I’m a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. But even though I was a successful wrestler in high school, it took me 18 years to get my black belt. Looking back, I believe part of this is because I have ADHD. Typical BJJ multi-step move of the day type instruction does not work for me. Now that I’m a black belt I spend a lot of time thinking about simple, general principles that I actually do remember.

I’m a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and I have ADHD. It took me 18 years to get my black belt even with a strong wrestling background. When I look back on my BJJ journey, I think a lot of it comes down to the standard “move of the day” style of teaching not resonating with me. For one thing, my ADHD brain only remembers a maximum of 3 steps.

I’m a 46 year old black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. One of my reasons for writing this is I have ADHD (as I suspect a lot of us do), and so I constantly struggle with traditional BJJ “move of the day” type instruction. So I’m trying to look for key concepts I can remember when I forget the 17 step combo I was just taught 5 minutes ago. Today’s concept is:

My dad spent 3 months in Japan in 1964 and got his judo black belt from the Kodokan – the mother ship of Judo schoools – going from white to black belt in 3 months. I’m not sure if this is the fastest anyone has ever done this, but I figure it makes a nice story that folks might be interested in, and it dawned on me that time is running out to see if there is anyone still alive who might have personal knowledge to fill in the gaps that I don’t know.

Doing sports with ADHD has been pretty well documented. The basic issue with ADHD, or at least ADHD-i (inattentive) is that we have problems with executive function. In particular, those of us with ADHD have problems breaking things down into tasks and we often have poor working memory. So when you go to BJJ class and the instructor goes over a 17 step sequence to take you from half guard all the way to an arm-bar, those of us with BJJ often go… WTF did he just say?