Competing in mid-adulthood: How to train to win after age 35

I love training for competition almost as much as I like competition itself - I love the hard rolling sessions, purposeful drilling, and competition focused energy.  I have been training and competing jiu jitu for almost 7 years now and I don’t want to stop, like ever. But, as I settle into my mid-30s, the way I approach training now has shifted somewhat from when I started. I have to be smarter. Now at the ripe age of 36, this is how I approach training before a big tournament:   

I need to actually warm up

I used to be able to show up at open mat and jump right into hard rolling. Now, I seek out 1 or 2 light rolls before I find my most competitive rolling partners. It just takes me a bit longer to rev up to full intensity and my joints respond better to hard rolling after they are warm.

I am selective about my training partners

I believe that it is good and valuable to train with everyone. There aren’t many people who I flat out avoid training with all the time. But now, especially leading up to a competition, I want to make sure that the majority of my rolls are with training partners that most closely resemble those in my competition bracket. I try to train with more women, with more people around my size and skill level, and with people who present challenges similar to those I am facing in competition. If I am having trouble passing spider guard in tournaments, I need to go train with people with good spiders.

I also try to minimize my higher risk rolls - those who use excessive force, spaz out when they lose position, move quickly without purpose, or crank on submissions. I need to save my muscles and joints for more productive rolls and also reduce my chance of being injured at the tournament.

Take hard/easy days

Back when I was a blue belt, I used to roll ten, 6 minute rounds every day. Now I still have marathon training sessions, but I just can’t do it every day. I alternate between hard training days and easier days. On days that I am sore and my joints don’t feel great (usually from very hard training the day before), it is tempting to stay home and rest. Instead, I go to class and seek out light, technical rolls. I almost always benefit more from drilling and rolling light than not training at all.

Pay attention to recovery

Epsom salt baths, good nutrition, adequate sleep, and massages are helpful. Cutting out sugar is one of the best things you can do.

Treat micro injuries

We often get hurt while training jiu jitsu. Sometimes we get injured. These days, I am listening more to the “hurt” to avoid the injured. I’d rather rest a few days to treat something early on, than rest a few weeks or months to treat a later injury.

Cross train

When it comes to physical attributes, it’s use it or lose it. Much of the decline that is attributed to age boils down to not training to maintain or even increase what you have. Now is the time to embrace your old woman/old man strength – strength train!  Do yoga to preserve your flexibility. Do Olympic lifts to increase explosiveness. Do high intensity interval training to enhance your cardio. If you don’t have time to do it all, choose what you actually enjoy doing. That is probably what you are going to stick with.

Tap when a grip breaks

I can’t emphasize this enough. DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOU FEEL PAIN IN YOUR JOINT! Tap when your last defending grip breaks and you can no longer safely defend the joint lock. I will fight a choke as long as I can breathe through one half of one ear. But an arm bar? A heel hook? Unless it’s the finals of the mundials, I tap as soon as I don’t have the grips to intelligently defend the submission.

To all the folks 35 and better – how do you train to perform at your best?  What tips do you have to recover and stay healthy?

Mental preparation for competition: building realistic confidence

We humans tend to have pretty high opinions of ourselves. In studies of social psychology, most individuals rate themselves as above average in just about every realm. Likewise, we rate ourselves higher than others rate us. It is mathematically impossible for so many of us to actually be above average in just about everything that we do, but that doesn't stop us from believing it. Most of us think we are smarter, better looking, more successful, and even better drivers than the average joe.

This isn't a bad thing. Believing we are better than we are is adaptive. Positive self-illusions preserve our self-esteem and give us the confidence we need to succeed. Notably, there is one population that is not prone to this self-aggrandizing way of thinking  - the clinically depressed. Studies show that those who are depressed actually rate themselves more realistically than the rest of us do. Overconfidence, it turns out, is normal and psychologically healthy.

It is likely that I believe that I am a better at my job than I actually am, that my baked goods taste better than they actually do, and that my blog is more influential than it actually is. I may also think I am better looking than I actually am (I am really, really good-looking, so I don't know about this one).  And so what? No one challenges these illusions for me, so I might as well keep believing them if doing so keeps me mentally well-adjusted.

The thing is, we can't so easily maintain illusions about our jiu jitsu. Nothing keeps things real like constantly testing yourself against others. If you train to challenge yourself and to get better, you probably get your ass beaten on a regular basis. I know I do. I get taken down, swept, guard passed, pinned, and tapped just about every time I step on the mat. I  don't go into tournaments with a "no one can beat me" mindset, because it simply isn't true. People beat me every single day. 

When I am mentally preparing for a tournament, I try to build what I call "realistic confidence." I'm not good at lying to myself, so I don't try to pump myself up by thinking that I am too good to be beaten. Rather, I train in such a way that convinces me that winning is likely.

When I think back on my most successful past tournaments, I notice a common trend. In these tournaments, I absolutely believed 2 things before hearing the ref's combate: 

• that every single person in my division is a person that I could beat
• that every single person in my division is a person that could beat me

Let's take a look at these separately:

"Every single person in my division is a person that I could beat." If you don't believe this, then winning really is not possible. I'm not saying that if you were to roll with every person 10 times, you would expect to win every match. There may even be people in your division that are objectively better than you. But you have to believe that, on the particular day of the tournament, you can beat any given person of your skill, size, and gender, because that's what you have been training to do.

"Every single person in my division is a person that could beat me." I'm not saying to believe that they WILL beat you...just acknowledge that the possibility is there. Giving my opponents this respect pushes ME to work harder and longer. The possibility of losing is what drives me to stick to my diet, push through my cardio, and stay on the mats to roll a few extra rounds. Otherwise, I wouldn't have to work so hard.

I have underestimated opponents and subsequently lost matches. I remember identifying a "person to beat" in a major tournament, only to be eliminated from the bracket before even facing her, by someone who was not on my radar.  Treat everyone in your bracket as a "person to beat" or you might get caught off guard.



Exaggerated self-confidence is normal, adaptive, and rarely confronted in most areas of our lives. In jiu jitsu, however, we get daily reminders of exactly where we stand. To succeed in tournaments, we walk a delicate line between under-confidence and over-confidence, since both are harmful.

I'm curious: What do you tell yourself when you are gearing up to win?  

Jiu jitsu math - why it doesn't always work

I'm not much of a numbers person, but I remember a few things from high school algebra. In the math world, if a>b and b>c, then we also know that a>c -  every time.

So in the jiu jitsu world, if player a beats player b, and player b beats player c, then logically, player a should also beat player c. Right? Right?! This is jiu jitsu math 101.

Only it doesn't always work. Now, if I had to place a bet and I had no other information to go on, I would still side with jiu jitsu math. In the above scenario, I would pick player a to beat player c. But there is a decent chance I'd be wrong. Among competitors of the same skill level, I would expect this math to fail about 25% of the time. That makes this a pretty lousy jiu jistu theorem.

Indeed, I've lost several matches that I expected to win based on  jiu jitsu math. And every time, I have found myself dazed and surprised. It makes no sense! Just ask my algebra teacher, Mr. Scata -  a>c! Except every now and then, c beats a.

So why does jiu jitsu math fail? There are a couple of reasons.

- Randomness and chance play a role in jiu jitsu matches. According to some smart math people at MIT, there are more possible outcomes to a game of chess than there are known atoms in the universe. So as a form of kinesthetic chess, a given jiu jitsu match can go about a gazillion different ways - at least when the 2 individuals are close in size and ability. Now, if I were to compete against Gabi Garcia 100 times, I would most definitely lose to her 100 times. But there are plenty of other people with whom I would expect to go 50/50, 60/40, 25/75, or some other split. Just because you beat someone once, doesn't mean you will beat them every time. Conversely, just because someone beats you once, doesn't mean you won't get her next time.

- People match up with each other differently. Some people do ok handling big, strong folks but have trouble against faster scrambly people. Some people do great when they can get on top, but get smashed on bottom. Depending of your style, success in a tournament can be dependent on the attributes and style of your opponent.

- Familiarity plays a role. I tend to drill and train with the same people a lot - so much so that we get to know each other's moves. Some folks who know me well know exactly what I am going for and can shut me down before I even start. And sometimes I can do the same to them. How you perform against folks who you are super familiar with cannot accurately predict how you will perform relative to each other when rolling with new folks.

What about you? Have you ever underestimated an opponent due to jiu jitsu math? Or have you ever defied the laws of jiu jistu math and defeated someone you weren't "supposed to?"
 

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