Gordon Ryan is one of the most accomplished BJJ professionals alive today. He is credited with an uptick in the popularity of BJJ. Before him, there were very few competitors who managed to assert their dominance and win competitions in a variety of rulesets.
In 2022, he won his 5th ADCC medal and displayed that he’s likely to be a fixture in the world of grappling for years to come. While many anticipate he’ll make the move to MMA at some point, Ryan has shot down those rumors and explained that he makes more than most UFC champions just competing in BJJ.
Recently Ryan guested on the Flex Lewis podcast and shared a bit about his motivation as well as what he considers peak age for BJJ.
When asked about his motivation Ryan explained:
“For me, I’m not really competing against the second best guy in the world. They’ll be boring for me. What I’m trying to do is my whole training program is built on progression over time.”
“So what I my goal is to be the absolute best version of myself that I can be before I hit my physical prime in grappling.”
“And now in grappling, you have a much later peak with athletes because it’s a sport mostly based around isometric tension. It’s not an explosion based sport like boxing or wrestling, for example, where you peak much earlier. You hit the peak in isometric tension in combination with still having good cardio, somewhere between 35 and 40.”
“After 40, 45, you start to your cardio starts to diminish. So I think 35 to 40, you hit you’ll be just you’ll be as strong with the but the best combination of isometric strength and cardio you have. And by the time you’re 35, 40, you’ve been training, you know, you’re, you know, 20 years or whatever it is. ”
“So, like, imagine if I was twice as strong as I am now with the same cardio, but an extra 10 to 15 years of technical progression like that, basically, that’s that’s what I’m thinking.”
“As long as I can stay healthy, I should reach my peak sometime between 35 and 40. So my whole thing is, how good can I be in the next 10 to 15 years until I go over that hump and I, I start to decline physically. So that’s that’s my goal. ”
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– Editorial staff of BJJDOC
