OUTSIDERS BLOG

Last week I started jiu-jitsu.

This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Years, honestly. And last week I finally stopped wanting to do it and actually did it.

In CrossFit, sport sits at the top of the pyramid. And over the past five years I've made it a point to commit to something outside the gym that would challenge me — something I'd have to actually prepare for, not just show up to. Jiu-jitsu has been on that list for a while. Last week it moved off the list and onto the mat.

But what stood out to me most wasn't the commitment itself. It was everything that came with it.

I decided three classes a week was a reasonable starting point. The problem was finding three slots that actually worked.

I'm at the gym most days from 7:30am to 4:30pm. One day a week I'm there until 7pm. The schedule doesn't leave a lot of open windows. So I started looking at the jiu-jitsu class times and kept landing on the same answer every time.

5am.

Which means a 4am wake-up call.

Now — I have to be honest about something. I preach sleep. I understand the science of it, the importance of recovery, what it does to your performance and your mood and your ability to show up as your best self. I tell members this regularly.

And I have a genuinely unhealthy relationship with going to sleep.

Not sleeping itself. Going to sleep. Any time after 9pm I consider my personal wind-down time — sports on TV, a show with Toni, whatever. No real routine. I shower, brush my teeth, get into bed, turn on the TV, look at the clock and somehow two hours have passed and it's 11pm and I'm still wide awake thinking about all the things I should be doing differently.

I should have a no-screens hour before bed. I should read instead. I should meditate. I should get the TV out of the bedroom.

I know all of this. I coach it. And I still look at my phone at 11pm thinking about how I should probably put my phone down.

So when I committed to three 5am jiu-jitsu classes last week, I was setting myself up for an interesting experiment.

Here's what the data actually looked like.

Day 1 — Sunday June 22nd: The night before I got 5 hours and 44 minutes of sleep. My Whoop recovery came in at 44% — yellow. Not great, not terrible. I got up and went.

Day 2 — Wednesday June 25th: 4 hours and 30 minutes of sleep. Recovery at 26% — red. That one hurt. But I got up and went.

Day 3 — Friday June 27th: Those 4am alarms start coming fast when you're doing this three times a week. But I was able to grab two naps during the day — one for an hour and ten minutes when I got home from class, another with Adley during her midday nap for an hour and fifteen. Recovery that morning was actually 75% — green.

Three days. Three classes attended. Not one missed.

I want to be clear — this was still the honeymoon phase. Week one of anything is powered by novelty and excitement. I'm not going to pretend I cracked some code.

But what I noticed, and what I think ties directly back to what we talk about at Outsiders, was that mental battle in the moment. The alarm goes off. It's dark. The bed is warm. Your body is tired. And there is a voice — a very reasonable, very convincing voice — telling you that sleep is more important than this and you can always go Wednesday.

I have two backup alarms set because I don't fully trust myself. I think that's worth admitting.

But every morning I got up anyway. And every morning, without exception, I didn't regret it. I felt sharper. More dialed in. Better throughout the rest of my day than I would have if I'd hit snooze and rolled over.

The issue was never the 4am wake-up. The issue was always everything the night before. Did I lay out my clothes? Did I sign up for class in advance so the commitment was already public? Did I get to bed at a reasonable hour? The morning is easy when the night sets you up for it. The morning is a battle when it doesn't.

This isn't really about jiu-jitsu or sleep data or even 4am alarms.

It's about what happens when motivation wears off and all you have left is whether you're going to do the thing you said you were going to do.

Motivation got me to sign up for jiu-jitsu. It didn't get me out of bed at 4am on day two with 26% recovery. That was something else. Call it discipline, call it stubbornness, call it not wanting to be the person who talks about things without doing them. Whatever it is — that's the muscle we're actually trying to build when we show up here every day.

The same battle I fought in my bedroom last week at 4am is the one you fight every time your alarm goes off for a 5:30am class. Every time you're tired and busy and have a dozen reasonable excuses to skip. The comfort is real. The temptation is real. And the only thing that beats it consistently isn't motivation — it's a commitment you already made that's bigger than how you feel in the moment.

That's what Outsiders is. A commitment you make before the alarm goes off. So that when it does, the decision is already made.



— Coach Joe