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.

I spent part of my morning listening to an episode of The Jiu-Jitsu Mindset with Pete Deeley and Professor Chris, and I found myself stopping, thinking, rewinding, and listening again. There was a lot of jiu-jitsu in the conversation—Rickson Gracie, invisible jiu-jitsu, self-defense, sport jiu-jitsu, connection, timing, leverage, base, preserving what came before us. But what kept me listening was the humanity. I’m becoming a fan of this podcast because of that. I love the humility Pete brings to these conversations, and I love the guests he brings on who are willing to share not only what they know, but something of themselves—their hearts, their passion, their mistakes, and the things they are still figuring out. Professor Chris talks early in the episode about preserving Rickson Gracie’s approach to jiu-jitsu. Around 8:34, he describes invisible jiu-jitsu as not depending upon “strength or speed or natural athleticism,” but instead using connection, weight distribution, timing, and control. At 65 years old, that gets my attention. I’m still rolling three to five days a week. I love training. I love learning. And I want to keep doing this for as long as my body allows me to do it. But that means my relationship with jiu-jitsu has to continue evolving. Around 31:25, Professor Chris says something that I think deserves attention from every older practitioner: having the physical ability to compete is a privilege. He speaks from his own experience of dealing with a broken back and the reality that not everybody's body is capable of doing the same things. Then, beginning around 41:42, the conversation moves into something even deeper: honesty. Pete talks about how people can get hurt when they dishonestly assess the situation they are in—when the body is telling us to tap, but the ego says otherwise. He describes that difficult middle ground between discovering that we may be capable of more than we think and recognizing when we are pushing farther than we should.

Yesterday, Saturday 9/19/26, I had the opportunity to train with Professor James Glynn, a McHugh BJJ black belt. We trained together, rolled a round of randori, and somewhere in the middle of all of it he reminded me of something I think becomes even more important as we get older: Don’t just learn the technique. Understand the mechanics that make the technique work. Professor Glynn talked with me about “breaking mechanics.” That stayed with me. It’s easy in jiu-jitsu to collect techniques. Put your hand here. Move your hip there. Grab this. Step there. But WHY does it work? What happens to the other person’s base? What happens to their posture and structure? Where is the frame? Where is the lever? What needs to be taken away before the technique becomes easier? For those of us who are getting older, I think these questions matter. At 65, I don’t want my jiu-jitsu to depend on being stronger, faster, or more explosive than the person in front of me. I want to become more efficient. More precise. More knowledgeable about what is actually happening between two bodies. That means I don’t just want to know more techniques. I want to understand the techniques I already know better. Thank you, Professor James Glynn, for the training yesterday and for reminding me to look underneath the technique. That’s something I’ll be paying much more attention to. For my fellow older grapplers: Next time you train, instead of only asking, “What technique should I use here?” Ask: “What has to break mechanically for this technique to work?” Train today so you can train tomorrow. 🥋