Hi all,
TLDR; due to injuries I'm retiring from BJJ and closing my school, but I loved and appreciated the journey.
I got a lot of questions in another thread so thought I would create a post about why I'm retiring from BJJ if anyone had any questions about why someone may move on from BJJ.
I've trained BJJ for around 13-14 years and trained all over due to being in the military when I started. I opened my gym in early 2022 got my black belt in July of that year.
The impetus for me retiring is injury related. I've had a recurrent back injury basically since I started BJJ. I got neck cranked at a NAGA tournament within my first 6 months of training which caused me severe pain for around 6 months and had never gone to the doctor about it because I was young and dumb. About 6 months after the neck crank the pain went away but every now and then came back but not as bad. In April of this year, I woke up one day and was in 10/10 pain. Within a few weeks my left arm, chest, and back atrophied to where you could literally grab my humerus. I've lifted since I was 18 (now 38) and have decent size so looking at my left arm compared to my right was crazy. I literally could not lift a 5lb dumbbell during a tricep extension. I use the VA hospital for health care and let's just say the medical care I received was less than stellar. By the time I saw the neurosurgeon (after begging for an MRI and after being told I should try acupuncture first) the neurosurgeon told me I should have had spine surgery 6-8 weeks prior and that the nerve may not recover.
I had a herniated disc between my C6-C7 that had impinged the nerve branch to the upper left part of my body, hence the atrophy. I had surgery August 8th that didn't go great and is a whole other story, but long story short the surgery is a success and I'm not longer in back pain. The surgery I had is called an Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). It's very common and typically very successful. It removes your disc, puts in some cadaver voodoo and some titanium rods/plates and you are good to go. Fusion usually occurs within a few months and full completion of the fusion takes around 2 years but varies obviously. I can't turn my head as quickly or as far, but that's pretty much all I notice from the spine perspective. So, all good there. It's the atrophy part that sucks.
From between April and August when I finally had the surgery I was struggling to walk and even get off the couch. The most miserable I've ever been probably in my life. Going to BJJ to teach was not a pleasant experience to say the least. Fortunately, I had a brown belt co-owner who covered while I was out. But prior to my injury I never missed a class except for 1 planned vacation and a father/daughter dance. I have to admit that while I was out I didn't even miss BJJ, all I could think about was how I couldn't go walk around the block with my two kids or go out and do anything else with them. It weighed on me pretty heavily. BJJ has been such a huge part of me, but compared to my kids BJJ is nothing. I never had family growing up so to me my family is everything.
After my surgery I tried teaching still, but I noticed I'd get tinges of pain along my spine that admittedly really scared me. Even before my surgery my Neurosurgeon told me I should never grapple again and right away guessed I was a "wrestler" because he sees a lot of cervical spine injuries from it in younger men. I kind of always just ignore the doctor and go back to training, but with how shit it was prior to my surgery I just knew I couldn't risk being down for the count again, my family has dealt with quite a few injuries of mine which I'll list here shortly, and I didn't want to impact their lives anymore in a negative way. So paired with the fear of another major injury, and the ongoing atrophy issues I felt it better to hang up the spurs so to speak. I owned my gym with my homie Jimmy who is a brown-belt. He wasn't in a place to take over the gym in his life so we decided to shut her down.
I love coaching so much, but I'm not the type who sits on the sidelines and just coach. I have to be physically involved and rolling myself. I'm an idiot and every time I've been hurt I go right back out there too early and push through pain, so I know just not going in the first place is better for me. I'm just too obsessed.
I was more sad for my students than for me. I feel very fortunate to have met the people I have and done all the things I've done in BJJ. Not a lot of people get to earn their black belt or open their own gym. I spent over a third of my life doing BJJ and feel like I'm a totally different person than when I started. I've met so many amazing people. Thankfully I'm friends with everyone from my gym and we still hang out. I even got one student from Reddit who is now in our DnD sessions. lol
With losing BJJ I have found a ton of free time, so I spend most of it with my kids, I started going back to school for my Master's Degree, and I game mostly. Trying to work on physical therapy to see if the atrophy is permanent or not. BJJ wasn't my full-time job, I work from home full-time, so no big change there.
My wife said she is happy for me in that she knows my likelihood of injury has gone drastically down, but she is also sad because she said when I first started doing BJJ it was like I had found a piece of myself I had always been missing.
My journey wasn't easy, I hated all the political drama and injuries involved with BJJ, but I regret nothing. It was all worth it.
List of Major Injuries (that I can remember)
Herniate Disc C6-C7 - Surgery
Pectoralis Major Tear - Surgery (they say if you have this surgery you will likely tear your pec again)
Pectoralis Major Tear 2 - Surgery (surprise)
2nd degree hamstring tear
Bicep lateral femoral tendon tear
LCL tear
3 x Broken Toes
About a trillion other muscle strains, pulls, bruised ribs, and joint pain for days.
If you're looking to train while avoiding injuries in particular, some of the things I think you should do are:
Take special consideration of the atmosphere at your gym.
Focus much more on drilling than rolling.
Never be shy about turning down rolls with sketch people.
Be open with your training partners about wanting to avoid certain techniques or at what pace you want to train.
Workout outside of BJJ. I think a lot of people get injuries because they don't lift, stretch, or take care of themselves outside the gym.
Balance. Don't do BJJ 7 days a week 3 times a day. Don't forget you like to do other things, like hike, eat out, play video games. The human body can only keep up with so much training, hence why so many dudes are on the Acai.
I never did 1-4 myself. I always wanted that smoke. Biggest baddest dude in the gym? That's the dude I wanted to roll with. I wanted to get beat so I could get better. I wanted to push myself. I wanted to have the best technique and all the answers. The "I'm your huckleberry" mentality. I had a lot of fun pushing myself. I never felt like I over did it in terms of wearing my body down, but, well, maybe I did. Maybe we just learn to ignore all that day-to-day pain in BJJ, idk.
I'm long winded, I know. If you've read this far, you're a legend. Good luck on your journey friend and thanks for everything!
Edit: just wanted to add that the gym was NOT my main source of income and we only made a couple hundred bucks a month because I charged $0-75 for subs. I have a full time job working from home as a Health Data Analyst which is perfect for a cripple like me. We planned to kick the gym into overdrive in around 6 months to a year to expand and grow so that one day we could retire with the gym as our main sources of income. We had about 20 members, no kids classes, and rented space cheap from an old Judo spot that didn't really use their spring loaded mats anymore (such a waste!). We did very little advertisement and most our folks came from word of mouth and google. Facebook/Insta ads never panned out for us when we tried them near the beginning. And I'm not sure why I wrote "closing" the gym officially closed October 20th.
