Tom Bennett is on his back on the floor of a house halfway down Cundy’s Harbor Road. Another man has his arm around Bennett’s neck, and he’s squeezing. Seconds tick by. Bennett’s fingers tap the ground. The man releases him.
It isn’t a brawl. It’s a martial arts training session. For the last 13 years, an informal group has gathered here to practice grappling, a style of combat or self-defense focused on grabbing and holding rather than hitting and kicking.
There are seven people on a warm May evening. Richard Webber, who built the studio and mentors the group, says twice that many usually show up, blaming the low attendance on the first day of the year with nice weather.
Bennett is a former Morse High School wrestling coach. Webber, who grew up on Pinkham Point Road, has been practicing martial arts for more than two decades.
He has trained in different disciplines and ran a gym for mixed martial arts, a style that allows punching and kicking, until 2010. But he gravitated toward grappling because it’s more cooperative than combative, although he allows that participants can make it “saucy” if they like. He opened this gym, colloquially called RAW Grappling after his initials, to create the type of training environment he wanted.
The group has no formal organization. Webber likens it to a speakeasy. Members hear about it by word of mouth. The studio opens Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights at 6. At the end of the session, the group will help sweep and mop the mats that cover the studio’s two rooms. They donate money as they see fit, and together raise money for the We Defy Foundation. That organization teaches Brazilian jujitsu, a form of grappling, to veterans with disabilities.
Webber says participants come from Harpswell and surrounding towns, as far as Scarborough. They include a carpenter, a fisherman, a physical therapist, and an underwear salesman, he says. Webber himself is a sales representative for foot and ankle medical equipment.
On this night there is one woman and six men, including Webber. One person is a novice, wearing a white belt. Two have gained purple belts, the penultimate level. Only Webber wears a black belt, the highest level.
Webber says members can advance as far as they want to, although it’s his prerogative when people advance and he promotes sparingly. He guesses it takes most people 12-15 years to earn a black belt, and some never do.
Webber first demonstrates a handful of moves. Tonight the focus is on the neck and shoulders. Next, participants pair up for five to 10 minutes to practice the sequences. Music plays over speakers, some of it incongruous. Fleetwood Mac’s “Landside,” for instance, doesn’t exactly call to mind chokeholds.
Webber walks from pair to pair, answering questions and giving advice. The participants give each other tips, too. After an hour the instruction is finished. Some members break into pairs for five-minute rounds of sparring. Others start to pack up.
I return in September to try grappling for myself. Webber pairs me with Kate Beaumont, a U.S. Navy engineer who lives in Topsham. She’s been coming for a few years. She practiced karate for two decades before that, but says she got tired of being hit in the face.
We start standing, practicing how to wrap an opponent and tip them onto the ground. Beaumont and I take turns, working slowly through the progression of moves. It feels like it would take years of practice to be able to do any of this fluidly or effectively in a real fight. Next, we take turns wrapping each other into headlocks.
At the end of the hour we practice chokeholds. Beaumont squeezes the carotid arteries that run up the sides of my neck to my brain. The flow of blood rapidly ebbs, setting off internal survival alarms. I suspect Webber wanted to make sure I experienced this sensation to really understand what they’re up to. Fortunately, all I have to do is tap Beaumont’s arm and she lets go.
One man has been coming for 12 years. Webber says the group has a pretty high retention rate. If someone lasts for six months, he says, they’ll be there for life.
One new member, Braeden Webber, crossed that six-month mark in May, and says he’s there to stay. He’s Richard Webber’s nephew and a recent graduate of Morse High School, where he wrestled.
Braeden says wrestling “did amazing things” for him, and he has grasped onto grappling to play a similar role. He is eager to advance to the next level, the blue belt. He is filling a notebook with the techniques he has learned and ways he could use them in different situations.
Braeden is living in Bath and working as a rigger at the Safe Harbor Great Island boatyard in Harpswell while studying business management at Southern Maine Community College.
As the group breaks up, members pack their heavy cotton uniforms into bags and head out into the cool evening air. People might think grappling is about fighting, Braeden says, but that’s not how he sees it. He’s thinking about bettering himself, and he sees the benefits of improved health and balance both in and out of the studio.
Richard Webber says some people do come to learn self-defense. The first skills he teaches are about self-preservation: how to fall safely, how to get back up, how to break an opponent’s grip. And he acknowledges that the skills he teaches could be used to hurt someone.
But the first thing Braeden wants to tell a reporter about the studio has nothing to do with fighting or fitness or grappling moves. He talks about a group of people coming together. That’s what happens in the studio, he says. “You build a community.”
Correction: An earlier version of this post gave an incorrect last name for a new member of the martial arts studio. The member’s name is Braeden Webber.
