Jiu-Jitsu Lessons with A.J. Daulerio

A conversation with writer and editor about sobriety, grappling, and learning to love the hard thing.

Welcome to the HEAVIES Feelgood Routine, a series that talks to cool, interesting, and creative people about how they design their busy schedules to accommodate good habits.

When I was a scrub writer on the Internet, A.J. Daulerio was the alpha and omega of the blog universe. To my mind, his versions of Deadspin and Gawker are still the pinnacle of the fun Internet. Now, over a decade later later, he’s sober and writes and edits The Small Bow, a mighty little publication that’s ostensibly about recovery and happens to be a home for some of the most beautiful writing you’ll find anywhere.

About two ears ago A.J. got into jiu-jitsu, which he says has been tremendously beneficial for his mental health and recovery. He was gracious enough to hop on a video call to yack about competing in a tournament over the weekend (spoiler alert: it didn’t go well), weight cutting, and why he considers the current incarnation of his work to more art than journalism.

This is a good one.

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Chris: Yo, what's up, man? It's nice to finally meet you. So how'd you end up in jiu-jitsu?

A.J.: There's a reader of The Small Bow, this guy who trains MMA overseas and is in recovery. I went to his Instagram and he seemed pretty legit, so I just asked him about training me. A friend of mine had just died, and I was kind of feeling my middle age, and I wanted to push myself a little more. So he started me on sandbag training, which was really great, and every week he'd give me a homework assignment. One week it was just to go to a free jiu-jitsu class. I was curious and interested, but scared to death. So I did the thing I'm not proud of: I signed up my five-year-old son.

A trial balloon.

That gave me a little delay, and then I went that Monday, and it was wow. Some Gracie gyms require a year of training before you spar, but my professor doesn't. You spar the first day. It was really clumsy and awkward. After I was done, and my feet were all cut up, they asked, "Would you come back tomorrow?" I said, "Alright," and told myself I'd give it six classes.

Jiu-jitsu is probably as important to my mental health and overall recovery as 12-step meetings and therapy. It's had that much of a profound impact on my life. And I suck. I'm not good. But what it does is it forces me into situations that, I think, the older we get, the more terrifying things can become—and the more I withdraw. How old is your son?

He’s three.

So I have a seven, six, and five-year-old. I don't know if you went through this process, but I was just like, "I'm not big enough to be a dad. I'm not strong enough to be a dad at this point. I can't save anybody. I can't protect my children. I can't protect myself." I just felt all that insecurity come over me. Jiu-jitsu helps neutralize that a little bit, not because I can beat anyone up, but it's slowed everything down so much.

How long have you been doing it now?

I've been doing it on and off for two years, but I went this morning, and I'm still anxious about going. It's like the heaviest door to open every week. I go into it hoping nobody new shows up, nobody who's going to murder me and make me question everything about my life. Of course, it happens, but that's part of it.

After my last tournament, which I did very badly in, I got in my head. I made a mistake I'll never make again: They gave out the names of your opponents the day prior, and I Googled them. One guy had a whole Instagram of all his medals and tournaments he'd been to…

I mean, it’s kind of impossible not to look them up.

He was also kind of a cornball, too. But I got in my head where I was just like, "Man, I'm not prepared for this." Which was dumb. It's not like he was a black belt. It's not like we were definitely put into this situation. But I was so full of self-doubt that the minute we slapped hands and stuff, I threw him on top of me. I grabbed a cross-collar choke, which looked nice.

Oh whoa.

And he was just… there. Then, just point after point. It was like 11-nothing. I was just trying to survive the whole time. My professor was like, "Why do you do that?" It was just sheer panic because I forgot what I'm supposed to do, and then I question why I'm there.

The next fight, I slowed everything down, and I got a takedown right off the bat. It was nice.

Amazing.

I thought I was going to choke this guy; he was blue and just didn't tap. I burned my grip. Then he had a nice sweep. I've had this really bad shoulder for a while, and he got me in a pretty weak arm triangle, but I was just like, "I can't lose my arm over this." So I just... yeah.

I just got so in my head about it beforehand. I was talking about this with my therapist this morning, and I was like, "I'm just so predisposed to losing. I feel like I don't deserve to win." That's the thing I'm trying to really work through here.

I don't know what to read to get rid of that. Should I read Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant? I don't know, but I have that thing in my life where I'm just like, "I'm not worth it, I don't deserve it. If I never try my best, because I'm afraid to try my best, then why do anything?" So I'm always kind of in this moment of implosion. That's kind of where my resting state is. I'm addicted to losing because I'm comfortable with it.

But I really want to start to get better about that. I want to have confidence in myself, and I want to figure out how to actually try my best. And this has been a great way of showing me that there's a lot of work that can be done here. Whereas if I don't do this, then I just sit with it the whole time.

I feel you. Actually, I might have just read a book that might be useful for you. Have you heard of A Fighter’s Heart by Sam Sheridan?

It's right here! [holds a copy up to the camera]

Oh, dude, yeah! I just finished it, and I started the second one. You really get into the mental side of combat in a useful way for me. My default is, I just want to survive when I go up against someone and not get beat up too badly.

That's the thing. Sam Sheridan was kind of a badass beforehand. I mean, I'm a blogger, so I try to keep it in perspective. But the survival thing is a really interesting point because I had two goals going into this fight: none of them were to win. It was basically get a takedown and not get submitted. I survived the first one, but I got submitted in the second. None of it was to win, and they were completely winnable. My professor almost demoted me, honestly.

When you're in a training class, what's your approach? Different guys have different styles—some are more aggressive, some are more technical. Where do you fall?

I love to grapple aggressively, man. I do like to get after it. But I'm also more cognizant of the fact that it's not cool to do that with upper belts. You can get hurt more by the people who don't know what they're doing. But I love it. I did four rounds today with all white and blue belts, and it's fun. I am sore as hell, and I can't lift my arm, but there’s no better way to start a morning, right? Everything is so much easier that day. This morning, I woke up with some stomach stuff, and I thought, "Well, there's your excuse not to go." Instead of fighting the excuse, I just thought, "I'll be fine." That's a big step for me, just to go to these things. I'm up there, I had to get up at 4:45 to do stuff and work a little bit.

So it's before you have to drop the kids off or anything like that.That’s cool. Since starting jiu-jitsu, have you started to think more holistically about what you eat? Has any of that changed?

I recognize how bad bread is for me. I've gotten to the point where I think, "Maybe I shouldn't eat carbs every single day." But when I stopped drinking and doing drugs, I became a candy, snacks, sweets guy. That was definitely a replacement. I had to lose about four pounds for this tournament, and the last time I had to lose nine. So I did keto for about two weeks, and that works, but then a week later… I swear, the pizza after cutting weight for a while is the best pizza you'll ever have.

Nothing better.

I think a good weight for me at my age is about 175, and I'm usually about 180-182, which I think is heavy for me. I have a bad shoulder and haven't been doing a lot of gym stuff, but you need muscle mass to get through this sort of thing. What did you fight at?

I fought at 125. I'm a small guy, about 5'5". The dude I fought was a 19-year-old who was about 5'9", 5’10”—and he beat my ass. It was bad. I thought I was going to have dad strength on him, and afterward I learned he had a two year old.

It is one of those things where I recognize how important it is for me to do as much as I possibly can to maintain and preserve my body. It's a cliché, but the older you get, I mean, I'm always sore, and I'm okay with that because I love doing this so much. But I also want to be able to walk when I'm older. So I think I just need to weight train and do cardio.

Were you an MMA fan before you got into this stuff?

For sure, yeah. I'm a fan of that, but it didn't play as much of a part in it as mostly just, "Okay, I'm being presented this opportunity to do something I'm totally afraid of, and I feel like I'm too old for, but this other guy is actually saying, 'You can do it.'" So I think it was really just like, I want to try to address these fears that I've been carrying around with me for so long and realizing that they're not going to completely go away, but little by little, they get quieter. And it's been great.

I played sports basically through high school, the normal sports, but the hardest thing for me is following directions. There's so much you have to be good at following directions to do jiu-jitsu. I'm terrible. I'm like the guy who, before smartphones, when you'd get directions at a gas station, I'd already know I'd have to go to another gas station right after because I'd completely forget what this person was telling me. So I'm definitely frustrated in the fact that I'm not picking up the technique as quickly as other people do. But I am content to be like... it's not about that. I can't express enough how great it has been for the emotional sobriety part of my recovery.

The guy who got me into it, the guy overseas, he does this great thing called "Roll To Recovery," where he rents out a gym, does an AA meeting, and then they beat the shit out of each other. I really want to try to start one here. I haven't found a sober jiu-jitsu guy who owns a gym yet. They still seem to smoke a lot of weed.

What is it about your gym that you like, and what's its makeup?

It skews very young. It's not that competitive, meaning there are people, like 12 of us, who competed in this last tournament. But the overall vibe is not self-defense. I think it is more a sport where people go there, like they go to a tennis court, and just want to play tennis with people. I don't see it that way yet. I still like to get my ass beat there, basically. So I haven't officially gone to thinking of it as a sport yet, but that's kind of my goal—where I can have fun with anybody and understand things and continue to learn.

One thing I'm always curious about, and I think it's a little less pronounced in Muay Thai, at least here in New York, but a lot of the martial arts communities can feel extremely red pilled. Are you seeing that at all on the ground level?

I don't know. There's actually one guy whose Instagram says "red-pilled." But I don't know, man. We were talking about this a little before, but I follow a lot of jiu-jitsu accounts, like Andrew Tate's stuff, Andy Elliot. They're just meathead, ultra-masculine, anti-trans, whatever—all the trash I don't necessarily want to see. But I'm so curious about Andrew Tate that I end up watching his stuff all the time. What is this guy's secret sauce? I still don't know exactly what he does. I guess he just trains teenagers to be him.

Something like that.

I also just watch his videos, and he and his brother are smoking cigars and saying awful shit. I do try to look into this, asking, "Is there something in the sport that will automatically make me become one of these people in some way? Am I going to start to relate a little bit better with the Shawn Ryan Show? Will maybe RFK Jr. be right about this stuff? Who needs measles anyway?"

I try to separate both of them because, obviously, you watch any UFC fight, and the whole gang is in the front row. I try to just keep it as part of my recovery and not be part of the jiu-jitsu community. But I would love to be part of a jiu-jitsu community that feels relatable.

So who else is in your algorithm? Are you a Craig Jones guy or like...?

Yeah, and then one time he did a video with Alex Jones, and I'm like, no, come on, man. But yeah, I follow a lot of people. There's this guy, Chris Bones Jones, an American guy who teaches in Australia.

Does your professor have a teaching philosophy or pedagogy that you really appreciate?

I love the fact that he's ESL, from Brazil. It's very basic stuff, which I found challenging before. But when I did my first tournament, and I got smoked in the first fight, I came back to the corner, and he just said, "Just don't do what you did last time. You'll be okay." And that made sense. It's a very simplified approach, but he really encourages technique, and that's what I'm weakest on.

But he also appreciates that I'm the oldest guy in the class, kind of the smallest guy in the class. I'm not the most athletic; this isn't coming easily to me. Then I got hurt; I tore my meniscus and had to spend some time away. Coming back after that, it was like, "Oh, I've gotta make a choice now." The potential for this happening again is high. Do I want to put myself back into this? It's just a matter of whether my life will be better or worse with this. And it's always going to be better. I just try not to get hurt. But if you get kicked in the face, it's kind of part of what you do, a little bit. I don't want it to happen, but it could.

After you come home from practice, what does the rest of your day look like? Are you just working on The Small Bow until a certain time? It's an incredible site, dude. Everything I read on there is terrific.

Thank you so much. I think we have similar approaches to what you're doing in terms of health and fitness—how can you expand this a little bit to make it more universal, a little weirder, go at this from a different angle? That's what I'm trying to do with this. Half our audience is in recovery. The other part are just strange and lonely people who, for whatever reason, are trying to figure shit out. I love that about it. I want to encourage that. And I'm trying more and more to incorporate things. Your Muay Thai practice is part of your story and how you do things, part of your work. It's like incorporating that. And that's what I'm trying to do with my jiu-jitsu. This is part of my recovery. This is something I'm going to talk about all the time. I'm going to obsess about it. I'm going to try to tell people how important it is to my life. I think that's good.

I think that's actually a great part of the most compelling and interesting magazine editors I've had in my life; they're obsessive about things in ways that most people are not. I think you need that to really do this stuff day in, day out, and care about it and grow with it. That's kind of just what I'm trying to do. I do The Small Bow every single day. There's always something to do.

So you're done for the day. You're shutting the laptop, or maybe you're not. What sort of things are you doing? Are you just thinking about jiu-jitsu all the time?

I'm going through today thinking, "Where did I mess up? Can I beat this person? What do I need to do differently Thursday morning to improve a little bit? What's the one thing I could bring into that?" So Thursday's good. Then I'll probably go Friday, and then try a different thing. Friday afternoons I go, it's a different group of guys. They're usually a little more intense, younger, a little more Russian, and scary. But I do think about it so much. And when I'm on Instagram, that's all I'm watching—that and people falling down and getting hit in the head.

What is SSENSE?

It's a fashion e-commerce site, but it's pretty fun because it’s a little literary too. It’s cool, a great day job. I'd love for HEAVIES to be the main thing, but I'm kind of seeing the limits of how big that can grow right now, mostly because I'm not a doctor. I'm a journalist and I can ask questions, but I'm not going to be able to tell you why your mitochondria needs whatever the fuck it needs.

Do you consider what you're doing more art or journalism?

I think it's a little more journalism than art. What about you?

I went through this phase, and I probably discovered about two years ago, where I feel more comfortable saying I do art than journalism. I don't feel comfortable calling myself a journalist. I talk to people, I ask questions. I could call myself that; I could probably qualify better there than I could as an artist, but I'm drawn to that world more. I want to write that way more, be a little more free. I want to try things and be more brave about stuff. I think I can incorporate some of the skills I've learned in journalism, but for the most part, I think I just need to keep running at the thing that feels right more than anything.

What made you flip the switch? Was there something specific that made you feel like you needed license to call yourself an artist?

There was a moment when I figured... because The Small Bow started with a grant in 2019. It was a normal website, and I was behind the scenes doing basic editing, hiring people, commissioning all that stuff. Then we lost the grant, and I had to switch to the newsletter format. I was so paranoid that people would only associate me with the bad things that Gawker did, or bad things I did at Deadspin. I felt like there was an asterisk next to my name. Then one day, I just said, "Fuck it. I'm going to write what's in my heart right now and see what happens." I was going to try to write like the writer I always wanted to be and see how that felt and see what happens. The response was positive, and I felt great.

I'm just like, "Okay, I'm going to go that direction. I'm going to do what makes me feel good." That's really it. I haven't met many happy journalists these days, so I tend to lean this direction a little bit more, I think, for my own sanity.

What part of doing this makes you the happiest, now that you're making art?

Honestly, it's that we get essays from people who I think don't necessarily have a place for them, and they'll come here and be like, "Well, I'm not in recovery." I'm just like, "Doesn't matter. Just give me the thing you want to do, and we can make it happen here." I think that's a real joy: to basically have a site where I think I can have any person I want write for it. I can find a way and make something relevant. It's a real gift. I think we both worked at publications where great editors have unfortunately been bowled over by the business side and then stripped of all their power—their real secret sauce that made you want to work for them to begin with. I kind of want to preserve that as much as possible.

It’s so funny. At GQ, I totally forgot you were profiled in the print magazine. There's a shot of you on the toilet with the microphone.

[laughs] I mean, that's another part of my life that I try to keep close, just for instructional purposes at this point. But it's twelve years ago now. So I'm letting it go. I'm not going to run from it. I'll let people know I worked at Gawker and Deadspin; it's eminently Google-able, sure, but this is what I do now. I'm glad. I've worked at The Small Bow longer than anywhere else at this point. I didn't think I was ever going to work again, frankly, for a little while, so I'm glad I can.

Do you think you’ll compete again any time soon?

I want to compete again. I think I could. I just want to medal again. Not for any other reason than the progression part of it and just for the showing up part of it. Because every time I miss a day, I can feel the pull to basically never go again. I'm always that close to quitting. And that's kind of the fight that I want to stay in the whole time.

One of the things I learned early on in one of my first classes, there was an upper-belt guy who was a wrestler and a thumper, too. He got me in a guillotine really quick, and I tapped. He was like, "Why did you tap?" And I'm like, "Well, you were choking me to death." And he's like, "It wasn't tight. You could have escaped." Then he said, "If you have space to breathe, you have space to escape." And I'm like, man, that works on so many different levels for me. It’s stuff like that I can learn from every single time.

Thanks as always for reading HEAVIES. Appreciate you all.