I was talking with Armand at McHugh BJJ in Marlton. He’s 46 years old and has been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 12 years. I asked him a simple question: What are you doing now to help yourself stay healthy and stay on the mats? Something he said right at the beginning stayed with me: “No one ever really sat with me and told me what to do. But here’s what I’ve learned.” That’s important, because after 12 years on the mats, Armand wasn’t talking about a new submission or some secret technique. He was talking about the things he has learned that allow him to continue doing jiu-jitsu. The first thing he talked about was putting a little “armor” around himself. For him, that means resistance training. He’s not interested in becoming a bodybuilder. He wants his body strong enough to better handle the physical demands of jiu-jitsu. Then he talked about sleep. He admitted he didn’t always pay much attention to it. Now he aims for seven to eight hours. He doesn’t always get it, but he recognizes how important rest is to his recovery. And then came something I think many of us learn as we get older: choosing our training partners. Armand said that years ago his attitude was basically, “You want to roll? I’ll roll with you.” Today he thinks differently. That doesn’t mean using age as an excuse. It means becoming more thoughtful about the pace of a round, who you train with, and whether your training allows you to work, learn, and still take care of yourself. I’m 65. I can only speak from what I know at 65, and I would add something to Armand’s list: have the courage to communicate. Tell your training partner what you need. Be honest about your body. Be honest about injuries. Be willing to slow something down. Tap when you need to tap. Choose safety over ego. None of that makes us less serious about jiu-jitsu. I believe it’s part of becoming more serious about longevity in jiu-jitsu. Resistance training. Sleep. Choosing our partners. Communication. None of those things sound particularly exciting. Nobody is going to cheer because you got eight hours of sleep last night. 😂 But maybe these are some of the conversations we need to have more often.

Before you worry about the next roll, the next class, or even the rest of the day, pay attention to what you’re doing right now. Ask yourself: Is what I’m doing in this moment empowering me and preparing me for my next moment—or is it taking something away from me? On the mats and in life, stay aware, be discerning, and make this moment count.

At 65 years old, I find myself in a place I didn’t expect to be. For almost 30 years, a large part of my martial arts life was spent helping to run and operate a martial arts school. I taught. I led. I helped develop students and instructors. I watched children become adults and white belts become black belts. For much of that time, when I walked into a martial arts school, I walked in carrying some kind of responsibility for what happened there. That chapter of my life has closed. And something interesting is happening as I step away from being the operator, the head instructor, the person responsible for the school, and move to the other side of the room. I get to be a student again. At McHugh BJJ, I don't have to run anything. I don't have to be in charge of the class. I don't have to have the answers. I can walk through the door, put on my gi, tie my purple belt around my waist, step onto the mats and learn. There is something incredibly freeing about that. Monday evening I walked into a 6:30 class I had almost never been able to attend because I was always working. Professor Pete McHugh looked a little surprised to see me. I told him, "I have a new schedule now." He smiled and said, "Great." Years ago, during another period of change in my martial arts life, Pete told me something I've never forgotten: "You've got to follow your path." Maybe this is part of that path. At 65, with more than five decades in martial arts and a sixth-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan, I can walk into McHugh BJJ as a purple belt and be perfectly comfortable being somebody's student. In fact, I'm discovering how much I need it. I need somebody to teach me something I don't know. I need training partners who can catch me. I need to tap. I need to ask questions. I need to struggle with a technique until I begin to understand it. I need to laugh with the people on the mat, get tired, get sore, go home, recover, and come back. For me, especially now, being a student comes first.

One of the strange things about getting older in jiu-jitsu is how easy it can be to focus on what we no longer have. Maybe we’re not as fast as we once were. Recovery takes longer. Things hurt that didn't used to hurt. We may look across the mat at someone 20, 30, or even 40 years younger and know immediately that playing their game probably isn't going to be our game. But there's another side to getting older that I think deserves more attention. We bring something onto the mat that we didn't have when we were younger: years of living. At 65, I don't approach training the way I would have at 25. I don't need to prove that I can keep up with the youngest person in the room. I want to learn. I want to become more skillful. I want to challenge myself. And perhaps most importantly, I want to train today in a way that allows me to train tomorrow. That doesn't mean lowering the standard. It means becoming more intelligent about how we pursue it. Life has taught me to be more patient. Jiu-jitsu continues teaching me the same thing. Life has taught me that ego can make a difficult situation worse. Jiu-jitsu reminds me of that every time I need to tap. Life has taught me that sometimes progress is so small you don't recognize it until you look back. Anyone who has spent enough time on the mat understands that one. This morning I've been thinking about something I wrote in Living Strong Through Martial Arts: “It took the whole journey to get me here.” That applies to the mat too. The person walking onto the mat today isn't just an older version of the person you used to be. You bring your experiences, your mistakes, your patience, your judgment, your scars, your victories, and everything life has taught you along the way. The challenge isn't to become young again. The challenge is to discover what kind of jiu-jitsu practitioner you can become with the human being you are today. So here's something I'd like my BJJ for Old Men community to think about: What has getting older taught you that actually makes you better on the mat today?

💭 For my senior martial artists: What has your time on the mats taught you that you believe needs to be passed on? Yesterday I trained BJJ twice. At 12:00 noon, I was at McHugh BJJ HQ in Marlton for no-gi. Then at 6:30 that evening, I was back on the mats at McHugh BJJ in Collingswood. At 65 years old, being able to do that means more to me than proving how tough I can be during any one six-minute round. During the noon session, my first round of randori was with another man in his 60s. He's a strong blue belt in phenomenal shape, but he's been asking me how to stop gassing out when he rolls with the younger guys. I told him something simple: “We don't have to keep up with them.” As we rolled, I would occasionally stop and point something out. “See? You're holding your breath.” “Feel how tense you are?” Meanwhile, I was deliberately doing very little. I was breathing, relaxing, framing, using technique and principles, and moving when movement was necessary. My next round was with a 23-year-old blue belt who was taller, heavier, strong, fast and agile. As we rolled, he kept laughing and telling me, “You've got this magic jiu-jitsu.” 😂 There's no magic. I'm simply not trying to match a 23-year-old's speed and power with the speed and power of a 65-year-old man. My third round was with another younger blue belt, a former wrestler. He told me he'd been following some of what I've been sharing and that the idea of “evolution, not comeback” had stayed with him. His body already has its aches and pains, and it made him think differently about trying to get back to the athlete he used to be. That conversation meant a lot to me because that's exactly what my hips—and eventually having both of them replaced—forced me to learn. I had to evolve. I had to become more efficient. I had to stop depending on physical attributes that weren't always going to be there. 📖 And here's what excites me about these conversations: this is exactly why I wrote Living Strong Through Martial Arts.