western part of the country made the journey to Chico to get an opportunity to improve their character and learn first hand from a variety of black belt professors.
Geoff Lane adds, "it's a day we get together to help our brown belts from all over the place prepare for their black belt exams. We've got people here from Hawaii, Arizona, Colorado, southern California, Eureka, Bay Area, all over the place."
And it doesn't matter what type of person you are, anybody can do jujitsu.
Tom Ball says, "the system is designed for young, old, male, female. We've got a big program of ours is disabled. One of our black belts is a vietnam veteran, he's been going to hospitals in the East, Michael Reed Hospital and actually teaching veterans who are wheel chair bound and basically saw themselves as being useless and teaching them self defense."
It's a unique sport that will certainly carry on in the world, especially when the goal isn't to obtain a certain color belt, but to achieve perfection through a state of mind and attitude.
