Originally written: March 2025
I was standing in the reception area of a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym, and a voice in my head told me to leave. You’re nearly 40. You’re carrying a stone of Christmas weight. You don’t know what any of this is. Go home.
I’d signed up online a few days earlier – a beginner taster class, the standard hook every gym uses to get nervous adults through the door. I’d told myself it was a low-stakes thing. Show up, see if it’s for you, decide later. Standing at the empty reception desk, none of that felt low-stakes
There was no one there. I waited. I was about to turn around and walk back out when the door behind me opened, and a bloke walked in and said, “Yes mate.”
That was Joe.
Why was I there
Most blokes I know who train in martial arts started in their twenties. I’d dabbled in kickboxing and karate at some point. I never really took to either. Boxing came later – I liked the fitness but not the sparring. Then I just… stopped. Gym sessions became early mornings before the rest of the house woke up. The same routine for years.
Turning 40 this year reframed it. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a simple thought: if not now, when? I didn’t really have the time. I didn’t really have the money. But it was something I’d wanted for years, and I knew if I didn’t do it now, I probably never would.
Three things were going on, if I’m honest.
The first was that I wanted to do something for myself. That sentence still feels uncomfortable to type. I’ve spent most of my adult life organising my schedule around everyone else’s. The 5am gym so I don’t disrupt school runs. My partner’s a runner – she goes out after work, and it’s huge for her mental health. I’d never want to take that away. None of that is bad. It’s what I want to do. I want to be her rock. But somewhere along the way, I’d stopped putting anything in my own column.
The second was my mental health. I have alexithymia – the inability to access or articulate one's own feelings. I don’t process emotions the way most people seem to. I bury things, get on with it, make sure everyone else is okay. That’s worked for years, except it hasn’t really. I knew I needed an outlet that wasn’t talking. Talking is the part I find hardest, which is part of having alexithymia. If you can’t access your feelings, how do you know there’s anything wrong?
The third was the simplest: I was carrying about 97kg of Christmas, and my cardio was a memory. The fitness side gave me cover. If anyone asked, I could say I was doing it to lose weight. The other two reasons were harder to say out loud – and did I really have to?
I don’t think any of this counts as selfish. But it took me a long time to convince myself of that.
The class itself
Joe could see I was nervous. He told me they got people in my situation all the time – late thirties, never trained, some kind of life thing pushing them through the door. Just give it a go. See how you feel at the end.
I changed and walked out in a borrowed gi and a rashguard. The rashguard clung to every kilogram I’d been pretending wasn’t there. The gi felt like fancy dress. The warm-up alone had me sweating and breathing like I’d run up a hill. We hadn’t even started the class yet.
Then we drilled. I didn’t know what anything was. Frames, shrimping, hip escapes – these were words being said in another language. My flexibility was awful; my body wouldn’t bend the way it needed to. Then they put us in for a roll. Three-minute round, light, just so you can feel what it’s like.
Three minutes is a lifetime when you don’t know what you’re doing. I spent it being calmly, methodically rearranged by someone half my size. By the end, I was lying on the mat with the ceiling tiles spinning, trying to remember how lungs work.
We finished. We bowed. We shook hands. Everyone told me I’d done well. None of it felt forced. They actually meant it. At the end, Joe asked if I wanted to sign up. I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.
A note on doing something for yourself
A lot of people in their late thirties and forties end up in the same place. You’ve spent years being reliable. You’ve folded yourself around other people’s mornings, other people’s needs, other people’s outlets. You don’t even notice it’s happened until something – a birthday, a year ticking over, something small – makes you stop and add it up.
Doing something for yourself is not the same as taking something from someone else. That’s the bit that took me years to get my head around. I’m a better partner, a better dad, a better colleague when I’ve got something that’s mine.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is just the thing I happened to land on. The lesson would be the same if it were running, or doing pottery, or learning Spanish. Pick the thing. Walk through the door. The voice telling you not to is wrong.
