Almost 40 yo, Black belt. Haven’t trained in 2 years. Stopped because injuries and some silly but deep hurt feelings over my daughters not wanting to train anymore...made it unenjoyable for me. I recently started Muay Thai to do something different (had never trained striking). I’m really enjoying it but I can’t find the motivation to get back on the mat. In theory of course I don’t want to lose my BJJ skill, but have almost no interest in actually training. If I were your student, what advice would you give?
advice? enjoy muay thai
maybe try a different grappling art like judo, start over as a whitebelt
Ive been there.
My daughters wont reallly train with me…maybe I cannget then 3or4 times a years, and FORCE the issue another 3or4. So I get no fatherly satisfaction from jiujitsu. I likely will never be able to share what I have with my kids, which is sad and likely the biggest issue that sucked the joy out of training. Why bother right if it not something you can share with your kids?!?
I dont really like jiujitsu as a sport…so that does nothing for me either. And I dont like what jiujitsu has become because of the sport influence. So pretty much… meh!
Another major issue is problems in my hip, neck and shoulder sapping desire to train.
What saved me is getting together in a garage and just do whatever. Brought back the fun element. I dont have to get better! I dont have to learn more and progress in belts! I dont even have to train jiujitsu when we get together…I have a lot of other training that I feel “meh” about just loke jiujitsu. But I can take elements of them alonng with jiujitsu and just play around…do “whatever”.
Freedom to be flexible and exploratory brought back an element of fun, or perhaps “play” would be best description of it. If I feel like going hard, I GO! And surprisomgly Ido want to get crushed a lot of the time…because I having fun.
And the only real satisfaction I get is when someone I trained (i occasionally teach) gives me thanks for something i taught that they used in real life. Ive had that from some LE and mil about fighting technique or shooting related skill. Otherwise, training has provided me with very little meaningful satisfaction, and feels like almost a waste of time!
Try to find the fun is best i can give you