Jiu Jitsu With Howie Hare

Howard “Howie” Hare is an eighth grader at Brier Terrace Middle School who is a four striped yellow (almost orange) belt at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Howie does Jiu Jitsu at Shoreline MMA six days a week for two and a half hours at a time. The competitiveness and difficulty of Jiu Jitsu is exactly what Howie loves about this martial art.

“What I really like is the competitiveness. With all the tournaments it doesn’t matter how big the tournament is. If somebody’s hosting it in their gym and there’s five people it’s just as competitive as national tournaments or tournaments with people coming from all over the world.” Jiu Jitsu originated in Japan, but the Brazilians changed a lot of the sport like the rules.

Howie said, “In Japan there [weren’t] totally scheduled points and a way to do the match. It was just you either had to put them to sleep or break something where they could not continue on in the match. So the Brazilians made it a little more so people could do it everyday without crippling themselves.” Carlos Gracie, Sr. is the “father” of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but his 11th son, Carley, brought Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to North America.

“My coach has been doing it probably 15 years, and he still has a long way to go, he says it everyday, but it’s just a thing where you can always improve, you’re never there.” Jiu Jitsu belts go from white, grey, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, black and finally, red. But if you start Jiu Jitsu as an adult (16 and older), your belts go white, blue, purple, brown, black, and then red, of course. This may make it sound easier to just wait a few years until you become 16 to begin Jiu Jitsu, but for adults the blue belt is way harder to get and takes longer. There are only 21 red belts in the entire world, 11 of which are Gracies’. Howie has been doing Jiu Jitsu since about 2012. He started Taekwondo when he was five or six (2007 or 2008), but that school closed down.

“We tried a couple of other places and that place had the instructor that could speak English the best so we tried that place. Then me and my brother kept on going and then our coach liked us because we worked and we were there every single day so we got private lessons from him.” Howie had his first tournament just two months after he started taking Jiu Jitsu classes.

“A lot of people probably don’t like combat sports as much. I mean some people think it’s too rough. Personally I like it, I’d recommend it if you wanted to try it. [For] some people it’s just not for them and it’s a lot of work too to get good at it.”

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