The Early Haze of Jiu Jitsu at 55: A Puzzle Unlike Any Other

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

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As already stated, I didn’t think I headed into my trial week of jiu-jitsu at 55 with anything resembling lofty expectations.

But even so, my first week at Flow Martial Arts in Coolangatta — and, to be honest, the entire first month — left me nothing short of dazed, battered, and confused. I mean, I told myself I was prepared to suck, but I suppose I still possessed some glimmer of hope that I’d be capable of bringing something unique to my novice status (other than my age).

But I was kidding myself.

Jiu-jitsu was where all egos — big and small — go to crawl under a rock and, for all intents and purposes, die.

Which I now understand is pretty typical for any beginning jiu-jitsu student. For a variety of reasons.

Jiu-jitsu forces your body into all sorts of unique contortions and movements. For example, let’s discuss an escape maneuver called ‘shrimping.’ This movement involves trying to move your body across the gym, repeatedly swapping from hip to hip in a jerky and spasmodic, jack-knifing motion across the mats.

For me, let’s just say it most definitely didn’t come easy, and for more than a week, the activity felt more like a hazing technique than any warm-up activity I’d ever participated in. And the best part?

Waiting in its wake were one or two other equally foreign-feeling movements that left me feeling just as uncoordinated and self-conscious.

And jiu-jitsu has its own jargon. Some of the more basic positioning terms include closed guard, half guard, mount, side control, sweeps, and reversals. While most of these terms serve as the foundation of any six-minute ‘roll,’ in the beginning, knowing one elementary term from another can seem as strange as trying to learn a second language in the middle of a street fight.

Which, of course, all leads to the submission and choke terminologies. Names such as the Americana, kimura, armbar, body triangles, bow and arrow, guillotine, and the cross-collar choke.

For the novice, there’s a lot going on in this department as each term has its own degree of complication and consequence. But, in one way, at least, there is the upside of these terminologies being far easier to remember than those in the positioning category.

Because it seems having your shoulder nearly ripped out of its socket from a kimura or feeling the blood drain from your brain while trapped in an armbar triangle does wonders for your memory. Let’s just say once you’ve experienced such a submission, you won’t forget it. And especially not the name that it goes by.

That said, I quickly learned all about these submissions. Not how to implement them, per se. But, more specifically, how it felt to be caught and submitted by such holds. Repeatedly.

Time. And. Time. Again. And all despite having 20 plus kilos on everyone else in the class.

Being larger and new, I became the perfect target for all my smaller classmates to practice their craft. Which is not to say I didn’t make them work. Because truth be told, to garner such submissions, they had to work fast. Not because of any unexpected bursts of post-middle-aged speed or crafty defensive skill on my part. But, rather, due to my pathetic conditioning which regularly saw me sprawled out gasping for breath after barely three to four minutes into a six-minute roll.

“You’ll get there. The conditioning will come,” I must’ve heard two to three times a class that first month. And always with a smile and a helpful hand up off the mat, I should add.

To an outside observer, such a gesture might’ve seemed virtually insignificant. But for me, such little acts of prodding encouragement meant everything and essentially gave my battered and bruised body and ego the slimmest belief that such early struggles wouldn’t last forever. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And oh, how I needed it.

My classmates understood that learning jiu-jitsu at any age is a marathon and not a sprint. They knew the early days of learning jiu-jitsu are like putting together a very large puzzle. A puzzle that has no box with an image to work from. Just a thousand little pieces that, eventually, somehow all come together.

For me, starting this journey at 55 only made this scenario even more challenging as it seemed I had an added handicap to contend with.

Because for me, it really seemed like all my puzzle pieces were blank.

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