E168 | BJJ Over 40: The Smart Way to Train, Prevent Injuries, and Outsmart the Scrambles

00:00 Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing Jiu-Jitsu in your 40s. Uh, I am 44 about to be 45 in February. Uh, my 40s for the most part have been pretty good. I haven't had uh catastrophic injuries. I've never had a a surgery based or due to Jiu-Jitsu. I've had lingering things, I've had some some things I've had to go to the doctor for or urgent care for. I'm currently dealing with something now. So, your 40s are going to be different than obviously than your 20s and your 30s. It really depends on your body and what you're doing before you go to class and during those gaps of when you're training, how you're warming up, uh what you're considering, what you're eating, are you lifting? Lifting is going to be a big one for just general body health. How are you eating? You know what I mean, are you drinking a lot? All these things go into it. But for me, I'm not a big drinker. I'm not, um, I'm not a big gym goer. I have kettlebells at the house, some resistance bands, and I use that, but I don't spend a ton of time at the gym lifting weights. It's just not my thing.

01:21 Uh, but some things to kind of consider while you are either approaching or in the middle of—I remember when I got to 40, I injured one hip and then I injured the next hip. Literally within a few months of getting to 40. And I was concerned and worried that this is going to be my new norm, just like these weird serious injuries. And they kind of leveled off, and now I really generally have more body issues like lingering things that don't go away as fast as maybe they used to. Or things that are almost like a new norm. My muscles in my neck and within my shoulder blades tend to be tighter now. I can look both ways when I drive, but some days it gets a little stiffer. Um, right now I'm dealing with a severe knot in my right shoulder blade that has caused a little bit of numbness in my thumb. Last night was easier to sleep. The two nights before that were terrible. I could not get comfortable, tossed and turned. My shoulder was hurting, my—like, there was pressure in my shoulder. Did not feel fun. Yesterday I started using the S-Cane like habitually throughout the day. And if you don't know what it is, it's it's shaped like an S. Usually looks blue. Uh, you can find it on on Amazon, I'll try to put a link in the show notes. It is a lifesaver. It allows you to use that pressure point and the nubs at the end on certain body parts. And for me, I've been using it in that spot. I had my wife use the massage gun on that area, and it's been slow improvements, but it's getting better. Like, like I said, last night it felt better to sleep, although I had to sleep on my back most of the night. It's uncomfortable. And you're going to have these ailments. And we're not even talking about like knee injuries and legitimate neck injuries, I'm just talking about like the ailments that kind of just follow you because of age.

02:40 So, as you build up or go through your 40s, some things to consider. There's a genuine reality check, and volume isn't always going to be a badge anymore. When I was—when did I start? I started in my 30s. My early 30s, I felt like I can train as many days however I wanted to train. And people would say, "Oh yeah, 30s is your—your like—where you start going downhill." I felt great. I felt great. I was competing a lot, I was training quite a bit. We were going to have those those little nagging injuries just because this is a combat sport. But I didn't feel—feel like it was anything that I couldn't deal with, I just felt it was like it's part of the job. Uh, now in my 40s, I have to understand how much I'm training, how much I'm teaching, and how much uh I'm putting on my body. And volume is no longer the focal point, and I have to now address how often do I want to train each week, and how is my body feeling? What kind of training I want to do each week? There's going to be days where, let's say I come in, and Tuesdays is usually my first day of the week, uh and I feel great, I might roll pretty hard, or I might roll pretty like active. Thursday comes in, I might still feel great. Sometimes by Friday, Saturday, I might start feeling it. So, Friday maybe I just don't don't roll at all, or I or I pick people who are a little bit more gentle, or that I know that I can I can uh handle without being too of a sporadic roll, or too too many unknowns. I'll roll with them and I'll roll more technical, I'll roll with something very specific in mind. I'll play the game more cerebrally, opposed to someone who I know maybe does better against me and forces me to have to scramble and deal with weight and whatever it might be. So, those are moments where I'm I'm picking certain training partners. Because I know my body's not feeling the greatest, or I have to nurse an injury. Uh, and then sometimes I just—well, I'm going to take the day off. Like, this weekend I took Saturday and Sunday off. As much as it bothered me to, because I love going to open mat on Saturday, I took it off. I I just did not feel like I can withstand someone's weight on me, and I didn't think it was going to be anything that would make the situation better. So, I took it off. You're going to have to make decisions on what your consistency is going to look like and what those intensity levels are going to look like. And you might have to take a week off, you might have to take certain days off, you might have to only roll in a certain way, or only drill. Simply because your body is not capable of keeping up with that schedule.

04:36 Warmups are going to be a big part of this. Excuse me, I'm not the greatest warmup person. Uh, I'm pretty flexible, I'm pretty um limber. I tend to not warm up in the way that some people do. I've seen some people who will come in and I I know that they're not going to roll right away. I know that they got to spend 15–20 minutes warming up. Fine, that's great. If your body requires that, then do it. Understand what kind of warmups are going to be good for you. Uh, whether it's going to be stretching, uh a light calisthenics, maybe some front roll, back rolls, whatever it is, understand what your body needs. Because it's uh a requirement at certain stages. For me, I like to grab someone who I know is not super athletic or super energetic and just kind of moves with me. And I don't do a whole lot. I play a little bit of guard, I let them pass, I bridge, and I allow that to be part of my warmup. I do some stretching, I do stretching throughout the week. I'll be watching TV and I'm stretching. So, I am constantly trying to stretch and loosen up the muscles, and so my usual warmup is a flow roll. Um, no weight, no submissions necessarily. I'm just playing the game and I'm kind of moving from position to position to understand where—like, just get my body lubricated a little bit. And that's me. Some people again will need something a bit more specific or a little bit more intense. And then my next round, I might up it a little bit, and then by the third round, I'm usually, okay, let's go. We're going at a faster pace. Understand what your body needs. Some of us are going to need something less, some of us are going to need something more. Some of us are going to have to get to the gym half-hour early just to—to get going. And this also depends on whether you're doing morning training or evening. Evening maybe your body's been moving because you work a job that requires you to move about, and in the morning you've been asleep for 7–8 hours. You got to start—you have to get your body moving, don't go at it completely cold.

05:48 As I've aged in my 40s, I've understood positions a bit better. I do not like scramble-heavy exchanges. I think that it taxes me cardio-wise, there is less—there's more unknowns in it, and it's harder to gauge what they might do versus what I need to do, and there's a little bit of a gamble in it. I don't like it as much. And there's times when I'm—we're going to have to. But I will usually play games or or guards that require less movement and more control. Half guard, closed guard, top pressure is my favorite. When I'm on bottom, I'm framing better than I used to be. I'm applying a more control with my legs or the grips, I'm analyzing which grips I really need for the occasion or the or the type of opponent that I'm going against. All of that is part of this. I do not want to play scramble-heavy games. I do not want to play anything that's going to tax my cardio. Once you start to get tired, you start making mistakes. Maybe you're not able to to withhold someone's weight, but you think you are, but your muscles are fatigued, and then they crash down on you, you have injuries. So, understand yourself and what you're capable of. If you're a professional or a pro, or you compete a lot, your cardio might be far better than mine, and those scramble-heavy situations, they're not an issue for you. That's great. But for some us—most of us who are in our 40s and work a full-time job and everything else, we're going to have to understand controls a whole lot better than at any other point in our careers. It was a time we can play the scramble game and not think twice. But at this age, I generally play a lot of half guard. A lot of reverse half. Um, a little bit of spider on on occasion depending on who it's against. But my favorite is top. I want to get to the top position, I do not want to hold your weight under—uh under—withstand your pressure, I do not want to have to deal with you coming forward. I want to be on top most of the matches. And I want to be in a position where I can gas you out with pressure, continually make you think about things, fatigue mentally, and then take advantage of that and get the game to the positions that I want and then end. I do not want to be on bottom. I want to be on bottom as far less as possible these days. And it's strategically it just makes more sense. As much as we want to argue that Jiu-Jitsu is the guard, it really isn't. Jiu-Jitsu, it's about playing guard as you need it, getting to the top position, maintaining that position, and then submitting. That's the way you should be thinking about it. Oftentimes we think about it a little different.

07:23 There's also a mental shift. There's a shift where there's going to be rounds where I used to—my goal was to win. I have to win this round, I have to get to the submission, I have to get the better of this person. And as I've gotten into 40s and almost dead-set middle 40s now, um I look at things in more of a big-picture, long-term. I don't want to win every round. There's some rounds that I'm not going to win at all, and I know it, like I'm playing like—I might even be going against a blue or purple belt. And there's a reason why I might be on my back, maybe I'm fatigued, maybe they're stronger, heavier, and I've understood that winning the round is going to require me to take some risks that I don't want to take, that may lead to some injuries. So, I sometimes just shift the goalpost and say, "My form of winning in this round or in this position is going to be not allowing a submission." Now, if I get caught in it, I'm not risking my body trying to get out. If there's a moment where I think there's a healthy, well-risked escape, we're going to go for it. But if I'm caught and I'm dead to the rights, I'm tapping. My pride is not getting in front of me. But there's going to be times when I'm—I'm rolling with someone and I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to be on the bot—I'm going to be on my back this entire round, I already know." My goal is to stave off the submissions, not let them get any deeper into the positions, and then we're going to look for an escape or reversal. And that's the win for me. The win is not, "Oh, I want to submit this person from wherever." And I have to be honest with myself and my capabilities as I get older, and their capabilities, and whether I want to risk my ego and body for something that may not be worth it. It hurts sometimes mentally. Like, you remember when you were 35, 30 years old and you can withstand all this. You remember, especially if you've been training since your teens or 20s, where you could withhold and withstand all of this and I—you would run circles around people, but now you're getting older, you got a couple of injuries, you're a little slower, you're not as strong. You have to change everything that you're doing, and you have to really weigh in: Do I want to risk this or do I want to be sparring longer and training longer? Because at this stage, let's say I berimbolo, and I'm just like, "Oh, I'm going to get this," and they crash down and I wreck my neck. And I'm not able to recoup the way I used to because of my age, or maybe this is a ling—lingering issue already and now I can't train for months, years, or ever. Like, those are things we have to start considering as we get into our mid-40s and approach 50. What is a risk—a win in a—and a loss, and do we even care about that anymore, or do we want to look at it more in the sense of: I just want to keep continue to learn and continue to do the thing that I love. You have to make those decisions.

09:20 I choose my training partners a lot better now. I, in the same sense of safety, I—those people who I may have rolled with in my early 30s and not thought anything about it, even if I knew they were dangerous, I do not roll with those people anymore. I just don't. I need to make sure that I can still go to work, that I can still teach, that I can still be of service to the community that I'm in. And I can't do that if I'm injured and unable to step on the mats. So, I'm very careful about who I train with. And the older you get, the more you're going to have to do that. If you have lingering issues, no matter what your ages is, you're going to have to do that. If you're a smaller person, like you might be the smallest person in the gym, it's okay, no matter what your rank is, to start choosing who you want to go with and who you don't want to go with. And you can do this—anyone can do this. Anyone can make those decisions. But I think they're more present and more important to make if you're smaller, if you have lingering issues, or if you're getting older. Because any one of these knuckleheads who doesn't know how to be a great training partner for you—and maybe they're a great training partner for most people, but they don't know how to be a great training partner for you—pass on that roll. It's okay to say no, it's okay, "Hey, I'm going to sit this one out. Hey, um, I'm okay, you're too much for me." Put it as a compliment to them if you want. If you are more daring, have the conversation, be like, "No, your intensity level is too high for me." And just say that. And that might spark uh a level of like, "Oh, maybe I need to—" and in them, "Maybe I need to dial it back for this person so I can roll with them." I love rolling with everyone I can roll with. But there are certain people that I just—I pick and choose depending on my day and how my body's feeling, and that's perfectly fine. You do not have to accept every roll.

10:48 For me, in my 40s, what really matters is timing, patience, awareness, efficiency, and then for me, because I'm an instructor, is my teaching ability. Those are the most important things and the things that I focus on most. There is going to be times when I'm rolling with someone and I allow them to stay in front of me longer than I need to because I'm I'm waiting on the right timing. I've become far more patient than I ever was, and there's times when I want the armbar, and at one stage, I would have forced it, but that requires strength, that requires more endurance and cardio than I want to waste now. So, then I'm far more patient, I'm aware of what is going to come next because I've spent so much time on the mats. And then I'm waiting for that timing, or I apply a certain type of efficient pressure to force the technique instead of—and by force I mean they—I'm forcing it through weight, and then they're giving me something, opposed to, "I want technique A regardless of what's available." Different mindsets. So, I'm I'm far more patient now that I've ever been, my timing is a lot better, my awareness is unlike anything that I've ever had before. There's times when I I know what my opponent's going to try to do a move or two ahead, sometimes three. And I'll cut them off at the pass and they'll look at me sometimes and be like, "You knew what was coming, huh?" It's like, "Yeah, I've seen this movie." So, what I focus on is different now, and I'm happy about it actually, I think it's a good thing.

11:42 So, in in that light, some things to to kind of—some mistakes to avoid. You are not meant to keep up with the younger competitors, please strike that away. There's nothing wrong with rolling with them, there's nothing wrong with maybe trying to see if you can get one up on them through timing, efficiency, and patience, but you're not—you're not moving in step with them, you just can't. It's not for you. Um, another mistake is ignoring some of these injuries and not treating them. If you got anything serious, go to the doctor. If you got anything questionable, go to the doctor. If you have someone at the gym who might be into physical therapy and like has gone through that training, communicate with them what's going on. Often times they'll give you exercises that you need to do that are pretty simple and that can help with these lingering small injuries and preventing them from becoming big ones. One time someone showed me a certain stretch because I was having lingering back, lower black—back problems, and that stretch was amazing. It helped so much. I recently learned another one that's been—it's gone a long way for me, and I don't have the same back injuries that I used to have. I used to have to take medicine, or pain medicine, regularly because it was so bad. With these stretches and some of the exercises that I learned from PT when I was going, I haven't had those same issues anymore. My lower back is still shit, but it doesn't get flared up as much as it used to. It used to be a habitual chronic thing, right now I'm—I'm decent, I'm good. Training through the pain probably isn't a great idea. Sometimes it's okay to train around it, and this is your personal philosophy and what you want to do. Some people just take the time off or don't train at all, which is probably the smart. If you're someone that wants to continue to train and you want to train around some things, do it intelligently, like talk to your doctor, talk to someone who's in physical therapy. So that you can understand what's minor and big, and what needs to be treated, and what needs to be seated.

13:17 Sometimes we think uh slowing down is us regressing. Throw that out the window. You're going to have to slow down. And slowing down is not a bad thing. There's times when I intentionally will roll and I tell myself, "I want to move like a sloth today." And as weird as it is, and people can kind of look at me sometimes and be like, "What the fuck is he doing?" I move like a sloth intentionally. And I start to frame slowly, I start to hip escape slowly, and it kind of in a weird way forces me to understand the smaller mechanics of everything. Because I'm intentionally not trying to match the speed. So, if it's—like throw that out the window, throw out the idea that slow is regression. It's not. It actually opens up some doors for you that you're not aware of. Uh, that whole thing of like slow is fast, and fast is smooth, or I forget how it goes. Once you learn how to do things really slowly, you can build up speed, but you can't do any of this fast. So, I think it's a—it's a benefit. So, throw out that idea that slow is regression. It's not. It actually opens up some doors for you that you're not aware of.