Something I find myself telling new belts often is, “When you’re small, there’s never an easy day on the mat.” If you’re new to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and you’re 5’6 and have spent the majority of your life weighing less than 150 lbs., it hits you rather quickly why weight classes in professional fighting exist. When I was a white belt, I remember spending a lot of time after we’d drill technique getting utterly and literally smooshed and never getting one chance to use anything I had learned in class. Sometimes I wasn’t even tired after rolling. I’d get smooshed. I’d tap. I’d get up. Slap hands, fist-bump. Smooshed. Tap. Get up. Slap hands, fist-bump. Smooshed. (Meanwhile, the big guy was huffing like he’d been chased by a bear.) But, eventually, the technique kicked in and I learned how to survive. And, then, I actually started tapping bigger people, people a person my size should’ve never been able to beat. Now, I’m a brown belt, so why do I feel like I’m reliving some of those white belt days when I couldn’t tap anyone?
Picture it like a video game with one of those bars that show the energy level for the character you’re playing. When almost everyone on the mat is bigger than you, you’re exerting more energy to do the same exact things they’re doing to you. Therefore, your energy bar lowers faster than theirs. Lungs must work harder. Muscle fatigue settles in faster. Energy bar goes down quicker. Then, one day, you find you’re not just one of the smallest guys on the mat, but you’re also one of the oldest. Energy bar goes down quicker. And because you’re older, you have more responsibilities and can’t train like you used to. Down goes the energy bar.
Frankly, for the amount of time I’ve been doing BJJ, I should’ve earned my black belt by now, but I’m a baby brown. My “glory days,” if I ever had any, were when I was a blue belt. That’s when I trained the most. I had been doing other martial arts for years and started doing mostly no-gi with a focus on MMA, but our gym introduced gi and I soon earned my blue. I did some BJJ tournaments. I fought in three amature MMA fights. (I still can’t get a takedown unless I can punch you first.) Eventually, I earned my purple belt. Something I respect about BJJ is that there’s not many belts, and you know if someone has a purple he or she has really put in the effort to get there. There’s a reason most BJJ schools are filled with whites and blues but considerably less purples, browns, and blacks.
But it was when I got my purple that my BJJ hit a wall. I already had a long commute and a full-time job, but then I started working on a 94-credit masters degree. Then, my wife and I became parents through fostering and adoption. Yes, life gets in the way of BJJ. I had my purple belt, but I was barely training. I found a good school much closer to home so I could train more, but I still wasn’t getting there more than once a week.
When you come into a new school wearing a purple belt, you feel the weight of the belt. You know everyone is eyeing you up and hankering to give you a spanking. After being at the school for a few years, I still had my purple belt and I didn’t feel that weight any less. If anything, I put more pressure on myself. I wanted to be able to represent my belt, my school, and my professors well, but since my life didn’t change, neither did my mediocre jiu jitsu. Then, in the fall of 2019, I went from the mat to the ER for the first time in 20 years of doing martial arts. I had torn my meniscus. Knee surgery followed. The following summer, as I was easing back into training, I visited another school while staying at my sister’s. Once again, being self-consciously aware of the weight of my belt as a stranger on the mat, I had a friendly conversation with one of the professors that went sort of like this:
“I’ve had my purple belt a long time. Even before the knee injury, I wasn’t training much.”
“But you’re keeping at it, so eventually you’ll earn your brown belt.”
“Honestly, I don’t think I want it.”
If this had been a movie, the scene would’ve cut to me, lined up along the wall back at my own school, and my professor is calling me out to reward me a brown belt. I actually — surprising to myself — got emotional. I said to my professor, “I didn’t think I’d make it,” because when I was sitting there with surgical stitches and my knee swollen as big as Tito Ortiz’s head, I thought, “This is it. I guess I’m done with BJJ.”
But now I’m a brown belt. Happy ending, right? Not totally. I’m still one of the smallest guys on the mat. I’m still in my forties and rolling with people twenty years younger than me. (And — I’m not complaining — people tend to think I’m a lot younger than what I am, so I don’t get any old man mercy.) I also still have a lot of responsibilities off the mat. And, to be perfectly transparent, I rarely watch BJJ videos and I hate exercising for the sake of exercising and I ran cross country for two years in high school, so I filled my lifetime quota for running. Unless someone is coming at me with a chainsaw, I’m not running anymore. When I have downtime at home, I much rather go for a hike or bike ride with my wife and kids or read a book. Often, I don’t even think about BJJ (other than figuring out how I’m going to get to class) until I walk into the gym. In other words, I still get tapped out much more than I tap others. And I still feel the weight of wearing that brown belt.
But I’m making peace with it — I think. Perhaps the greys in my beard are telling me I’m getting some wisdom. I would be lying if I said I still didn’t get frustrated. But I’m also enjoying training more than I was. Here’s some wisdom: It comes down to understanding both why I’m there and my season in life. One of the first things I ask someone if they’re seeking advice on joining a martial arts school is, “What do you want to get out of it?” Recently, I had to ask myself a similar question: “Why are you here? Why do you keep coming to BJJ?” It’s not for an ego boost, I can tell you, or I would’ve quit a long, long time ago.
I’ve whittled my personal goals for training down to these three things:
- Get a workout.
- Learn something.
- Go home not hurt.
If I added a fourth, it would be Help the younger guys and gals improve, but that’s a blog for another day. As far as Goal #1 and #2, I’m by no means a couch sloth, and I’m also not a workout fiend; but taking care of my body is important to me, and BJJ is my main source of exercise (and stress relief). I also love BJJ because I never get bored; there’s always something new to learn, no matter how long I’ve trained. Finally, Goal #3 may sound funny, but it keeps me training smart. It also helps me to keep the little ego I have in check. I used to try to overcompensate for all the missed classes by doing round after round with everyone willing until I was exhausted and beat up (and the more exhausted I became, the more beat up I got). If I didn’t go home hurting, I didn’t think I was training hard enough. Again, I was letting the weight of my belt color drive me. Now, I’m more selective about who I roll with. I regularly tell the huge guy that my hobbit back can’t handle him or the spazzy brand new white belt that I’m sitting this round out (because he’s the guys who will hurt you!). Now, I do one or two “old man rolls” (mellow rolls with a partner I trust) to get the body loose, and then I do a smaller number of hard rounds. Often I keep myself in check by saying to myself, “Did you get a good sweat? Yes. Did you learn something? Yes. Is your body feeling good? Yes… OK, then it’s time to go home.”
For me, it goes back to my size, which has to do with why I got into martial arts in the first place. Ever since reading G.I. Joe comics in the 80s and learning about ninjas, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of a smaller, weaker person defeating a larger, stronger opponent with skill and technique. I’m not a competitive guy; my interest in martial arts has always been driven by learning effective, practical self-defense, and BJJ works. After all this time, I’m confident I could handle myself in a street fight against an untrained person if I needed to (especially since no one will tell me I can’t throw elbows). But I’ve also had to accept that in this season in my life, even with a brown belt wrapped around my waist, I’m not going to be the beast on the mat mauling everyone.
