From Powerlifting to Jiu Jitsu
I remember the moment vividly.
I was in the gym, doing something I had always taken pride in showing off—standing ab wheel rollouts. It was one of those little feats of strength that powerlifters appreciate. Core strength, control, balance. The kind of thing that makes people stop and say, “damn.”
I had just finished deadlifting and was still riding that post-set adrenaline when something felt off. I reached down to my stomach near my belly button and felt it.
A hard lump.
Confused, I turned to my friend, another powerlifter who was training with me that day.
“Dude… I got a weird bump. What the hell is this?”
He took one look at it and said matter-of-factly,
“Yeah… you probably have a hernia.”
And just like that, something changed.
Apparently, hernias are something a lot of powerlifters deal with. Years of bracing, intra-abdominal pressure, pushing the limits of what your body can handle. It’s part of the territory.
But at that moment, I didn’t know what that meant for me.
Powerlifting wasn’t just something I did.
It was who I was.
The Identity We Build
For ten years I competed in powerlifting.
Sixteen competitions across three federations.
Training cycles, meet prep, loading bars, chasing numbers.
Everything revolved around the next training day. The next milestone. The next platform.
At some point along the way, powerlifting stopped being a hobby and became part of my identity.
I was a competitive powerlifter.
So when I discovered that hernia, I didn’t just think about the injury. I started thinking about what it could take away.
What I didn’t know then was that the real challenge wouldn’t be the injury itself.
It would be learning how to evolve beyond it.
Training Around the Reality
For the next three years I learned something a lot of lifters eventually face.
You can’t fight your body.
You have to work with it.
With guidance from friends and a lot of trial and error, I figured out how to train around the hernia. But there was a limit. (Isn’t there always?) Too much intra-abdominal pressure and it would flare up again and again and again…
The lifts that once felt inevitable:
a 550lb squat
a 600lb deadlift
suddenly started to feel like numbers that might never happen.
And that realization was a hard road to walk.
My last powerlifting competition was in 2023, about a year after discovering the hernia.
Deep down I knew something had shifted. I had hit a proverbial wall that wasn’t just about strength anymore.
It was about accepting change.
Leaving the Comfort Zone
f you’ve ever done something for ten years, walking away from it doesn’t feel natural.
It feels like losing a piece of you.
Around that time, I had friends in Jiu Jitsu who kept pushing me to step out of my comfort zone and into theirs to just come try it.
I turned to one of my friends, someone I respected deeply in powerlifting, but he was also a Jiu Jitsu practitioner. When I started realizing my training had to change because of the hernia, I turned to him for advice.
Instead of just talking about it, he offered something better.
An introduction.
A rash guard.
And a lesson.
That really meant a lot more than he realizes. Not long after that experience, things started to change.
At first, it was just curiosity…something different, something new to try. But the more I trained, the more I realized something important.
Jiu Jitsu didn’t aggravate my hernia the way heavy lifting did.
And it challenged me in an entirely different way.
A Different Kind of Strength
Powerlifting is about force.
Jiu Jitsu is about problem solving.
Every roll is a puzzle.
Every position is a decision.
You’re constantly thinking.
What’s my escape?
Where is the leverage?
What mistake did I just make?
It forces you to stay present.
It pushes you cognitively in a way I had never experienced before in training.
And maybe most importantly…
It gave me a new outlet.
The Unexpected Gift
Getting out of your comfort zone is never easy.
Especially when that comfort zone took ten years to build.
But stepping into Jiu Jitsu gave me something I didn’t realize I needed.
A new challenge.
A new community.
A new mountain to climb.
I’m incredibly thankful for the friend who showed me that door, for the friends who pushed me to try it. The ones who want nothing more than to talk about what I am learning and how the experience for them is.
For the teammates who check in with me.
For the academy where I train
a place that gives me purpose, tools, and friendships that extend far beyond the mats.
The Summit Isn’t One Peak
We often think our journey is tied to one path.
One identity.
One thing we do well.
But life doesn’t always work that way.
Sometimes the road forces you to change direction.
And when it does, it doesn’t mean you’re starting over.
It means you’re climbing a different mountain.
Dark Summit Mindset
Sometimes growth isn’t holding on to what you were.
Sometimes it’s having the courage to become something new.
The Dark Summit Mindset 
Leave a comment