Former Olympic boxer Tony Jeffries has officially stepped away from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after suffering a serious neck injury that left him fearing long-term damage.

Jeffries had thrown himself into the sport with the same discipline that carried him through an elite boxing career.
Starting at 37 years old and now a blue belt, he often trained multiple times a day:

If someone is training three times a week and I’m training six times a week, I’m going to learn more twice as fast.

In October last year, however, Jeffries began experiencing what he thought was minor discomfort in his scapula and neck.
But things quickly escalated:

The next day I woke up and I was in pain. I was getting tingling sensations in my fingers. I was getting numbing sensations down the right side of my body.

Despite seeing several medical professionals, his condition only deteriorated.
He reached a point where he was struggling to walk for more than 5 minutes, finding out that he could not turn his neck properly either.

An MRI gave him the answers he feared:

Disc bulges at multiple levels of the cervical spine, nerve compression.

Turning his head caused nerve impingement, which explained the tingling, numbness, and loss of grip strength.

In an effort to avoid surgery, Jeffries underwent extensive rehabilitation, which included wearing a neck brace and using spinal decompression machines.

Eventually, he opted for a more direct approach, which worked in the end:

They injected me with anti-inflammatory medicine and pain relief as well… I haven’t got any more pain in my neck. I haven’t got any more tingles in my arm.

Still, Jeffries made the tough decision to quit Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu…
Though he takes responsibility for the injury itself:

I was just so paranoid that I’ll hurt my neck.

I blame one person for this injury and that one person is myself.
I could have had less of an ego and tapped sooner when someone was choking me.

For Jeffries, the hardest part was letting go of the competitive element of BJJ:

In jiu-jitsu you can go hard, be really competitive which I love – the competitiveness of it.

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