Jiu Jitsu Saved My Life but Destroyed My Body // My BJJ Journey

my body is forever damaged from training<br>Jiu-Jitsu I started training 10 years<br>ago I'm a purple belt if you know<br>anything about Jiu-Jitsu the belt<br>ranking system is white blue purple<br>brown black for adults and then they<br>have belts Beyond black but your last<br>name pretty much has to be Gracie if you<br>want a red belt or a red and white belt<br>I originally got curious about Jiu-Jitsu<br>probably like many people do Through The<br>Joe Rogan podcast what's the Practical<br>use of jiujitsu well if you and I were<br>in a fight that would kill you he used<br>to talk about it a bunch and I listened<br>and that kind of planted that first seed<br>for me I was 27 or 28 when I first<br>started it was right around the time<br>when I started working at the Spearmint<br>Rhino and I was parking cars there I<br>wasn't dancing I remember I was doing<br>P90X and one of the guys that worked<br>there was a boxer like legit boxer dude<br>was sparring partners for some big names<br>he saw me eating clean I had my little<br>lunch packed I was the new guy the new<br>valet attended outside and you know<br>everybody likes to bust your balls are<br>you breaking my I I think about it I<br>remember him calling me a pretty boy<br>saying like why why are you trying to<br>get in shape you trying to get a<br>six-pack he's like do you know how to<br>fight and I'm like yeah I know how to<br>fight I felt like I did know how to<br>fight a little bit when I was much<br>younger like 15 years old I I trained in<br>boxing for a summer hitting Ms and the<br>bags and sparring a little bit so I felt<br>like I could handle myself and I grew up<br>fighting you know the typical oh yeah<br>man i' I've got plenty of street fights<br>under my belt response that I gave him<br>he hit at the coach and said he had like<br>200 street fights and like he's a lot of<br>guys up might lot<br>[ __ ] and he kind of chuckled and he<br>was like you should come down to the<br>boxing gym sometime and I did and I<br>showed up at his boxing gym I remember<br>my first day training with him he kind<br>of like Mr Miagi me and he was having me<br>do stuff that wasn't really boxing is<br>telling me that a lot of it would play<br>into it things like hitting a tire with<br>a sledgehammer but not just hitting the<br>tire with the sledgehammer but turning<br>your hips in the way that you would when<br>you're throwing a punch<br>as you're hitting the tire with the<br>sledgehammer to help you get power the<br>energy travels up the leg twists through<br>the hips and into the large muscles of<br>the back chest and shoulders sorry<br>getting into the weeds of things but he<br>misogi me a bit and I trained with him<br>for gosh I think it was like nearly 9 to<br>10 months I was 28 years old I was in<br>the best shape of my life cardio was<br>insane and I felt like hot [ __ ] how<br>could I not then my buddy Paco came over<br>to my house and at the time he had been<br>training Jiu-Jitsu he was a one stripe<br>white belt for people who don't<br>understand Jiu-Jitsu ranks he was<br>basically training for like 3 to 6<br>months at that point and he was fairly<br>consistent but a lot of times you'll<br>hear people joke around saying like your<br>first stripe means that you learned how<br>to Tire belt he was about 135 lb and 56<br>he's not a big guy and I at the time was<br>185 lb and 61 which gave me a bit of a<br>size advantage on him and there at my<br>house in front of my soon Tobe wife my<br>buddy Paco chokes me out multiple times<br>on my living room floor that's when I<br>was just like oh man I have no idea how<br>to fight if it was a boxing match yeah<br>I'm pretty sure I would have won because<br>I was training boxing at that point but<br>I've never grappled in my life I didn't<br>grow up wrestling I never trained Judo I<br>never did any of that stuff and jiujitsu<br>was just something that I had heard Joe<br>Rogan talk about a lot on his podcast so<br>I thought it was pretty cool that Paco<br>was training it but I wanted to put it<br>to the test and I quickly found out that<br>yeah that stuff works and Paco choked me<br>out a bunch of times in front of my wife<br>I'm glad that she still decided to marry<br>me after watching me get choked out by<br>my tiny friend but that's when I decided<br>I'm going to do it the funny thing is on<br>the way to my boxing gym I would drive<br>by this sign that said Jiu-Jitsu every<br>single day I went to the gym and mind<br>you I was going to the gym like five<br>times a week to train boxing and just<br>seeing that you just decid knowing<br>nothing about about it more than just<br>what I've heard from Joe Rogan and from<br>what my buddy Paco was telling me I<br>didn't research it much which is strange<br>for me because I am the type of person<br>who researches everything and then I get<br>caught up procrastinating and in that<br>weird I've done a lot of research on<br>this topic so much so that I feel like I<br>don't even want to do it anymore and I<br>do that with a lot of things but I<br>didn't do that with jiu-jitsu I was just<br>genuinely curious and thought that the<br>best way to learn more about it was to<br>try it and not research it too much CU<br>you end up watching fight videos and<br>Jiu-Jitsu street fights and then you go<br>down a rap hole pretty soon you're<br>seeing some old fat Russian guy doing<br>Systema throwing people across the room<br>by just touching them on their neck with<br>one finger which is obviously [ __ ]<br>so I finally decide to stop at that<br>Jiu-Jitsu gym and I remember the first<br>time training and getting beat up by<br>young children there was a kid there he<br>was a green belt which is like the<br>highest rank you could get when you're<br>under 16 years old and the kid was legit<br>just insanely good and he was like 13 or<br>14 years old he manhandled me a couple<br>of the blue belt girls that were there<br>kicked my ass I remember coming out of<br>that class so exhausted and feeling like<br>I had to throw up because my cardio was<br>put to the ultimate test mind you at<br>this point I thought my cardio was the<br>best it has ever been but it wasn't<br>grappling cardio it's different when<br>you're grappling when you're doing<br>Jiu-Jitsu when you're wrestling it uses<br>your entire body and it uses parts of<br>your body that aren't used unless you're<br>really grappling or doing exercises to<br>improve those strengths that are around<br>grappling and I was hooked at that point<br>I stopped going to the boxing gym I<br>signed up for the Jiu-Jitsu gym and I<br>was obsessed it became a thing that I<br>did every single day sometimes twice a<br>day mind you at this time I I had a job<br>that was super chill I worked graveyard<br>and I only worked like three or four<br>days a week and made decent money and<br>then I had my mornings and afternoons<br>pretty much completely open I had no<br>kids no real responsibilities so I had<br>plenty of time to train and I did and I<br>quickly Advanced I went from a white<br>belt to a blue belt in about 13 months<br>which the average blue belt takes about<br>2 years or so to get so I definitely got<br>my blue belt quick by most standards I<br>competed about three or four times as a<br>white belt might have competed almost<br>five times I don't I don't remember I<br>got first place in my first tournament<br>at Naga noi I I felt great it was<br>awesome I was never an athlete this is<br>the first time I got a medal put around<br>my neck I stood on a Podium and I beat<br>people fair and square with my ability<br>and it felt awesome and I I kept going<br>and I didn't stop until my first Serious<br>injury at blue belt when I got my blue<br>belt I was hesitant to compete right<br>away because I felt that I wasn't ready<br>I felt that I needed to build up a<br>little bit more to be prepared for that<br>first blue belt tournament I really<br>hyped myself up and and I waited and I I<br>kept training and I trained hard and it<br>was about four or five months where<br>Master's worlds was coming up in vas and<br>Masters is the older guys younger guys<br>are adults and then they have kids in<br>tournaments for Jiu-Jitsu and then you<br>have Masters Masters 1 2 3 4 so Master's<br>world is like this big tournament for<br>all the old guys and that was my first<br>blue belt tournament and I got<br>absolutely<br>demolished just wrecked I remember<br>someone telling me that they overheard<br>that guy had already been training for a<br>bunch of time and he was a blue belt for<br>like 4 years and I was a blue belt for 4<br>months I get destroyed and not only does<br>my ego get hurt but I hurt my knee and<br>this is one of the first times that I I<br>experiened a serious injury I didn't<br>have insurance at the time so I didn't<br>go and get an MRI because it was just<br>going to be too much money for me to pay<br>for that I decided to still go to the<br>doctor and they gave me a rough idea of<br>what they thought was wrong with it and<br>it seemed like a light MCL tear when I<br>would walk it felt like my knee was giv<br>out I couldn't walk or jog for a while<br>so then this was my first time off from<br>Jiu-Jitsu during the time I was<br>recovering my gym kind of had a falling<br>out and it fell apart the black belts<br>that taught most of the classes went and<br>started their own gym and through the<br>middle of all that I was trying to get<br>back in the training at the time Vinnie<br>magalas had been teaching at Syndicate<br>MMA which was not too far from my house<br>it was about a 15-minute drive and I<br>decided that I wanted to go train with<br>him he's ADCC Champion super well-known<br>Jiu-Jitsu practitioner legit World Champ<br>Jiu-Jitsu guy Al he was also at like the<br>peak of his MMA career at that point so<br>I thought it'd be cool to go train with<br>him and I did I think I trained with him<br>for nine months or so but again as it<br>goes with fight gyms there was drama at<br>Syndicate MMA and Vinnie decided to<br>split off and he was kind of in between<br>gyms so a lot of the people that trained<br>with him started following him around<br>and I was one of those he was at the<br>small karate gym at one point then he<br>moved to like this boxing gym that had<br>some mats we were just kind of gypsy<br>around to to find places to train when<br>we were training with Vinnie which was<br>kind of cool cuz there was like less<br>than 10 of us getting instruction from<br>one of the best Jiu-Jitsu guys at the<br>time I got to roll with him and I and I<br>got to train with him and and he was a<br>good coach he had a lot going on with<br>his fight career so sometimes he<br>wouldn't be there and his black belts<br>would teach or some of the other<br>students would teach but overall<br>learning with him was a good experience<br>and then around that time the first baby<br>came around I remember remember being at<br>Jiu-Jitsu when my wife went into labor<br>she calls me and she's like I'm in labor<br>and you know everyone tells you that oh<br>when you think you're going into labor<br>you're really not and it's like a lot of<br>false alarms and I was like okay no<br>worries I'll be home I left class and I<br>went home but I always like to shower<br>after Jiu-Jitsu mats can be dirty<br>sometimes especially at MMA gyms for<br>some reason MMA guys aren't as clean on<br>the mats as Jiu-Jitsu guys are and there<br>tends to be more [ __ ] that goes around<br>like ringworm and infections and skin<br>diseases so I always showered after I<br>got out of Jiu-Jitsu and I had to shower<br>before I took my wife to the hospital<br>when she was going into labor and and<br>there's still a joke that her and I say<br>because I have this weird Obsession that<br>when I get out of the shower I have to<br>clean my ears I don't like water in my<br>ears and so till this day when we're in<br>a hurry she's like hey make sure you<br>don't clean your ears we got to get out<br>of here and then I took a lot of time<br>off I got fat I got out of shape I<br>jumped up to almost like 220 2 30 my<br>wife loves to bake and when she was<br>pregnant she would just bake cookies all<br>the time so she would bake like two<br>dozen cookies she would eat two and I<br>would eat 22 and then that's how I<br>gained a lot of my extra weight and<br>Jiu-Jitsu wasn't a top priority anymore<br>but it was something I always wanted to<br>go back to because I really enjoyed<br>doing it after my firstborn got a little<br>older I was able to go back to the gym<br>and then we ended up having a second<br>baby so then I took time off and then<br>eventually went back to the gym and that<br>same cycle of like gaining weight losing<br>weight gaining weight losing weight<br>leaving Jiu-Jitsu going back jju and<br>that like just kept happening but I kept<br>training I never really completely<br>stopped training but I hurt more and I<br>wasn't young anymore and when we moved<br>out of Vegas and came to Washington got<br>back into the gym I I got back in the<br>training and I was feeling good and then<br>covid happened and everything shut down<br>my gym in particular here in Washington<br>shut down when they reopened it shut<br>down again like a month later and I kind<br>of just said I'm taking a break for a<br>while at this point I had good health<br>insurance and after about a year off of<br>Jiu-Jitsu I finally decided to get my<br>knee surgery and the surgery kicked my<br>ass I had a bucket tear in my Meniscus<br>it didn't have anything to do with my<br>MCL that I had hurt years before that<br>seemed to have healed up pretty well on<br>its own but the bucket tear on my<br>miniscus was a problem that I just<br>constantly had and it showed up a lot in<br>Jiu-Jitsu I remember very early on when<br>I was a white Bell we were drilling<br>triangle chokes and my knee got jammed<br>and I had to kind of like move it around<br>so that it unstick itself it it sucked<br>and then that would happen frequently I<br>would say often maybe maybe not<br>frequently but sometimes it would happen<br>and I'm able to like adjust my knee and<br>it would feel okay and then sometimes it<br>would just get completely stuck and I<br>would have to extend it and then like<br>grit through the pain I remember that<br>happened a couple times and in those<br>cases I'd be in pain for like a week two<br>weeks and just kind of like this<br>lingering achy pain in my knee finally I<br>decided to get that fixed because I had<br>taken a bunch of time off and it just<br>seemed like a good time to do it given<br>the fact that Co was still happening and<br>and we were kind of in a weird spot<br>because we had moved up to where my<br>brother-in-law's house was and there<br>wasn't really any Jiu-Jitsu Jims nearby<br>and I just decided like it's okay I'll<br>take a break and I'll come back to it<br>fast forward a year and a half later and<br>I'm traveling Europe and I decide that<br>now is probably a good time to start<br>training Jiu-Jitsu again which is<br>ridiculous because if you train<br>Jiu-Jitsu and you know what it's like to<br>go visit gyms it's a crapshoot sometimes<br>and you can sometimes go to a gym where<br>everybody is super cool and welcoming<br>and inviting and sometimes you can go to<br>a gym where they see you and you're like<br>fresh meat you can imagine me overweight<br>a little out of shape coming in with a<br>brand new ghee and a brand new purple<br>belt that I bought while I was traveling<br>because I didn't originally pack this<br>stuff with me on my trip to Europe<br>showing up at a small grimy hot gym in<br>Spain in Malaga luckily for me I speak<br>Spanish so I was able to at least<br>communicate with the people there kind<br>of telling them hey you we're traveling<br>I haven't trained in a few years I had<br>knee surgery I'm out of shape and I'm<br>pretty sure most of the people there<br>probably did not think I was a legit<br>purple belt and I consider myself a<br>legit purple belt I earned my purple<br>belt this was not given to me I got my<br>purple belt from a Ricardo kakan black<br>belt who is a Carl and Gracie black belt<br>and I have legit lineage behind my blue<br>and purple belt so I consider myself a<br>good purple belt I know what I'm doing<br>but when you're fat and out of shape and<br>haven't trained in 2 years your purple<br>belt doesn't mean [ __ ] and you're pretty<br>much like a really good white belt or a<br>mediocre blue belt at that point and it<br>takes a little while to get back into<br>shape of grappling but I decided to<br>start training again while I was<br>traveling and I continued to train<br>during our travels I trained in<br>Barcelona I trained in Portugal<br>unfortunately didn't train in London and<br>I really wanted to go to Carls and<br>Gracie London but I was too far and it<br>just didn't work out but I trained<br>throughout my travels and when we<br>settled down in Portugal for like that<br>month and a half before we came back to<br>the US I was back at it like two three<br>times a week I got my kids in it which<br>is something I've always wanted to do<br>and I was back and now fast forward like<br>6 months here I am back in the US<br>feeling great I've been training since<br>I've got back pretty much one of the<br>first things I did when we got back from<br>our trip was go right back to my old gym<br>and sign up and that was about four or 5<br>months ago it's the most consistent and<br>I have been since preco I would say and<br>I'm beat man I'm going to be 39 years<br>old in a few months at this point my<br>knees hurt all the time neck pain which<br>I ended up getting X-rayed at one point<br>and I had some degeneration and a couple<br>disc in my neck my back hurts broken<br>dislocated fingers and toes my fingers<br>hurt cuz I train a lot of ghee there's a<br>lot of grip breaking very similar to<br>Judo you're grabbing collars you're<br>grabbing sleeves<br>and it's very bad on your fingers a lot<br>of old school Jiu-Jitsu guys who trained<br>a lot of ghee have arthritis in their<br>fingers my elbows are screwed up from<br>being armbarred too many times one more<br>injury that I forgot about was my chest<br>I was born with a birth defect where I<br>have kind of a concave chest and one<br>time when I was training I was training<br>with a much bigger guy who's probably<br>closer to 300 lb and he's a black belt<br>now but at the time I think he was a<br>brown Bel and I was just about to get my<br>purple belt at that time but we were<br>training takedowns and I don't remember<br>the exact toss that he caught me with<br>but it was some kind of Judo throw hip<br>toss and he landed on me inside control<br>but when I landed I was kind of on my<br>side like that and he kind of landed on<br>me which caused my chest and my sternum<br>to go like that and I felt it like right<br>down the crack the parts of your ribs<br>that connect and it was the worst pain I<br>had ever felt in my life and to this day<br>this happened years ago I can't sleep on<br>my side my wife makes fun of me because<br>I sleep like Dracula you know I sleep<br>like this straight because if I don't<br>sleep straight I wake up with a hurt<br>neck or a hurt back or a hurt chest<br>because if I sleep in the fetal position<br>or on my side I mean it is such an<br>excruciating pain that it wakes me up<br>and then I get up and I have the like<br>stretch and it hurts and I've gone to<br>the doctor for it it's been exray it's<br>cartilage damage from what they assume<br>I've not gotten an MRI because my doctor<br>was pretty much like hey man it's kind<br>of like a rib injury when it rains or<br>when it's about to rain or it gets a<br>little cold out everything in my body<br>starts hurting and now a couple days ago<br>I I told my wife I was like I don't know<br>if I can keep doing this it's like this<br>thing that I love so much would say<br>saved my life even though it's this<br>corny ass saying that a lot of people<br>used to say and they put it on t-shirts<br>it was like Jiu-Jitsu saved my life<br>unless you are in the middle of a fight<br>where someone is about to kill you and<br>you use Jiu-Jitsu to save your life<br>Jiu-Jitsu doesn't save your life but for<br>me at least it helped a lost 28-year-old<br>who never really stuck with anything and<br>never had much ambition and drive it<br>helped me find that in me and in a weird<br>way I feel like I owe a lot of My<br>Success to the fact that I started<br>training Jiu-Jitsu because there's<br>something about going in and just<br>getting beat up day in and day out and<br>sticking with it and not seeing a lot of<br>progress for a while through that it<br>showed me that if I continued doing<br>something no matter how hard it was and<br>I stuck with it that I would eventually<br>get better at it and that I could<br>actually get good at it and I felt that<br>I was good at Jiu-Jitsu I still feel<br>that I'm decent as I get older it gets<br>harder and now I train with some young<br>guys and I can't even keep up with them<br>it's tough it is a combat sport that you<br>can't really fake the funk on what led<br>me to wanting to make this video was<br>that a lot of people have asked about it<br>because I've mentioned Jiu-Jitsu<br>throughout a lot of my videos and I've<br>you know gave a lot of credit to<br>Jiu-Jitsu for helping me get to where<br>I'm at while well I do credit Jiu-Jitsu<br>for quote unquote saving my life and<br>giving me some Direction when I was a<br>lost 20-some year old and helping me<br>understand what I know now from having<br>grit and sticking it out when things get<br>tough and that helped me learn how to<br>code helped me with my YouTube channel<br>it helped me with a lot of things just<br>so many aspects of my life that I apply<br>that same mentality to this point<br>although it helped save my life it's<br>destroyed my body and as I approach that<br>big 40 as I approach that over the hill<br>Mark I feel like I don't know if I can<br>keep going but I'm still still doing it<br>I'm just one Serious injury left in me<br>before I decide to call it quits I'm<br>scared man I get anxious when I go to<br>the gym not because I'm going to get<br>beat up I've been getting beat up for<br>the last 10 years and I'm going to<br>continue getting beat up as long as I<br>continue going I don't care about that I<br>don't have much ego I put up good fights<br>but I like to train with good technique<br>I don't roll soft but I'm also not not<br>an [ __ ] on the mats but I'm at the<br>point where I do feel that it's a game<br>of Russian Roulette at this point and<br>it's only a matter of time before I step<br>on those mats one day and my knee gives<br>out again or I dislocate something and<br>at this point in time I don't feel like<br>I want to continue putting myself<br>through that it does feel like my time<br>is almost up it does feel like I don't<br>have that much left in me I think it's<br>one of those things that will always<br>have a place in my heart and is a part<br>of my life and was a part of my life for<br>a long time but I feel that it has given<br>me enough that if I did part ways with<br>it and stop training today I feel that<br>the impact that it had on my life will<br>carry on through everything I do and<br>that's it that's my Jiu-Jitsu video I<br>don't know if anyone will get value from<br>this I don't even know why I made this<br>video CU people ask for it and it is<br>something that I enjoy doing and it is<br>something that I've done for a while and<br>it is one of those things that I can<br>talk about forever I don't know I guess<br>if if you guys want to see more videos<br>on Jiu-Jitsu I'm happy to talk about it<br>but I feel like I pretty much said<br>everything I had to say in this video<br>about my Jiu-Jitsu journey and how it<br>saved my life but has destroyed my body<br>in the process all right with that said<br>thanks for watching and I'll see you<br>next time