Rolling into Reality: My First Jiu Jitsu Experience at 55

The below blog is written by our student Jimmy! Enjoy.

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I thought I had a pretty good and tempered grasp on things as far as my expectations heading into my first introductory jiu-jitsu class.

It was late April of 2024, and in four weeks, there was no escaping the fact that I was turning the big Double 5s. But there’s that whole age-is-just-a-number thing that, I can’t lie, I’ve always been a big fan of.

For a few reasons.

First, my wife is an amazing chef, and as such, I’ve been fortunate to eat extremely healthy over the years. It’s easily the biggest reason I’ve felt fitter than many of the 35 and 40-somethings I crossed paths with on a daily basis.

Also, I had always been fairly quick and agile, and though I knew I’d lost a step or two (or three or four), I tricked myself into believing I still might have the slimmest element of surprise up my sleeve.

And while I’m no Arnold, I once had a great relationship with weight lifting. Enough of one, I reasoned, to allow me the present-day belief that I was hardly what you could consider a weakling.

It wasn’t much, and I accepted that it wasn’t going to be easy. But as a fairly fit guy with a large frame and a very competitive nature, I figured if anyone was going to pull this jiu-jitsu thing off at 55 years of age, I had as good a chance as any.

And then I put on my gi for the first time.

The thing felt like what I imagined wearing a bear skin hide must feel like. Thick and heavy, so much so I wondered if the thing was made of Kevlar. It probably wouldn’t stop a bullet, I reasoned, but I was pretty damn sure the thing had to be, at the very least, fire retardant.

“The material has to be able to stand up to steady gripping and pulling,” my new instructor said before leading me back into the gym as I silently pondered the implications of the sort of force I was getting ready to subject myself to.

But that mauling would have to wait.

Because back in the gym I was greeted with the smiling faces of around six or seven mid-to-late 20-somethings. All were quick with handshakes and as welcoming as they could be. And the best part, I told myself, was that I had 20 to 30 kilos on all of them.

After all the ‘gripping and pulling talk,’ for the briefest of moments, I breathed the sigh of a man given a death row reprieve. It would prove to be a misplaced sigh of relief, but it was a sigh nonetheless.

But that sigh was soon to be replaced. Replaced with panting after what would prove to be a five-minute warm-up run around the gym.

Yes, barely five minutes of a light jog mixed in with a series of high knees, heels up, shuffling in and out, and skipping with arms flailing in various directions intended to increase blood flow and loosen up muscles, joints, and tendons.

I’m no medical professional, so I can only guess as to what that five-minute warm-up did as far as my capillaries, muscles, joints, and tendons were concerned. All I know is it left me panting like a dog that had mistakenly chased a car halfway across the Nullarbor. And all with the added benefit of turning my bear skin gi into a portable sweat lodge.

That would be the moment I’d begin recalibrating my preconceived and tempered grasp of the undertaking before me.

It was the middle of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, and this coastal section of SE Queensland was what any local would tell you was ‘quite cold.’ I was out of breath and sweating uncontrollably, and a quick look around the gym revealed only a smattering of fans on the periphery of the rolling mats, which meant only one thing.

There would be no air conditioning when summer arrived, and as such, I knew I had until maybe September (at the latest) before I figured this gym would turn into a virtual sauna.

I knew I needed to lose some weight, so hip, hip, hooray for that, I thought. But on the flip side, at the rate I was currently sweating after only five minutes, summertime would most likely see me flopping away on the mats with an attached IV.

Still panting and sweating heavily while hunched over with my hands on my knees, it was all a pretty dismal scenario to ponder.

And, looking around the room at my new classmates as we lined up for the next phase of what was fast becoming Operation Reality Check, I noticed two things.

One, they’d barely broken a sweat.

Second, and most concerning, involved their faces. It seemed the genuinely warm and beaming smiles they’d greeted me with five minutes earlier had been replaced.

Replaced with even bigger smiles coupled with a twinkle in their eyes that suggested a barely contained eagerness for things to come.

And let’s just say it was that eagerness that concerned me.

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