Facebook c0-founder Mark Zuckerberg has been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the past few months and is already hooked on the lifestyle and benefits that go along with this sport.
Zuckerberg recently competed in and won gold in a local BJJ tournament.
Zuckerberg has displayed his passion for BJJ by sharing images and videos of his training on FB and IG and largely discussed benefits he has realized from having trained Jiu-Jitsu.
He has been training under famed BJJ instructor Dave Camarillo of Guerilla Jiu-Jitsu, a black belt under Ralph Gracie and who is the instructor of Jon Fitch.
he shared on his IG:
“Competed in my first jiu jitsu tournament and won some medals 🥇🥈 for the Guerrilla Jiu Jitsu team. Thanks to @davecamarillo @khaiwu @intense0ne for training me!”
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Zuckerberg shared what pushed him to step out of his comfort and compete in Jiu-Jitsu, on the Lex Fridman podcast:
“I’m a competitive person. Doing sports that basically require your full attention, I think is really important to my mental health and the way I just stay focused on doing everything I’m doing. So I decided to get into martial arts and it’s, it’s awesome. I got a ton of my friends into it. We all train together. We have a mini Academy in my garage. And one of my friends was like, Hey, we should go do a tournament. I was like, okay, yeah, let’s do it. I’m not gonna shy away from a challenge. I registered under my first and middle name, so Mark Elliot and it wasn’t until I actually like pulled all that stuff off right before I got on the mat that I think people knew it was me.”
“The main thing, people who train jiu-jitsu it’s like you need to not have pride because of all the stuff that you were talking about before about you know, getting choked or getting you know, joint locked,” he said. “You only get into a bad situation if you’re not willing to tap once you’ve already lost, right but obviously when you’re getting started with something, you’re not going to be an expert at it immediately. So you just need to be willing to go with it. I mean, maybe I’ve just been embarrassed enough times in my life.”
Facebook Employees actually Train Jiu-Jitsu in Custom Company Gis & Rashguards.
The point of offering all these perks at the Facebook (Meta) HQ are to make working long hours and practically living at work bearable. Many employees sometimes work 16 hours days for months..
The BJJ training is taught by various BJJ black belts.
The idea was for the employees to benefit from all the positive aspects of BJJ training: self defense, fitness, stress relief, weight loss, social interaction, camarederie etc..
Rogan asked him ‘So how did you how did you initially approach it? Like, how did you get a trainer like what did you do?’
“I know a bunch of people who are who are into it. There’s actually this really interesting connection between people who surf and do jujitsu. Oh, yeah. So so so. So a bunch of the guys who I do that with, you know, they, they kind of have gyms and kawaii and you know, I basically collected a bunch of recommendations ran them by a bunch of people who I know and I ended up I’m gonna train with this guy, Dave Camarillo. Guerrilla jujitsu. “
” He’s, he’s great. Yeah, super nice guy. And I feel like I’m learning a ton and that The crazy thing is like I’ve I don’t know, I mean, it’s, it really is the best sport. I don’t the question isn’t how did I get into it? It’s how did I not know about it until just now from from from like, from the from the very first session that I did like five minutes in I was like, Where has this been my whole life. I like it’s like, Alright, my mom made me do three varsity sports and like my life took a wrong turn when I chose to do fencing competitively instead of wrestling in high school or something, right?”
