starting brazillian jiujitsu

I started BJJ in late 2025 after years of saying I would. I had decent excuses: I was competing in powerlifting, I had two kids, my wife was in school for her doctorate, it’s expensive. Eventually though, those excuses withered away: I fell out of love with training for powerlifting competitions as injuries mounted as high as my blood pressure, my kids are old enough to be totally fine with me training a couple hours a week, and my wife graduated and got a job so the financial pressures eased substantially.

I’d wanted to start for quite some time, so when the excuses evaporated, I jumped in quickly. I immediately learned a few things:

I was not as in shape as I thought I was. 225lb at 6’2”, I outweighed most of the people in my gym, which mattered for about 20-30 seconds before they moved very quickly around my size and ended up in a dominant position.¹ From there, my size became a liability: I was exhausted trying to support my weight and their weight, resisting their submission attempts, fighting off takedowns and trying to move fast enough to maybe get an upper hand.
Resource efficiency was key. Especially at my larger size, I had to be very efficient with the way I used my energy. Constantly pushing up against an opponent bearing their full weight down on me was a quick way to get gassed. I had to learn to keep myself relaxed, think through how I could apply my bodyweight to get into a better position, and only when I knew roughly what I was going to try to do would I start moving.
Inflexibility was killing me. I’ve been plagued with sciatica since high school² and have very tight hip flexors. This meant trying to do a lot of the submissions and sweeps was pretty hard. What I didn’t realize, though, was that everything else was also incredibly inflexible: my feet were tight enough to make it very hard to properly shoot for a double-leg takedown, my shoulders are tight enough to make certain escapes from a kimura fairly difficult, etc.

I’m still (time of writing 4 March 2026) learning a ton. It’s a beautiful, extremely difficult sport, worlds different from powerlifting.

On multiple occasions I’ve been tapped, taken down or swept by a guy half my age and quite literally 80-90lb lighter than me. Not even a blackbelt! A more experienced white belt than me. A very cool guy though. ↩
If you’re a parent, please ensure that whatever coaches teach your kids how to lift weights are qualified to do so. Myself and my little brother both had the same weightlifting coach in high school football that taught terrible form, and now we both have lifelong (though luckily very manageable) sciatica from it. ↩

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