Year 25: A Look Back and Why I Almost Quit BJJ this Year.

As the year 2026 dawns upon all of us I took a minute to look back at the fact that this year will be my 25th year of Jiu-jitsu. Yes, that means I started Jiu-jitsu in 2001 as a teenager. It seems weird to think about the fact that I have been training for a quarter century and at this point the majority of my life, also to contrast that with the fact that I have shared the mats with people who got their black belt before I was born.

Despite the fact that I have trained for this long, I almost quit Jiu-jitsu this year. I love Jiu-jitsu. It has been a huge part of my life, but the culture that has become pervading in the Jiu-jitsu community has become incredibly toxic and incredibly disheartening to be associated with. Many people espouse the belief that we should only worry about Jiu-jitsu on the mats and train with everyone. However this makes Jiu-jitsu an unsafe environment for many people, because it only acts as a cover for people with abhorrent view points.

Over the last year, people that hold those viewpoints have become increasingly loud and disgusting with their claims with little accountability from our community. From baseless and disgusting attacks on trans people, to open Nazis and fascist, to people actively bragging about training with people like Kyle Rittenhouse with almost no push back from anyone. I believe that more people do not push back against this kind of behavior because of the belief that Jiu-jitsu people should only care about Jiu-jitsu.

This is absolutely false. For one, people, whether they do Jiu-jitsu or not, do not exist in a vacuum. We are all people with lives and experiences and staying silent on things outside of Jiu-jitsu is not acknowledging their lived experience, and as a result we cannot be the best instructors possible. The second thing is it allows people with openly hostile ideals access to people they hate. This makes it unsafe for many people to train and puts lie to the phrase “Jiu-jitsu is for Everyone”.

As a black belt and instructor, I see it as my duty to speak up on behalf of those that do not have the power or privilege that I have. Oh boy did I get a lot of push back from that. From former students who happen to follow me on social media sending anonymous messages to the gym owner to try and get me fired. To people I trained with all the time getting very upset about my advocating for people and insulting me as a result. I have also become very wary of the people I train with because it has been extremely revealing to me about people who would openly want to commit harm to me based on my beliefs.

Will I stop speaking out in regards to my beliefs and my values? Absolutely not, I firmly believe that if we want the Jiu-jitsu community to change for the better that we need voices that counter the hate and vile toxicity in the Jiu-jitsu community. I will continue to use my voice to stand up for those that do not have the same privilege as I do. As a 3rd Degree Black Belt, I believe that I can be a force for change in the community.

I am also extremely thankful for the community of other like-minded individuals I have met either in person or online that also are willing to speak up regarding these things. These individuals are one of the big reasons I am still practicing Jiu-jitsu now and will continue to do so. I am also incredibly grateful for my partner and their support throughout this whole year and the struggles I have had over the last year.

But even with all these experiences, I am looking forward to training more over the next year and working to make Jiu-jitsu a better place for people to be in. In my last 25 years of training I have learned some very valuable lessons that I felt like I could share below in order to help people out in getting better at Jiu-jitsu.

When I started training, my first instructor was a purple belt and there were two other blue belts at the gym, everyone else was a white belt. What this means is that every single person was fighting to prove themselves as being ready for that next step. Every roll was high intensity and high energy. I don’t regret the way I started in Jiu-jitsu, but I do not think it is a great way to promote longevity in this sport. Training for longevity should be the goal for people that are practicing Jiu-jitsu, because unless you are a weird financial influencer or have funds to train all the time, it is going to take you on average 10 years to get your black belt. You cannot train at a super high intensity level for that long. I feel lucky that I survived that time on the mat and attribute a lot of that to my age at the time and the fact I was a teenager and able to recover quickly from injury. When you start training and even why you have trained for a long time, it is important to not treat every roll as a world championship round. Training in a controlled and safe manner is very important to training for a long time. Most gyms are operated to provide Jiu-jitsu instruction to regular people. The focus should be training for longevity as opposed to training to win competitions. Not that there is anything wrong with competing, just the training mindset is different.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. We have all heard this at one time or another throughout our Jiu-jitsu Journey. What does it really mean though because it is one of those things that is easy to say and it can act a lot as a thought stopping phrase to avoid a deeper discussion. The way I interpret this phrase is that you have to be able to execute the moves slowly. Oftentimes, people struggle with control and will utilize their athletic ability to compensate. This means they generally do not know how to do the move properly. I have always found that if I cannot do a move slowly, I don’t know the move well enough to execute properly. I remember once getting the advice from a competitive grappler that I needed to be more explosive in my movements in order to beat them. Which seems like good advice, move faster and harder and you can beat this person. The problem is this person has a fantastic natural athlete with excellent athletic ability, something I just do not have. I am not a natural athlete, I am just a guy who likes to train. I did not take this advice because it was not the right advice for me. Instead I worked on a few key moves so I could execute them in a slow and controlled manner on every opponent. While it was not something that worked right away, it did eventually bear fruit because I started being able to control and restrict this person’s movements when we grappled and they did not really have an answer for the slower pace where they could not utilize their explosiveness.

Jiu-jitsu can teach you great lessons about dealing with adversity, but it can be really frustrating. In Jiu-jitsu you are going to get beat especially when you are new it's going to happen a lot. It is a great lesson about dealing with frustration and adversity, because at some point, you realize that you can grapple to the best of your ability and still lose. Sometimes you might do everything you can personally and the person you are grappling with is just plain better than you are and you lose. This is a frustrating feeling, but you can take it as a learning opportunity. Learning about making changes from your failures or mistakes to try again or make changes to find success.

One of the biggest lessons that I have learned is that Jiu-jitsu is both a martial art and not a martial art. Jiu-jitsu portrays itself with marketing as a martial art, however it ignores a lot of the side of martial arts that deal with things beyond the physical aspects. In the rush for Jiu-jitsu to differentiate itself from other martial arts, it focuses almost all on the physical aspects to the point of derision of the other aspects of martial arts. Many traditional martial arts focus on the physical side but also the character side of people. Jiu-jitsu people will often deride or openly insult other martial arts, because it is “not effective” or they participate in silly rituals like bowing on and off the mats. I think many people see Jiu-jitsu’s effectiveness as a sport, as making Jiu-jitsu people superior to other martial arts practitioners. This attitude bleeds over into wanting to remove all other aspects of Jiu-jitsu besides the physical activity. This is where Jiu-jitsu becomes not a martial art and more of a sport like wrestling. The problem is that many of the activities that Jiu-jitsu derides are things that are great for building character. Bowing on and off the mat, generally an idea of respect for the space and your training partners you share the space with. This small seemingly insignificant act leads to better mindfulness about your practice of Jiu-jitsu. By focusing on only the physical, it allows space for negative actors to grow in influence. These actors we have seen in the past couple of years are willing to use Jiu-jitsu to advance truly horrible ideologies and goals. As Jiu-jitsu practitioners we should focus on the character building portion of Jiu-jitsu as well as the physical.

Overall, I have loved my last 25 years of Jiu-jitsu and I look forward to at least 25 more years of training. I encourage everyone to keep training as long as you can and hopefully, we can share the mats at some point in the future.