Jocko Willink is well-known for his love of both Jiu-Jitsu and hard workouts, but even he believes that BJJ is more important than a gym membership. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise really, considering that Willink still pushes himself to train with some of the best BJJ competitors around to this day. He did go into more detail on a recent episode of his podcast though, and he explained exactly why Jiu-Jitsu is more important to him:
“Jiu-jitsu is kind of a priority. I’ll tell you why: It’s learning! If you take me and you, and we go through this situation, and you decide to do jiu-jitsu, and I decide to weightlift, in ten years, who is happy and who is sad? The answer is clear!”
This makes sense, because people frequently talk about how Jiu-Jitsu changed their life or taught them lessons to use in other areas of their life. Willink has even talked about dealing with losses in Jiu-Jitsu and how that can help you learn to deal with losses in other areas of life before. Moreover, Jocko Willink thinks that the physical benefits of Jiu-Jitsu are obvious and the physical benefits of a gym membership can be had by simply using some at-home equipment:
“While you were training, guess what else you were doing. You were doing calisthenics; you were sprinting; you were lifting rocks; you were doing cheap stuff for free and still getting massive benefits. For me, my priority is going to jiu-jitsu. Because you can spend 40$ on a set of rings for your garage, and the next thing you know, you can do pull-ups, dips, and muscle-ups, so you can get massive benefits with a set of rings or a pull-up bar. You can become a beast with those exercises.”
The below clip where Jocko Willink explains why he believes Jiu-Jitsu is more important than a gym membership was taken from a full-length episode of the Jocko podcast:
