"I started doing Jiu-Jitsu when I was 19 years old and at first, I hated it."

Today we hear from David Pham, age 28 from Southern California. David is wrapping up his last year of graduate school and shares with us what life is like as a full time student pursuing a Doctorate in Physical Therapy while trying to manage a training schedule and the importance of finding the right Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym.

PWT: “Great to talk with you David. It sounds like you’ve taken a pretty interesting path with your jiu-jitsu even quitting pretty soon into starting before picking it back up again years later.”

David: “I started doing jiu-jitsu when I was 19 years old and at first, I hated it. The first gym I trained at in upstate New York was not the best setting to start the sport out for me. Constantly getting aggressively submitted by everyone. There were no beginner programs to ease me in. 

The first lesson I remember was an inverted guard to armbar sequence. I did not even know how to shrimp let alone invert. I quickly dropped it after the first month and continued playing lacrosse in California where I went to college. 

As I am finishing up my final year of Physical Therapy school, I always find it interesting that the sport that I am trying to put the musculoskeletal system at disadvantageous positions and lock up joints is the exact opposite of my future profession to free up joints and strengthen the musculoskeletal system. I found that when life made me work hard my jiu-jitsu slowed down and when my life slowed down my jiu-jitsu sped up. There is always a balance to things and some things need to compromise in order to move forward.”

PWT: “Going through schooling to be a physical therapist while doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu must give you a different perspective on things. Do you find one helps the other?”

David: “It does definitely help the healing process and preventable injuries. Knowing what treatments are bogus and true are very important to be backed up by research not word of mouth/randomly online. As far the treatment of injuries, BJJ is just the mechanism. The way it presents can be similar to many other pathologies/mechanisms, so it can be as straightforward or complex as they come depending on the person. Recognizing joint range of motion and the limitations of certain joints certainly allows me to understand submissions more in terms of the bio-mechanics. Commonly, when things are damaged, people jump to name random/common terms without proper knowledge of anatomy. Each tissue needs to be addressed differently in terms of healing. That is very important when people train through injuries, where they should take time off and if it prevents them from doing daily activities to seek medical assessment, if able.”

PWT: “What made you start BJJ in the first place? Can you talk more about how your second gym and the friend that convinced you to give it another shot?”

David: “I was always interested in team sports and only got to try wrestling for one year in high school. I started to get a little bored with traditional college sports in school. They just weren’t sastifying what I was looking for athletically. BJJ is hugely popular in SoCal and a college friend of mine suggested I try it out again. My friend grew up in New York similarly to how I’d grown up. We had the same interests, played the same sports, and had the same major which meant we were in the same classes with each other all day, every day. He suggested his gym and would take me to introduce me to everyone.  I really liked the idea of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu being a team sport, but also a very individual sport. 

The CheckMat gym he took me too was instantly welcoming. They wanted to know about who I was and what my other interests were. It felt more like a family. They were understanding the days we would arrive late due to school and when we were just generally tired having class from 8 a.m. until jiu-jitsu started at 7 p.m.; even having to eat dinner immediately before practice. It was really different than my first Brazilian Jiu-jitsu experience.

My friend in college trained at a local CheckMat school. I visited and fell in love with it. If I did not have a friend that trained I would have never given it a second chance. ”