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Joe Rogan On the Benefits Of Jiu-Jitsu & Being In Great Shape At 53 Years of Age

Joe Rogan On the Benefits Of Jiu-Jitsu & Being In Great Shape At 53 Years of Age

BloodyElbow‘s Stephie Daniels did an in-depth interview with Joe Rogan. This is what the Jiu-Jitsu black belt had to stay about benefits of Jiu-Jitsu and staying in shape:

“Stephie Daniels:  You are in immaculate shape. You work hard for that. You eat right, you exercise and you do all the right things. Is that for quality of life now, or is it more for longevity reasons to be around longer for your children and their children?

 Joe Rogan: It’s certainly both. I would love to be around for my children, no doubt about it. I love being a dad and the last thing I would want is my kids to miss me because I was an idiot and didn’t eat right, but It’s not totally selfless; I would still do it even if I didn’t have children. I would still take care of my body. One, because I’m sane, two because I love doing jiu-jitsu. I’m on a hiatus right now from jiu-jitsu because I’ve been having back problems, but they’re almost entirely worked out now, I’m almost 100%. I’m giving myself the right amount of time for rehabilitation this time. To enjoy jiu-jitsu you have to be in good shape, otherwise you just get f—ing strangled all the time. I’ve been doing Jiu-jitsu for a huge part of my life; it’s been a big part of my life since 1996, so that’s another reason why I enjoy exercise.

Also, I like blowing off stress. One of the most underrated aspects of exercise is the effect on the mind. I have friends that are really intelligent who sort of pooh-pooh taking care of the body as if it’s some sort of egotistical, vapid approach. I think they’re doing their mind a disservice by not clearing out all the cobwebs that come from stress and hormones building up. There is all sorts of fight or flight s— going on and reward systems that are in place in your body that are not being managed by day to day society working in a cubicle or sitting in your car in traffic. There are all sorts of things that your body doesn’t do that it’s sort of designed to do.

 

For me, one of the best ways of staying level is forcing myself to exercise extremely hard. Extreme, rigorous exercise. I have two gyms in my house. I have one gym that’s set up full of weights, kettle bells, chin ups and stuff like that. I have an elliptical machine in there and all sorts of different weights and a gravity bar to hang from my ankles. My other gym is an MMA gym. It’s in my garage and it’s all matted. It has heavy bags and it has a TV that I watch fights on to get motivated, and I work out there. That keeps me sane. It keeps my stress level low.

 

There’s a big difference between how I respond to situations in life when I’ve been working out hard on a regular basis and not. If I get out of jiu-jitsu class after a really hard roll and a boulder landed on my car, I’d be bummed out, but my reaction would be so different than if I was on my way to class all tense and angry cause I haven’t had a chance to work out for a few weeks, and a boulder landed on my car. Then I would be like, ‘What the f—!?’ The perspective changes depending on the stress level.

 

I think we would all do ourselves a world of good if we removed the stress from our lives and took care of our bodies. If I had a company, a place where everybody showed up at work, one of the things I would do is set up a f—ing gym. Set it up, have it be free and give people an hour every day, even if it means they only work seven hours a day instead of eight. I would be happy to have someone who only works seven hours a day instead of eight, but they work out for an hour. Then I would think I’m giving them something back, giving them something for free, alleviating their stress, lightening their load and, I would assume, improving their quality of life. I think most people burden themselves down with a lot of stress and don’t give themselves nearly enough release from that stress.”

 

Read the full in depth interview