So is BJJ for older guys possible? I’m lying here in the dark feeling sore and broken.
I am a busy father in my mid 40′s. What I am finding is that I have to maintain an extreme off-mat fitness regime in order to remain injury free. There is no margin for error when you are older. It is virtually impossible time-wise. And yet I am not ready to shrivel up and retreat to my rocker quite yet.
The issues:
- Range of motion: Mine is reduced
- Power: The younger guys have it
- Endurance: I have none
- Time: I am employed full time, I am a single father
- Metabolism: Lowered
What do I have that the younger guys don’t? Not sure. Maybe the ability to think. To be circumspect. Patient. Also, no one expects me to do all that well. Or to be all that fast so….
I try (TRY) to:
- Get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (tough).
- Watch what I eat (is coffee a food?) – no sugar, watch the carbs.
- Drink 8 glasses of water a day (and pee constantly).
- Lay down a strength and endurance base that also promotes range of motion.
- Think always about injury prevention.
I started Crossfit a few years ago. Cool. Good for overall fitness with a great website. It’s at www.crossfit.com . That went well. But or me the WHY is as important as the WHAT.
So I kept searching and stumbled upon Gym Jones. It follows a different path. Everything is questioned. Tested. Re-tested. And in the end it seems that at Gym Jones the journey is the thing AND THAT is my thing too. They seem to measure, improve, measure again, improve. Competitions are tests of the program. The guys there use their brains as a tool to improve their performance. www.gymjones.com . In the end I took a seminar in Salt Lake City. The course gave us a foundation to develop our own program for diet, strength, power, endurance, rest and recovery. There are also Black Belt BJJ guys developing the fitness part of their game at Gym Jones. That’s actually where I first heard about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
So for this forty year old, BJJ at Martial Arts Planet is part of the journey. So far, so good.
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