Training BJJ in your 40s

Are you over 40? I know I am. Do you still want to train hard and do as well as you can proving yourself young still? I know I do. (My birthday is in April by the way, any presents welcome :) ).

As I enter my__ year of my 40s I feel the urgency to get things done while my body still can. I train more. Than I ever have with my pain threshold seemingly higher now. I have added new hobbies with karting and Padel recently and am still training BJJ around my training. Here are my tips on keeping going at 40 and things I probably should have listened to in my 30s too.

Listen to your body.

If something hurts don’t push into it, work around it. If one of your hips hurts when doing BJJ try and practice doing the move on the other side, not only will this give you more options once that side gets easier it will balance you out and possibly help prevent other injuries in the future. If your arm hurts, use one arm.

We usually struggle with the above as we don’t like losing, this leads neatly on to my next point.

When training losing in BJJ is ok as long as you understand why it’s happening

You don’t always have to be winning. Yes you don’t want to just quit and lose all the time, but sometimes you are going to lose. Spoiler alert, unless you have really quit and just aren’t trying then you aren’t losing. Here’s how that works:

You have an injury

As with the point above listen to your body. If you have an injury you are working around that prevents you from using your body the way you want you are going to have a diminished capacity to do things. As long as you try and figure out ways to work around this and keep trying you are progressing.

You are trying new things

You need to try new things to improve, you might like fighting on top and want to improve your guard game. You need to open up to do things, when training it’s the best time to do it. Also you have to test things to understand how they work and don’t work and fix the holes in your game.

You are physically tired

Have you been training a lot? Sometimes you come to training with the best of intentions and your body just doesn’t work (this gets a bit worse as you get older).

I feel this is still a good learning opportunity, try and slow things down and don’t go as hard or athletic, work on your slower controlled game instead and in the worse case just defend. Try and conserve your energy and work your way through things.

You have a lot on your mind, it’s not BJJ’s fault

This is one everyone suffers from, they have a bad day at work, things aren’t going well. They aren’t focusing in class and start doing badly, then the voice in your head goes “I’m rubbish! Why do I even train BJJ?” This is a very simplistic look at it but we give these kind of thoughts and feelings too much power. As with physically tired this is a moment to try and block out the day and focus on the game at hand. I think people come to BJJ for a simple answer on these days and actually it can be the opposite, you have to be aware of what’s going on and then refocus on BJJ instead. If you keep linking BJJ to these thoughts you will start to think you aren’t good and then you will start hating training.

If you’ve ever meditated this is the same idea, only it should be easier and more fun in BJJ. Accept your thoughts and feelings and let yourself refocus on your training.

Always keep training

Try not to skip training, in fact I would say try and do something everyday. Learn to pace yourself and focus on different elements everyday, whether it be gym work or yoga or something completely different. You can train something everyday.

Training everyday will give you an understanding of your body and again you can work around things and it will make it a good habit. It will also make the idea of losing less of an issue as you will have lots of opportunities to win.

With this one, remember to pace yourself and build up to harder training. Also don’t overdo it, I’m presuming you have a day job, family etc. when I’m writing this, don’t train eight hours a day everyday.

Don’t give yourself excuses

Yes, yes you are old… yes you are weak…you are way too busy… everything you tell yourself is true. I’m not denying that. What I will say to you is… so what? Do it anyway. None of the excuses really matter, just do it anyway and do your best. Work as hard as you can and see where it leads you. You will surprise yourself, you will do better than you thought and as long as you can keep improving incrementally then just keep going with it. As long as it’s not ruining your personal or professional life and you are enjoying it anyway just keep going.

Why are you doing things? Your goal isn’t world champion (it is a nice idea though!) it is fun and self improving, you can’t say where you will go and don’t set ridiculous goals in your head as these will limit you and bring you down, set fun goals that are still hard, but make them more consistent. Train X times a week at this and this. Don’t set do a billion push ups, set do push ups every day then you can right down your progress and see a nice upward trajectory, that’s all that counts in the end. Once you hit a peak you can tweak it with the same idea in mind.

It really is never too late

The above ideas work better when you are in your 40s when you kind of understand them better and yet you will still feel like it’s too late. Is it late to become the champion of the world? Probably is. Maybe you can be champion at your age category and belt colour though. Also the incremental wins are really worth it. When you do better at something than someone younger and stronger it feels great.

Conclusion

What are you waiting for? Start something new today :) (sneaky link for our beginners course to add below)…(whoops didn’t mean to write that into the article)… (but it’s right there if you want to start :) )