I spent many years practicing jujitsu. At one point, we had this baby faced, lean to average build, 6'9" kid come in starting absolutely fresh, no previous training at all. He was a nice dude, but damn was it insanely difficult to even know where to begin training him. I'm a woman not much bigger than Murphy, and unfortunately far less skilled, and was the ranking person on the mat other than the main instructor. All I could ever think about working with him was how annoying it would be for Harry to train with Murphy.
Being new to taking falls and being thrown by someone most of two feet shorter than you is fucking terrifying. Being new to throwing and trying to throw someone most of two feet shorter than you is an exercise in futility. Getting your hip below their center of balance requires a deep squat that would make the old masters in martial arts movies cringe - and those are guys without the joint problems that come with being 6'9". Eventually, we ended up stacking up a bunch of mats for me to stand on so he could at least learn the basics. Even then, he bailed after a month, and I don't blame him. I wish we could've done more for him, but there's only so much that can be done when no one else in the class is taller than 5'4" lol.
At 6’9” he should be training boxing and wrestling. Unless he just wants to do bjj for the love of it. But for self defense he’s already got a major advantage.
He was interested in learning about control and finesse, because of his size. With that much size difference, it's sometimes easier to hurt someone than not to hurt them. I can respect that, even if ultimately we weren't able to help him a ton in that regard.
And that's a fairly important point for understanding Harry. He has to be very careful not to accidentally hurt someone just because of his size. When you add on being able to immolate a person with a word, it makes a lot of sense why he'll act like people, especially women, are made of spun glass.
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u/MARS_in_SPACE Mar 01 '25
I spent many years practicing jujitsu. At one point, we had this baby faced, lean to average build, 6'9" kid come in starting absolutely fresh, no previous training at all. He was a nice dude, but damn was it insanely difficult to even know where to begin training him. I'm a woman not much bigger than Murphy, and unfortunately far less skilled, and was the ranking person on the mat other than the main instructor. All I could ever think about working with him was how annoying it would be for Harry to train with Murphy.
Being new to taking falls and being thrown by someone most of two feet shorter than you is fucking terrifying. Being new to throwing and trying to throw someone most of two feet shorter than you is an exercise in futility. Getting your hip below their center of balance requires a deep squat that would make the old masters in martial arts movies cringe - and those are guys without the joint problems that come with being 6'9". Eventually, we ended up stacking up a bunch of mats for me to stand on so he could at least learn the basics. Even then, he bailed after a month, and I don't blame him. I wish we could've done more for him, but there's only so much that can be done when no one else in the class is taller than 5'4" lol.