Transition to Jiu Jitsu

*Written in 2016. Found in 2025 with no new edits made. This was around two years before receiving my black belt.

This is where I am in my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu journey and how it is helping me repair my life and better myself in more ways than I could imagine.

I devoted my life to the fight game, making sacrifice after sacrifice to potential careers, schooling, and relationships. Was it always the right or best choice for me? That will be in question but I am a dreamer and always wanted to be a martial artist and nothing will stop that. And just like all art, it must be suffered for. And I suffered in many ways for my art.

This devotion led to building my identity as a fighter. It engulfed me. Being a fighter was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in I was spending every day at the gym. Constantly improving on all aspects of the MMA game. It was what I always wanted to be. What I always was. The glory, the bleeding, the constant testing of oneself. The attention and being noticed and respected. The love from the crowd. Hearing your name announced before walking out to the cage.

This is what I lived for.

The curse was spending every day at the gym. Training took control of my life. It was me. Missing out on family and friends. Holidays and celebrations. And a tool to destroy relationships once they began to grow and blossom in fear of it taking away from my ability to train properly. From my life as a fighter. Looking back, I see how wrong I was. How fighting for is equally as important as fighting against.

Because of this mindset I ruined relationships with amazing people. Both personal and career related. Sometimes very aware of what I was doing. Some of them I have been lucky enough to mend, others not yet. But I will continue to fight for what is best for me.

I retired from fighting several times. Four failed retirement attempts before making the fifth one stick. Why will this one stick? Why do I know I can stay retired now? Because I have BJJ.

I have been lucky enough to teach martial arts, including building boxing and MMA programs. This was tough to do while I was trying to retire though.Training daily in those arts always sparked that fire in my mind. That “you have one more fight in you” time and time again. It always landed me back in the cage. Even though I knew it wasn't what I really wanted. Especially once I realized the affect it was having on my brain. But it was what I needed. Was it really what I needed though?

I had a long a rough career. We always trained as hard as we fought, if not harder. Most classes ended with hard sparring sessions. And our Sunday MMA sparring was basically 10 rounds of full out MMA fighting. Bloody Sunday was legendary in the Louisiana MMA scene. This has lead to much brain trauma. I suffer from CTE due to years of this style of “kill or be killed” training. Paired up with my already tough to deal with psychological issues and we can begin to understand where I’m coming from. I am a wreck at times, other times I am so much more.

Now to step out of the gloom. Throughout my career I was never able to fully focus on just one aspect of combat sports. MMA always left me splitting my time between striking, grappling, or combining the two. Even once retired, or attempting to do so, I was still in a place where I was teaching both aspects of the game, leaving me unable to shake the drive to fight. That identity of J.C. “The MMA Fighter.”

I made the best sacrifice and gave up striking to make the full switch to BJJ. I train 6 to 7 days a week still but now it is all grappling. Primarily in the Gi even. An aspect of training that was nonexistent for almost my entire career. An aspect that I have fallen completely in love with.

It was like falling in love with martial arts all over again. Learning new techniques and far advancing a skillset that was already strong and respected. Training with guys that shared the same passion for grappling and improving not just their lives, but the lives of their team.

The friendships made on the mat are similar to those made in the MMA and striking worlds but the differences are worth their weight in gold. People tend to disappear from the MMA world at a much faster rate. Especially in a gym that is so focused on MMA competition.

Knowing there is no threat of injury or repeated brain trauma are very important to me now. I am older and my body is different from such a long and rough career. It isn't always the years but the milage put on in those years that mean the most. And I have run many miles.

Maybe it is just the team I share the mat with that make me love BJJ so much. Maybe it is the new friends being made. But whatever it is, BJJ is helping me get out of some very dark places and rebuild my life. Allowing me to focus on the most important aspects of martial arts and myself. Most importantly I am learning I can still be a fighter without ever stepping into the cage or ring again.