Learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in my mid 40s felt like a good idea at the time.
Too much John Wick, UFC and Joe Rogan.
As a youngster I’d been mad for martial arts, dabbling in Karate, Ninjitsu and Muay Thai. I had a library of VHS martial arts movies, that were watched over and over; everything from Golden Harvest productions with Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, to the JCVD era starting with Bloodsport.
Maybe as part of what constitutes the modern ‘mid-life crisis’ I decided that I wanted to rekindle some aspect of this.
At least the choice was between either Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) or long distance running (the other classic domestic escapism), often the choice of high achieving CEOs or Dads that needed a good excuse to get out of the house for hours at a time.
The thing is that fundamentally I really don’t enjoy running, the only reason because I’m so inherently bad at it.
I run a bit like a cross between a 1950s robot and Mr Potato Head.
After a period of life challenges I was building a framework of security protocols to keep my mental game stable with a proactive toolkit of self help strategies and a lifestyle structure of ‘must haves’ or ‘must dos’. I was intimidated by the prospect of BJJ but my masochistic streak meant that for that reason alone, I had to give it a go.
I wanted to engage in something that was very visceral and physical, with an element of enforced camaraderie.
There was an additional caveat that I didn’t want to get punched in the face and had to consider the injury risks of any other dynamic, physical hobby for a middle aged male.
A grappling sport was the obvious choice and with so much modern publicity and claims to the benefits, I went and found a local BJJ club called Fortify Jiu Jitsu.
Thinking that being in my mid-forties was any kind of obstacle didn’t really cross my mind.
I’ve since spoken with other guys kicking around my age who fancy giving BJJ a go and are interested in knowing what it’s like to start, this is bit of insight into my experience so far.
The Honeymoon period – Two left hands
Certainly the experience at my gym, as a beginner the introduction was pretty gentle. A steady hour of having a single technique explained, broken down and then drilled with some repetition to try and start ‘greasing the groove’.
I opted to cover both variants, ‘Gi’ (the classic version wearing the jacket and trousers – one guy said his wife referred to it as his ‘costume’) and the more modern variant ‘No-Gi’, usually shorts and a rash guard (a closed fitting short or long sleeved top).
There’s an initial adjustment to this level of proximity to another person in our usual day to day lives of personal space. I can’t recall any other experience of having another man’s legs wrapped around my waist and getting such an intimate perspective of when they shaved or the type of fabric conditioner they used.
You soon begin to adjust and then begins the process to establish the totally baffling skill of understanding your own body mechanics relative to those of your training partner.
Our training club has a very careful introduction to sparring – also known as ‘rolling’.
White belts paradoxically are the most dangerous training partner, both to themselves and the person they happen to be rolling with. A complete lack of awareness regarding their own body positioning and associated joint mechanics, limited repertoire and no sense of strategic direction, will lead to very high energy but very low yield roll. A factor multiplied by an equivalent partner.
As a consequence, rolling is incorporated cautiously and is structured around key starting positions with a limited choice of options – referred to as ‘positional sparring’. Think of it as the grappling equivalent of ten pin bowling with the giant inflatable sausages in the gutters.
Getting the ‘tap’ is the point of a roll when a person acknowledges that they’ve lost the position and are now helpless to their opponent’s offence. When rolling with a higher belt this can happen quickly and cleanly. Amongst the white belts it is rarely clean and can sometimes have the indignity of being completely self inflicted.
In the early periods you start with an absolute lack of direction within a roll, but slowly, you see how you are beginning to learn foundational moves in the same way you begin to learn what a Pawn is on the chessboard. As you grasp this analogy you can visualise the long road ahead to learn all the ‘pieces’ as the apprenticeship before you really start to play the game.
Crossing the Chasm
For a number of mundane life reasons, a new job and a crappy commute, my early trajectory in BJJ was interrupted and I had sufficient time away to feel like I was nigh on back to ground zero by the time I returned.
A shift to a new job and remote working meant that I had a new freedom with my time beyond the office hours. Not that returning was instantaneous, there was a definite reluctance to commit to getting back on that horse. It was easy to find an excuse to miss going back each week, a late finish at work, Ocado delivery due, toe nails a bit too long.
A return was a commitment. I’d done the soft introduction, dabbled enough to know what it was I was signing up for. The question was whether or not I wanted to sign up.
With a crack of the mental whips on my sub conscious self, I gave myself a stern talking too. Was I doing this or not? Whenever it gets to this stage, it becomes a case of whether I can live with the erosion to my self-esteem if I pussy out.
What this really constituted was stepping out of the safety of the beginners class into the advanced class. This would plunge me firstly into the more advanced techniques – I was fine with that (despite my persistent struggles with the ‘basics’), but secondly into a consistent hour of free sparring with the higher belts.
I was less fine with this.
Getting smashed – being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable
I’m not afraid of getting out of my comfort zone. If you ever work a tough shift as a ‘proper’ chef you know what discomfort can be. I’m yet to find a comparison to the brutality of a 12-14 hour busy day in a kitchen nursing burns, cuts and dehydration with a relentless pressure to complete a seemingly impossible to-do list.
I’m also no stranger to training hard and having to dig in to get something done.
And yet the discomfort of being physically mauled by another human being to the point of complete disempowerment and submission is difficult to experience.
I have pondered if this becomes harder as you get older because personally I find this extremely intimidating.
That playground scrap you had with the classroom nobed feels like a long time ago and the last time you convinced yourself that you were ‘ready to go’ was when that other nobed dinged your trolley and cut you up by the salad leaves at Waitrose.
The point is that despite the aspirations to be able to handle three men in a bar with a pencil, deep down you know that really it’s probably both a bit superfluous, but also unlikely.
Unless the apocalypse comes and society breaks down (not totally impossible), in a modern society with structured behaviour, laws and police, you can hopefully navigate your entire life without ever having a truly physical altercation.
By historical standards we have all gotten pretty soft and it does seem that generationally, this softness and lack of resilience is a growing pandemic.
An inability to cope with the challenges of life is never going to end well so there does seem a valid argument to train these skills and expose ourself to a variety of uncomfortable challenges in fundamentally safe environments.
Whilst this academic argument has credibility this can still be overwhelmed by the fight or flight mechanism after 5 minutes of having a man sat on your face and not being able to do anything about it.
I admit getting through the next six months of BJJ were challenging.
The inevitability of the mixed crowd that want to pursue BJJ means there will be a spectrum of training partners you encounter. Some just happen to be more zealous, more competitive or simply less developed in empathy or compassion. It’s also difficult to learn the right balance of resistance when rolling and I definitely experienced some more brutal domination which was possibly just a result of me ‘trying too hard’ and being punished as a result.
There have been occasions (and continue to be occasions) when younger, more dynamic, more skilled opponents hurt me. Sometimes this can just happen as a result of the physicality of the roll, other times it’s a result of the intent of the roll and this can be psychologically much more challenging to overcome.
On more then one occasion I’ve left the mat with the shaky vulnerability reminiscent of old memories of playground bullying, sometimes with an injury that impacted the rest of the week’s training physically, yet the psychological impact had me stalling for weeks afterwards.
I suppose this is just part of the process of a sport like BJJ. It is rough and it can be intimidating but it’s through this journey of challenge that you build those critical qualities of resilience that in turn feed into those crucial pillars of good mental health like self-esteem and pride in yourself.
There are certain characters at our gym that whilst not bad guys, I know that a roll will be pretty intense and I have to pick those rolls with a bit of caution and strategy.
It’s also worth noting just how utterly exhausting an intense roll can be and with the adrenaline pumping, it’s only the next day that you see the extent of bruising on your body and realise which joints have been tweaked beyond their usual ranges and how much ribs have been flexed.
I’ve had to accept that the rate of progress for myself, maybe because I’m older, maybe I’m just a bit soft and useless, is going to be slower than a lot of the younger guys. The weekly schedule of other commitments and priorities means that BJJ has to fit in the gaps that are available so that also impacts the rate of progress. Even if I committed myself to more sessions per week, I’m not totally sure my body could cope with it. Getting the right balance of recovery as you get older if you still want to be busy with physical activity definitely requires a strategic approach and I’m still working on this.
At this stage though, I can at least confirm that my comfort with discomfort has developed and the intimidation is dissipating.
A snippet of ‘real-time’
A final note of stark reality as I conclude this post after what felt like a particularly brutal session this evening – like all things, some days are better than others.
I’m shaky, mentally and physically. I’ve just had a double gin and tonic to sooth the edges (and I don’t really drink). My body is already telling me that getting up tomorrow won’t be pleasant, my neck is strained, my fingers are on fire, my calf throbs. Most significant is how I’m feeling emotionally. A diluted mixture of vulnerability, humiliation and trauma; I wonder if others sometimes feel like this or maybe I’m just a bit delicate?
I got my ass handed to me multiple times tonight. I just felt like I went from one pummelling to another.
Did I enjoy it tonight…..
Not really.
Do I question the choice to do this voluntarily?
I’d say so.
Will you be back next week?
……………………
Yes…… I probably will.
