Feb 7, 2023
Today's guests are Rob Biernacki and Stephan
Kesting! 
They have just brought out an amazing new guide for athletes over 40, a guide that will teach you how to defeat the younger, more athletic opponent - a must buy for all BJJ athletes as the skills, concepts and techniques in here are like a cheat code for BJJ success!
Your guides in the BJJ for Old F***s instructional are, Rob Biernacki (46) and Stephan Kesting (52), both of whom are very experienced BJJ black belts
Rob Biernacki is a BJJ black belt, and head instructor of Island Top Team. He’s among the forefront of the new wave of BJJ instructors, using sports science, biomechanics, kinesiology and a conceptual approach to the martial arts.
Rob has traveled to train with Marcelo Garcia, Caio Terra, Eddie Cummings, Paul Schreiner, and Henry Akins, Ryan Hall, Dean Lister, Jake McKenzie, Ricardo Liborio, and Charles McCarthy from ATT from whom he received his black belt.
He frequently teaches seminars at academies throughout North America and is sought after for private instruction by other BJJ instructors seeking cutting edge information.
He has also coached high level competitors like BJJ legend Yuri Simoes, Bill Cooper, Kyle Boehm and others to victory in high level competition.
Stephan Kesting is a BJJ black belt who has trained for over 40 years in the martial arts, including many grappling arts like BJJ, sambo, judo, submission wrestling and shoot wrestling.
His Youtube BJJ videos have over 64 million views. He’s produced 36 BJJ instructionals, and has published 3 books on the topic.
Stephan has worked with Rob Biernacki on a number of very successful instructionals including The BJJ Formula, The Modern Leglock Formula, The No Gi de la Riva Formula and The Submission Formula.
The underlying theme of their previous work is scientific and biomechanically-based approach to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. These instructionals have been described by many as the best, most useful instructionals they had ever seen.
The BJJ for Old F***s instructional will definitely improve your skills, reduce your injuries, and improve your longevity on the mat. And help you tap out lots of young punks. What’s better than that?
Apologies for my mic settings here, my side has a bit of an echo but the quality answers from Stephan and Rob more than make up for that!
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- Like Bernardo Faria said, find a move that you can become a specialist in rather than just good at most, find moves that work for you and you can become a god at them, and your game can accelerate as you grow from them.
- Older athletes need to ensure they have a deep understanding of underhooks, frame, base etc to ensure they know why they using certain moves, guards etc rather than just knowing the 'what' move.
- There is a macho element in some BJJ places, where when you roll, you roll at full speed and 100% always. Your BJJ journey is your journey, you have the right to pick and choose suitable training wise, and ask to slow things down, take rest rounds etc. As an older athlete, you need to appreciate you won't be able to go 100% all the time, and need a reality check. However, with honesty and time, you learn how far you can push yourself as an older guy.
- Practice is the time you learn, you grow as an athlete, a person and a BJJ practitioner. You need to learn that your training partners are there to grow and learn with, not to try and win against regardless. We are all there to grow and learn, if you break your toys ie training partners, you don't get to play with them so calm down 'Andy'!
- Judge a technique not on how well it works, but but how bad a situation it leads to when it fails - does a technique cause you to be passed and subbed all the time, then you might want to get rid of it!
- Assume that you want to 'experience as much jiu-jitsu in a round as possible' in a round when you roll, so you learn and grow every session, stop looking at taps as sign of weakness, look at the taps as a chance to learn how to improve your problem solving etc and you can get real time feedback on your current skill level, timing ability etc.
- If your gym doesn't do a proper warm up or cool down after sessions, you can add it into your routine to keep healthy and safe. Just because the class doesn't stretch, warm up, you can actually add in your own bits that you need before and after class to enable you to get to the next class and be able to live your life in between classes.
- Avoid trying to follow the lifestyle of health influencers and younger athletes, listen to your body, measure what works in terms of quality of sleep, diet changes etc and use those that work best for you and eliminate the changes that cause problems. No one else is living your life, look at what works for you and use those.