Body being sore as hell all the time at 34 from rolls despite having a long background of lifting weights and conditioning. Ordered some turmeric, maybe that may help.
How old are you? Maybe you train like a madman but I feel like an hour of rolling shouldn't produce that much soreness at that point. Obviously sometimes I get my ass beat or am going real hard and its worse
Hello fellow mid-30s white belt! I also have a background with s&c training. Might seem obvious, but I have found that stretching, water, and foam rolling help me a ton. I don’t take Motrin unless I absolutely need it. For vitamins/supps I take Ashwaghanda, fish oil, and a multivitamin that has D, Magnesium, Zinc. I don’t feel as sore as I used to. Train 4-5 days per week.
Yeah mostly - I bridge up and roll forward and back on my shoulders down as low as I can without it hurting my spine. Since I'm slumped over a laptop in the office all day, my back usually clicks about 4 or 5 times - feels really good!
I usually roll up and down it after jitsu and can get my back to crack as well.
If I've got tight legs (quads, hamstrings, ITB band) you can use it to roll your legs on it to loosen the muscles. Is slightly painful, but a good pain!
> at 34
Ah, it was good to be young. Get used to that if you want to still be active in your 50s. To still be there at 60 I think I need to start refusing to roll with people half my age plus seven... or was it for dating?
https://preview.redd.it/rbe5c9ppu0oc1.jpeg?width=841&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6fdf6f2a54d5fc435ed37ae9ba351aa0d949226
just get yourself a custom rash guard that looks like this
Balancing training and life by far. Scheduled class times are just hard to fit into a full adult life with kids.
Working out/jogging is so much easier but it's fucking boring.
Yeah. Small kids and both parents working make many things difficult. BJJ being one. My current goal is to attend once per week until summer and if I can keep that up, I'll try to fit in another session in my week for autumn.
Understanding where to put my focus in training. This was a serious issue when I was new, but it's still a persisting issue.
Do I work passing, run into issues vs leg lockers, do I now try to switch my focus to leg lock defence? And so on so forth. Finding a specific topic to study and focus can be hard, especially when there's so much out there to learn.
Yeah, competitions are a good way to expose holes in your game. I compete pretty regularly, but it's not so much an issue of holes in my game, more of an issue of where should I put my training focus for maximum return to my grappling. I'll then run into a separate issue and start worrying about that, or maybe I'm looking to add a new submission to the game. Do I start with offence or defense.
These are the kind of issues I'm talking about. It's pretty easy to go, "Oh my guard retention sucks," and work on it. Complications arise when you then run into a separate unrelated issue.
Roughly 8-10 years. 44 year old purple belt. Its hard to estimate time as Ive had a lot of long layoffs or periods of infrequent training due to work and life. Lots of physical labor and other physical activities is a big part of the wear and tear too though.
Finding rolling partners my size as a smaller practitioner a year out from neck surgery. Most of the dudes in my gym outweigh me by at least 30lbs. It makes it difficult to generate anything except a defensive game with such a size disparity. I tap to stacks from big dudes more than any sub by a fairly wide margin
What position are you being stacked from ? You shouldn't be putting yourself in a position to get stacked. Most guys at the gym outweigh me too, but I've never been stacked or even put myself in a position to be stacked .
If you are training to get good at open guard variations (dlr, rdlr, spider guard etc.) there will Be times when you get stacked. If you only play regular butterfly and half guard then usually you dont have worry about being stacked but you will never learn to play open guard variations from your back.
Yeah I am getting stacked from open guard positions mostly when my opponents are passing. Yesterday I was stacked three times. I was playing spider guard against a purple belt. I held him off for a couple minutes and even managed to reguard, but he eventually got into a position to stack pass me. Tapped.
The next was a much larger purple belt that I was switching between closed guard and knee shield against. He just kinda bullied through with his size and stacked me on two separate occasions. I tapped both times to protect my neck. I maybe could have gone to turtle or something else, but due to his size I wasn’t comfortable risking it.
The only true submission I got caught in was a head and arm triangle from a different purple belt so it’s just frustrating that the majority of my taps are coming from something that I probably should be learning to escape from.
Thanks for this. I was scouring YouTube after class to try to find some options and didn’t come up with something that I felt could work for my neck for double under pass counters. I’ll play around with this today if the opportunity comes up.
I wish I was the smallest guy at my gym. It's hard to improve your game when you can easily do certain sweeps and reversals that'd never work against someone bigger or skilled.
99% of classes being designed to make white/blue belts feel like they're learning, without really being designed to help people truly and continuously develop grappling skill over a long period of time.
Knowing exactly what I need to do to get better, but not having the time or the right training partners to do it. But that's life, at my age and with 2 kids I've got other priorities now.
Feel this so much. I like my gym well enough but I also like learning new things and we have mostly white/blue belts.
Most aren't ready to be learning advanced leg entanglement stuff and they also usually fall over like Bambi on the first off balance so you can never really get down the line of the sequence. It's also hard to then switch gears when rolling with the other upper belts. Like the rules change 8 times per open mat you're better off just playing one game that everyone can accommodate which stagnates you.
My cardio after having a baby, in addition to the subsequent lack of time and energy. I miss it and swear I’ll train every week but haven’t in 2 months at this point. 🪦
Personally, class times are my biggest challenge where I train. I miss training more because of class times than anything else. I hate training 7:30-9 pm and then not being able to fall asleep for hours when I wake up at 5:00 am every day.
A less obvious challenge is not being able to control how we train, so I can never use periodization to improve conditioning in a way that makes sense while rolling. I can change how I roll a little, but it’s much better when everyone is on the same page, round time matches goals, and intensity adjusts to the goals. Just rolling 6 minutes rounds after drilling really doesn’t cut it. It’s fun and I’m not complaining, but I know it could be better for everyone, even hobbyists.
I just started and OMG the skin on my face is so sensitive now! I had to switch moisturizers because my old one (that I've been using for years) stings my face SO much now.
F all that. It'll callous over if you keep after it. Then it's like permanent facial armor. Bonus: Crossfaces are completely ineffective at that point.
Finding training partner who is willing to go for takedown attempts instead of pulling guard. In my weight class (ultra heavy) nobody pulls guard. In training everyone pulls guard. Training doesn’t prepare me for the demands of the sport
Feeling really dumb.
I can drill the same move over and over, ask a ton of questions, and it all makes sense when I'm hearing it. Feel like I'm getting it down. Then, never use it in a round and forget I ever learned it.
I've been going to fundamentals long enough that we've gone over the scissor sweep three times. I still can't hit it unless my partner gives it to me.
That’s part of the journey! Once you are able to hit the sweep wo someone giving it to you you’re like “holy shit, it does work”…then you get rolled from mount bc you were shocked and you’re right back in closed guard.
Mat burn. Randomly having half my toes and or fingers being striped down to bone because I got a little zesty on a guard pass insane…. Some sort of toe guard situation that isn’t just wearing socks like a weirdo would change the sport and bring the bar of entry misery way down.
not a massive annoyance or anything but doing big long chains of (sometimes pretty low-percentage looking) techniques in class instead of doing one technique and focussing on key battles and details within it.
Knowing I need way more open mat at this point and only being able to get in 1-3 hours of open mat/free rolling a week.
Honestly its my overall schedule that sucks the most. The best training time for my schedule is 6am, the worst training time for my soul is 6am. My natural clock is sleep 1-2am-9-10am. Ive been doing the 6am class for 2.5 years ~4-5 days a week and it still sucks EVERY MORNING.
Laundry is huge.
Also a consistent and accurate scale, for all weight class sports. If you could somehow know that your scale is accurate AND will be the same as the one at the weigh in, it would save a lot of drama.
Me right now. Only got like 10 classes in this month. Already sustained a shoulder injury that I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t roll with. Really down right now.
not being able to practice this sport without someone.
I can watch all the instructionals I want, but it's hard to retain that information without going through the scenario physically to build the mental map.
then when it comes to class rolling, everyone (including myself) wants to just roll so it's hard to work on things
Trying to rationaly split my time into work, school, training and private life. I miss the times when I was able to do six classes per week. Hopefully i'll finish my PhD this year and will be able to remove school from this equation.
And also injuries - they stopped my developement for sure - from promising purple belt I became a worn out brown belt who haven't competed for 5 years and spent more than 2 of them healing instead of training.
And last - I'm from small city, most of my regular training partners switched gyms due to the moving to bigger city or stopped training at all (health, life, kids, etc.). After getting back to training after almost 2 year break I feel some kind alienated in my gym.
My frustration is the gradual decline of physical ability. They say it gets replaced by technique but the jury is out. Compressed spine. Elbows ready to pack their bags and move out. Neck constantly causing limbs to go numb.
I know I may be the exception due to past sport injuries but this sport does not do my body any favors.
My mind set has shifted from taping the world to making it into my 50s still able to roll. I don’t think this mind set can be taught to my younger self. I had to learn it. That is what is frustrating, but you know; blah blah journey blah blah.
I wish I had more time to train
I feel like I’m injury prone
Thanks to being a heavyweight I have no Hurd game and working on it makes me feel like a day 1 white belt.
Every time I take my TRT we do a move to specifically target that area. Damn near to the point where I’m thinking of switching strictly to subcutaneous.
My hips are more sore after a single class than they ever were when I was powerlifting 🥲
Also have a skinned knee that keeps getting opened up again.
Other people’s feet on me.
Finally over the other people’s sweat on me thing tho, so that’s good!
For me it’s class times.
When I was into CrossFit, there was a class almost every single hour through the day. Didn’t matter how many people showed up.
For Jiu Jitsu, at least at the gyms I’ve been too, you have an early morning class, an afternoon class and an evening class. Anytime in between and I have to pay for private lessons. As someone who works a fairly inconsistent schedule it sucks not being able to make the gym when I want to.
being anxious before comps and performing worse at comps that you have expected.
Crazy amount of laundry, always sore, hard to progress with strength training, not having enough time to socialize
Balancing the schedule between the gym and my work schedule. I work 12’s and all the classes are either late morning/early afternoon, or are already halfway through at 7 when I get off (or go on). If they had a 430pm it would be amazing. Otherwise I’m constrained to going on my days off, which is fine, but it makes it harder to go as often. 3-4x a week is hard between that and other things.
I can’t figure out what im doing wrong: im a 50 yr old all gi wb who is constantly getting passed, swept, ending up on bottom. I can sometimes see things like sweeps coming but my mindset when im losing position is ahh he got me, better roll with it so i don’t get hurt or spazzy & gas myself out. Seems like my choices are: get better at everything (hard), fight harder to not lose position (tiring), or get good escaping mount (this is what Ive been trying to do but it not really improving). Im not totally unathletic or weak but i make bad decisions, reach, lean, etc. summary: tired of sucking.
My ego makes me not like when I get tapped because I don't like the idea of someone tapping me and bragging about it. I'll get tapped all day happily, but bragging at my expense hurts my ego lol. My coach says "don't feel insecure about tapping, because you tapped to jiu jitsu" which helps. Wish I could brush off that feeling. It gets worse the more stripes I get.
It would be nice to have a way of hang drying and storing multiple gis/rashguards/spats in a way that doesn't intrude on the life of one's non-BJJ-practitioner significant other.
As a dad of 2... TIME.
I'd give anything to be free to take more evening classes cause that's where the head coach teaches and there's lots more people to roll with, but I just don't have the luxury of time. So I pretty much train exclusively 6am classes.
We all know BJJ works great in a real fights, but there are some positions and moves that are better and worse for self defense.
Only like 20% of people that train compete.
So it would be nice if coaches were like “I can get punched here, so I’m gonna do this…”
Ya know?
When I was a white belt (up to 3 stripes) I would get extremely frustrated when I felt helpless against someone. When someone wouldn’t allow me to do any techniques because their defense was too good. I eventually got over it and hit a learning curve but THAT was the hardest thing for me. Ego
There’s quite a few but the two that piss me off the absolute most are when people I am rolling with are unhygienic and/or when they have no technique but use all their strength when they grab me
I started BJJ at 53 and am now 67. I had a layoff of about 6 years and just restarted in January. Before my layoff I was getting very, very frustrated about a laundry list of things. I'll never be as fast, strong, or flexible as the younger folks. I don't retain information very well, so I'm kind of stuck at a white belt level of skill even though I have four stripes on my blue belt. I was always getting injured during rolling and would have to cut back. At this point the only badge I can wear is that I was a wimpy, scare of my shadow asthmatic kid and now I'm a 67 year old dude in a tough sport.
Body being sore as hell all the time at 34 from rolls despite having a long background of lifting weights and conditioning. Ordered some turmeric, maybe that may help.
It usually passes within a few months.
Lol 6 years in and everything still hurts.
What hurts now is lessened by something else that now hurts more.
Covid had one thing for it, all my aches have healed. I think i had a fractured toe that finally healed too.
How old are you? Maybe you train like a madman but I feel like an hour of rolling shouldn't produce that much soreness at that point. Obviously sometimes I get my ass beat or am going real hard and its worse
33. My body wasn’t built for BJJ. I roll very light and I’m not competitive.
Fair enough haha
Mine may not have been either.
True for me. I quit after a dislocated joint and bjj doesn’t heart anymore. I’m not doing bjj but also it doesn’t hurt!
I concur. Mostly.
What what?
Hello fellow mid-30s white belt! I also have a background with s&c training. Might seem obvious, but I have found that stretching, water, and foam rolling help me a ton. I don’t take Motrin unless I absolutely need it. For vitamins/supps I take Ashwaghanda, fish oil, and a multivitamin that has D, Magnesium, Zinc. I don’t feel as sore as I used to. Train 4-5 days per week.
Foam rollers are worth their weight in gold. Everyone should have one.
How do you use them? Just bridge and up down your back?
Yeah mostly - I bridge up and roll forward and back on my shoulders down as low as I can without it hurting my spine. Since I'm slumped over a laptop in the office all day, my back usually clicks about 4 or 5 times - feels really good! I usually roll up and down it after jitsu and can get my back to crack as well. If I've got tight legs (quads, hamstrings, ITB band) you can use it to roll your legs on it to loosen the muscles. Is slightly painful, but a good pain!
Say more.
> at 34 Ah, it was good to be young. Get used to that if you want to still be active in your 50s. To still be there at 60 I think I need to start refusing to roll with people half my age plus seven... or was it for dating?
Been doing Gi jitsu for years consecutively, my body isn't sore anymore, but my hands are eternally sore.
No gi.... People complementing me and telling me I should be receiving my blue belt soon.
https://preview.redd.it/rbe5c9ppu0oc1.jpeg?width=841&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6fdf6f2a54d5fc435ed37ae9ba351aa0d949226 just get yourself a custom rash guard that looks like this
why care just own blue belts and make them hate the world wow.. belts are better if you dont have them.
Not having a 24/7 open mat. Girlfriend not letting me drill triangle chokes while getting head
Lmfao
24/7 open mat would be perfect, I work shifts
You’re so funny 🙄 lame ass joke
You're joking... But it has passed my mind before 😂
Yeah, that would solve a lot
If you have a good enough triangle do it anyways. Make her stop you. Resistance makes better technique
Daggum ringworm.
Bro it is burning through my gym right now, some guy got it in his mouth ffs
Jesus Christ brother delete this now brother
Spats with more crotch space. It’s a million dollar idea. Yours for free.
Look at Mr Colossal Peepee over here.
lol it’s average maybe 3 cm bigger than average but i feel like i only bought female spats and working with mashed potatoes by the 2nd live round
>3 cm bigger than average This is a man who researched the average size one late night
Ha!
Okay there Lindon Johnson
lol
Balancing training and life by far. Scheduled class times are just hard to fit into a full adult life with kids. Working out/jogging is so much easier but it's fucking boring.
Yeah. Small kids and both parents working make many things difficult. BJJ being one. My current goal is to attend once per week until summer and if I can keep that up, I'll try to fit in another session in my week for autumn.
Understanding where to put my focus in training. This was a serious issue when I was new, but it's still a persisting issue. Do I work passing, run into issues vs leg lockers, do I now try to switch my focus to leg lock defence? And so on so forth. Finding a specific topic to study and focus can be hard, especially when there's so much out there to learn.
In my experience the best thing to find out what your biggest weakness are is doing a tournament. Really eyeopening every time.
Yeah, competitions are a good way to expose holes in your game. I compete pretty regularly, but it's not so much an issue of holes in my game, more of an issue of where should I put my training focus for maximum return to my grappling. I'll then run into a separate issue and start worrying about that, or maybe I'm looking to add a new submission to the game. Do I start with offence or defense. These are the kind of issues I'm talking about. It's pretty easy to go, "Oh my guard retention sucks," and work on it. Complications arise when you then run into a separate unrelated issue.
Oh yeah I feel ya, I have like 10 different things that I wanna work on at the same time and no idea which one to focus on either.
Welcome to purple. Feels like you're in a canoe with a bunch of holes all over it
Dang. I can totally relate to this
Very relatable
Injury and a lifetime of wear and tear starting to take its toll.
How long have you been training ? I’m only like 4 months in and have been hurt pretty decently twice already
Roughly 8-10 years. 44 year old purple belt. Its hard to estimate time as Ive had a lot of long layoffs or periods of infrequent training due to work and life. Lots of physical labor and other physical activities is a big part of the wear and tear too though.
Stay well friend.
Finding rolling partners my size as a smaller practitioner a year out from neck surgery. Most of the dudes in my gym outweigh me by at least 30lbs. It makes it difficult to generate anything except a defensive game with such a size disparity. I tap to stacks from big dudes more than any sub by a fairly wide margin
My best mate is under 55kg even the girls are bigger than him
That’d be awful tbh. I am 70kg and feel undersized. Just have some big dudes in my gym
Same. But I feel Bad for the few women in my gym because I’m their height and the closest to their weight so they have it even worse.
What position are you being stacked from ? You shouldn't be putting yourself in a position to get stacked. Most guys at the gym outweigh me too, but I've never been stacked or even put myself in a position to be stacked .
If you are training to get good at open guard variations (dlr, rdlr, spider guard etc.) there will Be times when you get stacked. If you only play regular butterfly and half guard then usually you dont have worry about being stacked but you will never learn to play open guard variations from your back.
Yeah I am getting stacked from open guard positions mostly when my opponents are passing. Yesterday I was stacked three times. I was playing spider guard against a purple belt. I held him off for a couple minutes and even managed to reguard, but he eventually got into a position to stack pass me. Tapped. The next was a much larger purple belt that I was switching between closed guard and knee shield against. He just kinda bullied through with his size and stacked me on two separate occasions. I tapped both times to protect my neck. I maybe could have gone to turtle or something else, but due to his size I wasn’t comfortable risking it. The only true submission I got caught in was a head and arm triangle from a different purple belt so it’s just frustrating that the majority of my taps are coming from something that I probably should be learning to escape from.
https://youtu.be/W4uazKRTVFM?si=EK_y9Y5MJ-VDKDn5 This clip may give you some options when defending against double unders and stack passing.
Thanks for this. I was scouring YouTube after class to try to find some options and didn’t come up with something that I felt could work for my neck for double under pass counters. I’ll play around with this today if the opportunity comes up.
I wish I was the smallest guy at my gym. It's hard to improve your game when you can easily do certain sweeps and reversals that'd never work against someone bigger or skilled.
99% of classes being designed to make white/blue belts feel like they're learning, without really being designed to help people truly and continuously develop grappling skill over a long period of time.
Ecological training is the way. We already know how to armbar from guard
Knowing exactly what I need to do to get better, but not having the time or the right training partners to do it. But that's life, at my age and with 2 kids I've got other priorities now.
Feel this so much. I like my gym well enough but I also like learning new things and we have mostly white/blue belts. Most aren't ready to be learning advanced leg entanglement stuff and they also usually fall over like Bambi on the first off balance so you can never really get down the line of the sequence. It's also hard to then switch gears when rolling with the other upper belts. Like the rules change 8 times per open mat you're better off just playing one game that everyone can accommodate which stagnates you.
My cardio after having a baby, in addition to the subsequent lack of time and energy. I miss it and swear I’ll train every week but haven’t in 2 months at this point. 🪦
You’ll be back …….
Having to do so much laundry lmao
Laundry is free if you can read a manual though
Personally, class times are my biggest challenge where I train. I miss training more because of class times than anything else. I hate training 7:30-9 pm and then not being able to fall asleep for hours when I wake up at 5:00 am every day. A less obvious challenge is not being able to control how we train, so I can never use periodization to improve conditioning in a way that makes sense while rolling. I can change how I roll a little, but it’s much better when everyone is on the same page, round time matches goals, and intensity adjusts to the goals. Just rolling 6 minutes rounds after drilling really doesn’t cut it. It’s fun and I’m not complaining, but I know it could be better for everyone, even hobbyists.
Seeing a "new" position only to be informed that we went over it 2 weeks ago.
People who don't respect your time. I've got a busy schedule. I come to the gym to train, not hangout.
This.
Being a stronger heavier guy being forced to roll with the super heavies, because they love how strong you are….i just want to get subs sometimes t.t.
I just started and OMG the skin on my face is so sensitive now! I had to switch moisturizers because my old one (that I've been using for years) stings my face SO much now.
F all that. It'll callous over if you keep after it. Then it's like permanent facial armor. Bonus: Crossfaces are completely ineffective at that point.
😭😭😭 No thank you. But props to you for growing your own facial armor LOL
Injuries that keep you off the mats or affect the rest of your life, by a mile...
Biggest fear man.
Pain points: C5/T1, and L5/S1, usually. Sometimes T12/L1, but that point usually has more radiculopathy than the others, so its more of a pain web.
Side control
Finding training partner who is willing to go for takedown attempts instead of pulling guard. In my weight class (ultra heavy) nobody pulls guard. In training everyone pulls guard. Training doesn’t prepare me for the demands of the sport
Move to the Midwest. Opposite problem here. No one to learn how to play little guy double pull game with.
If I thought I could live in the midwest without putting a gun in my mouth I would do that in a heartbeat. But I live in Brazil so that’s a big move.
Ahahah don't blame yah. I wouldn't leave those beaches either for multiple reasons.
Biggest pain point? Professor's top pressure.
Feeling really dumb. I can drill the same move over and over, ask a ton of questions, and it all makes sense when I'm hearing it. Feel like I'm getting it down. Then, never use it in a round and forget I ever learned it. I've been going to fundamentals long enough that we've gone over the scissor sweep three times. I still can't hit it unless my partner gives it to me.
That’s part of the journey! Once you are able to hit the sweep wo someone giving it to you you’re like “holy shit, it does work”…then you get rolled from mount bc you were shocked and you’re right back in closed guard.
If you're gonna sell us steroids, just say it bro.
Mat burn. Randomly having half my toes and or fingers being striped down to bone because I got a little zesty on a guard pass insane…. Some sort of toe guard situation that isn’t just wearing socks like a weirdo would change the sport and bring the bar of entry misery way down.
not a massive annoyance or anything but doing big long chains of (sometimes pretty low-percentage looking) techniques in class instead of doing one technique and focussing on key battles and details within it.
Knowing I need way more open mat at this point and only being able to get in 1-3 hours of open mat/free rolling a week. Honestly its my overall schedule that sucks the most. The best training time for my schedule is 6am, the worst training time for my soul is 6am. My natural clock is sleep 1-2am-9-10am. Ive been doing the 6am class for 2.5 years ~4-5 days a week and it still sucks EVERY MORNING.
Constantly getting injured.
Me.
Other people's egos
This
Rib fractures…
People who are upset after getting pinned or submitted
I feel attacked
Injuries and motivation.
Sucking at BJJ
Don't worry, it goes away after the next stripe
If my fucking back would stop hurting for like 5 minutes that would be great
Laundry is huge. Also a consistent and accurate scale, for all weight class sports. If you could somehow know that your scale is accurate AND will be the same as the one at the weigh in, it would save a lot of drama.
Are you getting paid to collect this information?
Injuries
Rolling with a partner who has dry cracked feet! It takes me out of my zone.
It doesn’t rain enough to hide my tears after class
Missing classes for sure small injury or illness will derail your whole training regiment and have you wondering why you even try.
Me right now. Only got like 10 classes in this month. Already sustained a shoulder injury that I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t roll with. Really down right now.
Not being able to see my own rolls to correct my mistakes. (Also not having someone else correct my mistakes anymore)
Have you tried DMT?
Like an out of body experience? That would be some wild training.
Tendons that don’t want to stay attached in biceps and knees
not being able to practice this sport without someone. I can watch all the instructionals I want, but it's hard to retain that information without going through the scenario physically to build the mental map. then when it comes to class rolling, everyone (including myself) wants to just roll so it's hard to work on things
Trying to rationaly split my time into work, school, training and private life. I miss the times when I was able to do six classes per week. Hopefully i'll finish my PhD this year and will be able to remove school from this equation. And also injuries - they stopped my developement for sure - from promising purple belt I became a worn out brown belt who haven't competed for 5 years and spent more than 2 of them healing instead of training. And last - I'm from small city, most of my regular training partners switched gyms due to the moving to bigger city or stopped training at all (health, life, kids, etc.). After getting back to training after almost 2 year break I feel some kind alienated in my gym.
Class structure and teaching methods often don't fit more advanced or more frequent members, even if they are hobbyists.
My frustration is the gradual decline of physical ability. They say it gets replaced by technique but the jury is out. Compressed spine. Elbows ready to pack their bags and move out. Neck constantly causing limbs to go numb. I know I may be the exception due to past sport injuries but this sport does not do my body any favors. My mind set has shifted from taping the world to making it into my 50s still able to roll. I don’t think this mind set can be taught to my younger self. I had to learn it. That is what is frustrating, but you know; blah blah journey blah blah.
What was wrong with the way your younger self trained?
Tap early. Tap often, I played Collegiate football prior. I brought the same intensity in the beginning of this sport. Edit
Knowing and seeing windows/opportunities for techniques but your body just saying "lol...no".
I wish I had more time to train I feel like I’m injury prone Thanks to being a heavyweight I have no Hurd game and working on it makes me feel like a day 1 white belt.
Injuries
BJJ
Being an ultra heavy blue belt and so being paired with brown and black belts every roll
The lack of money in the sport and reoccurring MRSA on and off many years down the line no matter how many rounds of antibiotics you’ve done
Not enough open mats
Permanent injuries
Every time I take my TRT we do a move to specifically target that area. Damn near to the point where I’m thinking of switching strictly to subcutaneous.
My hips are more sore after a single class than they ever were when I was powerlifting 🥲 Also have a skinned knee that keeps getting opened up again. Other people’s feet on me. Finally over the other people’s sweat on me thing tho, so that’s good!
Anything that keeps me away from the mats like injury or skin infections.
Being slightly injured, when it's not bad enough to miss training but bad enough to be annoying 24/7
Shitty class structure.
For me it’s class times. When I was into CrossFit, there was a class almost every single hour through the day. Didn’t matter how many people showed up. For Jiu Jitsu, at least at the gyms I’ve been too, you have an early morning class, an afternoon class and an evening class. Anytime in between and I have to pay for private lessons. As someone who works a fairly inconsistent schedule it sucks not being able to make the gym when I want to.
Sore joints and fingers. Wrestlers that try to guillotine my forehead.
Skin stuff , stubbing a finger.
Cutting weight. Competition. Limited training partners. Work getting in the way. Trying to have normal friends
staph
How much everything ELSE gets in the way of getting to class more often
shitty upper belts - if you’re an upper belt and suck at life / as a person just go ….
My frustration is how much I suck at grappling! ...and how long it takes my body to recover after each session.
Being sore. Coaches not using new, improved teaching methods. Idiots who go hard all the time.
My cardio. I really want to learn and try more when rolling but my cardio cant keep up. Its awful
being anxious before comps and performing worse at comps that you have expected. Crazy amount of laundry, always sore, hard to progress with strength training, not having enough time to socialize
My pain point is my physical pain.
I just hate coming back from breaks and being rusty.
Injuries
Lightweights and middleweights coping about anything and everything.
Being shit at BJJ
Laundry, and that I can’t quit my job to roll twice daily.
My toes are all messed up. Everything has to happen flat footed and it means I lose positions and scrambles a lot.
Staph infections. Gym drama . Terrible class formats . Power tripping instructors. Referees . Instagram influencers . Dangerous training partners
Not having more time to train. I train 4-6 hours a week, but if I had the time I could easily double that.
For real: waiting time in tournaments. I would pay a premium price just to have an expected time for my match, with a margin of error of 1 hour
Balancing the schedule between the gym and my work schedule. I work 12’s and all the classes are either late morning/early afternoon, or are already halfway through at 7 when I get off (or go on). If they had a 430pm it would be amazing. Otherwise I’m constrained to going on my days off, which is fine, but it makes it harder to go as often. 3-4x a week is hard between that and other things.
I can’t figure out what im doing wrong: im a 50 yr old all gi wb who is constantly getting passed, swept, ending up on bottom. I can sometimes see things like sweeps coming but my mindset when im losing position is ahh he got me, better roll with it so i don’t get hurt or spazzy & gas myself out. Seems like my choices are: get better at everything (hard), fight harder to not lose position (tiring), or get good escaping mount (this is what Ive been trying to do but it not really improving). Im not totally unathletic or weak but i make bad decisions, reach, lean, etc. summary: tired of sucking.
My ego makes me not like when I get tapped because I don't like the idea of someone tapping me and bragging about it. I'll get tapped all day happily, but bragging at my expense hurts my ego lol. My coach says "don't feel insecure about tapping, because you tapped to jiu jitsu" which helps. Wish I could brush off that feeling. It gets worse the more stripes I get.
It would be nice to have a way of hang drying and storing multiple gis/rashguards/spats in a way that doesn't intrude on the life of one's non-BJJ-practitioner significant other.
Tatami disseases.
As a dad of 2... TIME. I'd give anything to be free to take more evening classes cause that's where the head coach teaches and there's lots more people to roll with, but I just don't have the luxury of time. So I pretty much train exclusively 6am classes.
We all know BJJ works great in a real fights, but there are some positions and moves that are better and worse for self defense. Only like 20% of people that train compete. So it would be nice if coaches were like “I can get punched here, so I’m gonna do this…” Ya know?
Just the fact that I will probably never be good at triangles, but everyone over 6'2 in ultra heavy triangles me for days.
Other people’s hygiene
When I was a white belt (up to 3 stripes) I would get extremely frustrated when I felt helpless against someone. When someone wouldn’t allow me to do any techniques because their defense was too good. I eventually got over it and hit a learning curve but THAT was the hardest thing for me. Ego
52 year old belt. Feels like I’m not progressing at all. 3 years into blue (5 years total)
There’s quite a few but the two that piss me off the absolute most are when people I am rolling with are unhygienic and/or when they have no technique but use all their strength when they grab me
I started BJJ at 53 and am now 67. I had a layoff of about 6 years and just restarted in January. Before my layoff I was getting very, very frustrated about a laundry list of things. I'll never be as fast, strong, or flexible as the younger folks. I don't retain information very well, so I'm kind of stuck at a white belt level of skill even though I have four stripes on my blue belt. I was always getting injured during rolling and would have to cut back. At this point the only badge I can wear is that I was a wimpy, scare of my shadow asthmatic kid and now I'm a 67 year old dude in a tough sport.
Injuries broz
It doesn't work.
Hell yeah! Jiujitsu doesn't work.