I’ll admit the general gym-going public are an oddity to me. In the past I have trained in dedicated martial arts gyms or army ones, both of which have clear parameters as far as work ethic and behaviour go. Certainly there are people in commercial gyms who shake under heavy weights and pound on treadmills, but many simply walk around performing the odd squat and the occasional lonely sit-up. For these people the gym is a social space, equipment is something to lean on, and other gym-goers are there to be flirted with or out-postured.

Jiu-jitsu people are different. Although we train in a commercial gym, we come to absorb the fighting craft rather than to preen. We rock multi-coloured gis and invariably leave bruised, fat-eared, and ragged. We maintain unique rituals and traditions like bowing, tapping, inverting, osss-ing, etc. I accept that to outside eyes it must seem that we just roll around on the floor clawing at each other and that compared to the pristine citizens of the “normal” gym we look like the querulous crew of pirate ship. Yet there has generally been peace and tolerance between the tribes.

Sometimes the gym people, upon seeing us, make Bruce Lee noises and do air-kicks in gentle mockery. Our ever-smiling, ever-patient Brazilian black belt laughs along with them. When they go away he says: “Just enjoy at their jokes. My master taught me this. Then, if they do come to train, you show them jiu-jitsu.” We laugh like B-movie conspirators. For we know the dark jiu-jitsu power of which he speaks. In some very junior way we too are keepers of the secret knowledge of the sacred tatami.

These mats are holy indeed. Like training partners, tatami are an essential for our art. You can train without a gi but not without mats. For several hours a night those mats, which belong to our teacher, become our nation and our temple. Each night we assemble and disassemble them, stacking them away with care and neatness. We disinfect them regularly and each month we clean them inch by inch with a little hand-held steamer.

Never at any point do we walk upon them with shoes. To do so is an unspeakable heresy, like holding a choke after someone has tapped or coming to training in an unwashed gi.

Naturally this physical sanctity is lost on our expansionist neighbours, who mistake our tatami for mere flooring. They can see mats ringed with shoes and flip flops, mats populated solely by shoeless people, and yet never make the connection between bare feet and tatami. Despite the fact that we have never once smeared the contents of the London pavement on their weights or pull-up bars, we return each week to find gym-goblin footprints gouged into our mats. The problem is that we rarely catch them at it.

During one weekend training session, however, we did catch a transgressor. I was playing half guard over at the time, burrowing underneath a sparring partner in an effort topple him. From my upside-down angle I saw a trainer-clad foot step on one corner of our mats in horrific slow motion. Outside it was an English winter. I had no doubt that those trainers had waded through lashings of filth, muck, grime, and oily disease on the way to the gym. All of which had just been transferred to the mat against which my face was pressed. My soul flinched. In that moment I hated the culprit with a zealot’s spite.

Mr. Shoes stepped on the mat again. I grimaced and got distracted, exposing an arm that my opponent duly grabbed at the elbow and started to prise away for a submission attempt.

The third time a foot hit the mat, our belligerent brown belt saw and jumped to his feet. Mr. Shoes, I feared, was now beyond help. “Hey!” yelled Brown Belt. The rest of the jiu-jitsu class stopped mid-movement, some freezing in bizarre inverted grappling positions.

Shoes turned as Brown Belt marched over to him with his chest puffed out, fingers tucked into his belt like a swaggering samurai, nonchalant but with a whiff of potential violence. “No shoes on the mat; we put our fucking faces on here.” Brown Belt snarled. Mr Shoes had gelled his hair for the gym. He was wearing designer jeans, a whiter-than-white tank top, and weight-lifting gloves. His attire was now conspiring against him, however, making the idea of his downfall somehow more pleasing.

Shoes apologised. At that moment, though, his girlfriend appeared from where she had been doing sit-ups on a yoga mat. Gym-Person-Man-Law dictated that Mr. Shoes must now butch up in front of Mrs. Shoes. As he turned away he muttered something under his breath. Brown Belt, never one to accept anything other than complete victory, asked him what he’d just said and the two squared off again. Shoes had an audience in the doe-eyed Mrs Shoes, just as Brown Belt had one in us.

I thought how unsatisfactory it would be if our guy were to punch Shoes. I silently prayed that he would do something more in line with the art. A gnarly double-leg, maybe? A flying heel hook? The situation suddenly and disappointingly defused itself as Shoes apologised again and slunk off.

Even after this minor skirmish, though, the mat damage continued. ”Some people don’t have no respect,” my normally placid instructor erupted one night as he jabbed a finger at a muddy scuff-mark. Outside of our hours of training the mats had become fair game for whoever wanted to jump around doing Zumba or Geri Yoga or whatever else people do.

One night we arrived to find that some of the interlocking teeth that bind the mats together had been sheared off altogether. It felt like we’d returned from a hunt to find our village pillaged by Orcs.

Those mats were the place I went to escape the grind of life, work/lack of work, writing, and sundry Veterans Problems. Yet now lycra-clad, pouting gym freaks were launching vicious incursions over my frontier. Invaded. Our resources stolen.

With each new injury to our mats--and by extension our honour--we began to haul in the duty gym manager and demand our equipment be respected. Nothing happened and the damage continued. Our only recourse was jiu-jitsu insurgency.

In an explosion of quintessentially British outrage I made a passive-aggressive sign. “For BJJ use only,” it read. “Thank you for your co-operation.” I scowled at the milling Zumba and yoga people as I taped it (angrily) to the wall. Another one of our number bought a tarpaulin to cover our precious tatami. We then piled medicine balls and gym equipment on top of them, bricking them in behind steps and racks, fashioning a fortress to protect that which gave us meaning.

This seems to have worked. But the wounds still run deep. Last week two girls were doing lunges near the mats as we took them apart after class. One of them--shamelessly, right in front of me--stepped on a section of tatami. “Get. Off. The. Mats.” I snarled each word, not caring that I sounded like an arsehole. She looked embarrassed and genuinely repentant. “Sorry,” she said.

For the first time in years I affected a soldierly thousand-yard stare and pinned her with my half-remembered rendition of cold, dead eyes. I made a petulant show of inspecting the mat for damage, tucked it under my arm, and stalked away.

Check out these related stories:

Ottavia Bourdain: My Jiu-Jitsu Addiction

No Easy Life: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Cerebral Palsy

The Tao of Dean Lister