Wareham Jiu Jitsu Students Prove You Can Still Reach Your Goals and Win Big After 40

WAREHAM, Mass. - July 1, 2014 - PRLog -- While many think of martial arts as a young person’s pursuit, members of SBG East Coast (formerly Nexus Martial Arts and Fitness) have been proving that they can reach their competitive and fitness goals at 40 and beyond.

This past weekend in Hartford, CT, SBG student Ryan Parker, a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) and well-known face in the Massachusetts martial arts circles who works with the MA Athletic Commission and travels extensively to referee tournaments, stepped on the competition mat for the first time in many years. As a busy self-employed professional and father of two, he had continued to train in the art he loved over the years but with much less regularity and had put on some extra “Dad weight.”

After deciding to set a new goal, he picked up his training schedule and participated in the academy’s popular Summer Size Me fitness challenge, where he secured bragging rights as having the best overall body composition change during the 90 day program. He won the combined brown and black belt division at the North American Grappling Association tournament, winning the Championship Belt in his division without a single point scored against him. The win came just one day after his 40^th birthday.

Ryan’s story is not unique. Last month in his first tournament competing as a new brown belt in BJJ, SBG student and instructor John Murphy traveled to Boston for the “Good Fight” tournament, which features a no points, submission-only format, and also won the brown and black belt/expert No Gi division.

Although in his 40s, with a busy career as a Fed-Ex manager and a family, John has amassed an impressive competitive career that includes multiple Expert Championship Belts in regional tournaments as well as a Bronze in the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation’s World Championships, a Gold in the No Gi Pan Ams, multiple Golds at the Boston Open (including the Open Weight division) and multiple Golds at the New York Open.

A closer look at the instructional environment of the academy reveals that Ryan and John’s successes are no fluke. Academy owner and chief instructor Stephen Whittier explains:

“From the beginning, my goals for the school was very inclusive. I didn’t want to just focus on training athletes and fighters, although we’ve done exceptionally well in that area, and I didn’t want to just work with the young and athletically gifted.”

Not coincidentally, Whittier is also the founder of the “40 Plus BJJ Success” program, an online instructional program that specifically focuses on training, skill development, and longevity strategies martial arts students 40 and over. The program is followed by well over ten thousand students from around the world, and his social media pages have a following of over thirty thousand.

“It’s very rewarding,” Whittier states. “There’s nothing like helping people to reach goals they never thought they could reach and fall in love with the art like I did. There’s an old saying when it comes to achieving your black belt in BJJ that ‘It’s not necessarily who’s best, it’s who’s left that counts.’ I want to help people be the ones who are still in there for the long haul.”

Penny, a physician and Wareham Jiu-Jitsu student, speaks to the challenge and rewards of beginning to work out in her 50’s: “[You start] and hurt for two days, but it is a good hurt and before long you feel stronger, go a little more, and feel less winded. In a few more weeks there are little victories… and there is that thing that you though you would never be able to do and you feel it near enough to grasp.”

For more information on SBG East Coast youth, teen and adult martial arts and women-only fitness programs, visit http://www.nexusma.com or call 508-295-5427.