Car-jitsu – the contact sport only practiced in cars

2 min read

8 months ago Robin

In case the name ‘car-jitsu’ wasn’t clear enough, this new contact sport that is becoming increasingly popular in Russia is basically a sort of jiu-jitsu….in a car.

If we were to make a list of the most unusual places to wrestle in, the car would probably rank pretty high, and that’s precisely what makes car-jitsu so intriguing.
Invented a couple of years ago by Vikentiy Mikheev, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Judo black belt and a professional mixed martial arts fighter, car-jitsu challenges practitioners to subdue their opponent in the small space of a car.
Everything inside your car, including the seat belts, steering wheel, mirrors and chairs, can be used to win the game, but, just like in regular jiu-jitsu, hitting is not allowed. And here the key to winning is the supposed “creative use of the environment”.

The rules of car-jitsu are pretty straightforward: both competitors start in the front seats of a car, and, just like in jiu-jitsuu, the goal is to submit the opponent or gain an advantageous position and score more points.
A match consists of two rounds of three minutes each, where competitors switch the drivers and passenger seat sides. If they are tied after these two rounds the competitors move to the back seat for a deciding four minute round.
The points system for car-jitsu is as follows: four points for each mount and back control, and two points for the knee-on-belly position.

“In 2020, I came up with the idea of doing competitive grappling in vehicles,” said Vikentiy Mikheev. “Since October of 2020, my friends and I have been running small tournaments of car-jitsu to study the aspects of jiu-jitsu application in such a confined space.”

Although it cannsounds silly, some say that it could have some real-world applications. Maybe you might need to defend yourself in your car, and finding creative ways to subdue an assailant in that very small place could come in handy. In particular, it could end up helping women defend themselves out of some tricky situations.
For now, car-jitsu has yet to transcend Russian borders, but it’s popularity, with over 2 million views on YouTube, is growing there, so we might see it adopted somewhere else in the near future.