Injuries, Training Methods, and Eco-Warriors

On a Wednesday in early February 2024, I suffered a broken left arm in training. A crack to the ulna.

We were playing a jiu-jitsu game where one partner was trying to pass the open guard, and the other trying to retain their guard. I was in a group of three. One of my partners ran full speed around my guard and launched his entire body weight at me. I took the impact on my forearm, and my elbow hyperflexed. I already had some arthritis there which made fully bending my arm difficult and painful. Both of us and a number of witnesses heard a crack.

Next day I went to my GP, a medical imaging centre, and Emergency at a local public hospital to have a plaster cast applied. This took many hours, most of which was waiting. But the services provided were excellent when my turn eventually came.

Wearing that cast was like dragging a ball and chain. I couldn’t sleep properly, couldn’t drive, couldn’t swim. Showering was complicated and annoying. But I had it on less than two weeks, and after that had it in a sling, which after the first week I only wore in public situations to avoid it getting bumped, and so that I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone asking me to help them with heavy lifting, changing a tyre, etc.

I am 69 years old. A good friend of mine, a few years younger, told me, “At our age, we are but one injury away from retirement. But for you, this is not the one.” I agree.

I have been training jiu-jitsu since 1998. I was awarded a black belt in 2013. Anthony Lange, the instructor at my main academy, retired from full-time teaching in December 2022 and shut up shop. A banner on the wall said, “Jiu-Jitsu Is For Health”.

Most of his students, including me, went to a new gym started by two of Anthony’s best black belt students. Their approach was much more sport-oriented. It ended up being almost all no gi, not by design, but because that is what the students signing up were interested in. Some talented and accomplished students there don’t own a gi, and don’t know how to tie a jiu-jitsu belt. There is one adult gi class a week, and the kids wear gis. The rest of a pretty extensive Muay Thai, MMA and Jiu-Jitsu class schedule, is no gi.

There are other successful gyms nearby that are predominantly gi. Go figure.

I’ve done plenty of no gi, and in many ways prefer it. But I have found the more athletic and sport-oriented approach, and the different culture, difficult to adjust to. Part of me wanted to do my best to keep up with the faster pace and athletic requirements, at least partly out of ego, and not wanting to disappoint my new instructors and training partners (which is just another form of ego). The rest of me knew that this was not feasible. Finding where I fit in, how hard I should go, and what I should and shouldn’t do, became a constant source of confusion and frustration.

I didn’t want to succumb to the limp, moist, and clammy embrace of old age and wimpdom by going too soft, but at the same time, I didn’t want to redline it and injure myself.

In some perverse way, I’m glad reality hit me this way and whispered, NO, YOU WEREN’T TOO SOFT. BUT YOU CAN’T KEEP THIS UP.

Gamification, and the constraints-led and ecological approaches to motor learning, are flavours of the month in jiu-jitsu, and have good evidence as to their efficacy in other sports. They have growing numbers of adopters and evangelists in the Jiu-Jitsu community, but I think that collectively our understanding of how to implement them is immature. Too often such ideas are seized upon as a sacred doctrine to replace all others, with much bandwagon-jumping, but if you’ve been in any activity like this long enough, you see such things go in cycles, ideas falling in and out of favour. I’ve read the Paul Gray books and listened to Kit Dale, Greg Souders, Priit, etc. (who some call the “eco-warriors”), but remain a skeptic.

Could these methods work well? Quite possibly. Will implementing them uncritically and all-in from the start produce bad outcomes? Almost certainly.

I originally seized on these trendy ideas as the primary cause and root of all evil as far as my injury was concerned, and felt that they are too dangerous for older, smaller, or otherwise physically challenged people due to an inability to modulate intensity, and an inability to prevent people resorting to reckless movements as the desire to “win the game” escalates.

I have changed my mind. A bit.

Thought needs to go into the selection of games. Anything that potentially exposes the physically disadvantaged person to taking the full weight of a bigger person, and perhaps also their own, in an accelerated or sudden impact type of collision, is asking for trouble.

My injury occurred from the guard passer running full speed around my legs and then launching himself at me with his full body weight. I kept my elbow/knee connection, and did most things right, but … SNAP. I don’t blame my partner as he was playing the game as he, and I, understood the rules. I was a consenting adult. But the results still sucked.

I don’t think gamified guard passing is a problem per se. The pressure passing game where you just basically lie on someone like a wet blanket and progressively collapse the frames they put up by using angles and connection Henry Akins style until you are chest to chest should be perfectly safe for anyone without an injury. There is no sudden impact or G forces.

You could seriously and permanently damage students if you put them in situations where a student could jump on someone when they are inverted or in other positions where their spine is bent, twisted, or otherwise compromised.

Considering Chris Haeuter’s aphorism regarding the correct attitude to training, “Think Street, Train Sport, Practice Art,” I need to spend more time practicing Art, while thinking Street. Sport probably requires some serious constraints. There are many ways to do Jiu Jitsu.

Steve Maxwell, sixth degree black belt, and a world-class strength and conditioning coach, two years older than I am, told me once, “Be very careful taking advice from how to train as you get older from anyone younger than you.” People older than me and still training jiu-jitsu are getting thinner on the ground. I need to become my own advisor.

I recognise that the authority of being a black belt makes this easier to manage in the social environment of a class, than it might be for a lower belt facing similar issues. But, this is where I am and I am going to exploit that.

I am going back to Jiu-Jitsu in about two weeks. But doing it differently this time. I will need to do just solo drills for a little while. After that I intend to evaluate everything I am instructed to do for risk vs. reward, and just sit out those activities where the risk is too high. I need to be less agreeable, in Jordan Peterson Big Five personality trait terms. It is possible to be too accommodating and to care too much about others rather than oneself. My safety comes first, their feelings second.

My training has to improve my health.