A Little More on Fitness and Aging

If you want to understand this blog better, you need to read two of my first three posts here.  I couldn't figure out how to add an "about me" button to the top of the page like so many of my favorite BJJ blogs have.  So I wrote these posts to explain my relationship with BJJ and physical culture in general:

Gnarly Old Guy 1

I followed it up with this to complete the tale:

Gnarly Old Guy 2

If my posts over the past couple of months haven't made it perfectly clear, I live in my self-deprecation.  I own it.  I think that honest humility is endearing, and training in max effort combat sports after one's 30's is very humbling (unless you're Randy Couture, who happens to be one my favorite sports icons).

I got here because I lived a lifetime as a physical person.  I have probably outcompeted my own ability to letter in multiple sports in high school, play two sports in college, and suffered through two nasty injuries, the first of which is actually one of the defining elements of my being (left knee injury in college).  And don't get me started on how asthma defines the asthma-suffering athlete!

I believe that now, I have chosen to train in a very difficult discipline, one that requires peak conditioning to accomplished fine motor techniques against a backdrop of max effort at anaerobic and just sub-anaerobic energy expenditures.  This shit is hard for me, and I am old for it.

In addition to the fitness attributes of a BJJ'er, BJJ requires a melding of the seemingly competing attributes of well-above average flexibility with strength in the core, hips, and hands.  To illustrate this irony, I recently saw an interview in which grappling whiz and MMA coach Ricky Lundell stated jokingly that "flexibility is weakness entering the body;" a play on the old saw that "pain is weakness leaving the body."

In my 30's, I was exceptionally strong, moderately flexible, and could put down 18 scrummages and 18 tackles while running 8 miles during the course of an 80 minute rugby match.  I was not bad for a high level club game, but not select team caliber.  I my 40's, I could put down max effort 50 second shifts on a pretty good senior league hockey team.  As of last September (2011), I was swimming 5000 yards in just over 90 minutes.  I've done the hard and was competitive at it.

And now, I want to progress in a discipline I have already tried and dropped 3 times since my 30's.  One that requires me to be able to thread a fucking sewing needle while meeting or exceeding the gross motor output of any of the sports I have tried before!  Repeatedly.  While my opponent tries to break my arms off or choke me to sleep, or step inside my jab with a wicked left hook to my ridiculous old guy head.

And I hope you keep reading my travail.