Mike Stewart Jr. started in taekwondo at six years old, earned a black belt in ninjutsu by his late teens, and discovered jiu-jitsu through a judo black belt training quietly on the side of his ninjutsu school. After a rough stretch in his early twenties — drinking heavily, experimenting with drugs, a repossessed car, a couple arrests, and weight up to 230 pounds — he made a decision at 25 with his brother: train jiu-jitsu seriously for a year, then open a school together. They opened Rising Tide Martial Arts as white belts. Mike trained under Helson Gracie, who supported the school once Mike earned his blue belt. Sixteen-plus years later, Rising Tide operates five locations in the Columbia, Maryland area with two more opening, hosts seminars with names like Gordon Ryan, and has built one of the most respected jiu-jitsu communities on the East Coast. Mike got his black belt in 2019 and trains four to six times a week. He met Josh on the mats at Vagner Rocha Martial Arts, where he visited, trained, taught, and blended in immediately.
I met Mike on the mats at Vagner Rocha Martial Arts. He came down, trained, taught a little, shared knowledge freely, and blended right in with one of the most competitive classes in a community that does not make that easy for visitors. That tells you most of what you need to know about him before he says a word. What this conversation revealed is a guy who built a five-location martial arts business from two rollout mats and seven students, opened the doors as a white belt, survived the inevitable challenge matches that come with claiming legitimacy you have not yet earned on paper, and arrived — sixteen years later — at a coaching philosophy and a life philosophy that has as much to teach the business-minded midlife grappler as it does the gym owner.
What stood out most is Mike's honesty about the unglamorous reality of building something real. No shortcuts, no overnight success story, sixteen years of below-means living, deficit peanut butter, busted cars, and a level of discipline that he is now passing on to a new generation of students — many of whom are finding the same thing he found: that jiu-jitsu gives back exactly what you put into it, on the mat and off it.
From Ninjutsu Black Belt to Rock Bottom to White Belts Who Opened a School
Mike's path to jiu-jitsu ran through three other martial arts first. Taekwondo at six. High school wrestling. A teaching job at a ninjutsu school as a teenager — taken because the taekwondo schools weren't hiring — where he earned his black belt in four years and got his first real exposure to jiu-jitsu and judo from a judo black belt training quietly on the side, against the tribal preferences of a school that did not want outside arts taught under its roof.
He discovered jiu-jitsu properly in 2005, inspired by watching Kenny Florian's technical level on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. He trained for a year at Yamasaki Academy in Maryland — one of the state's first BJJ schools — got humbled by a Brazilian training partner named Beto, learned the etiquette of tapping someone the hard way, and then walked away from it. Life unraveled. Heavy drinking. Weed, acid, Adderall, Vicodin — not heavy drugs by his framing, but enough experimentation and enough cigarettes from playing in a band to put him at 230 pounds with a repossessed car and a couple of arrests behind him.
"I hit up my brother. I was like, dude, I'm gonna get back into jiu-jitsu. I'm gonna train my ass off for a year. I want you to do it with me. And then after a year is up, we're gonna start a martial arts school."
— Mike Stewart Jr. · Rising Tide Martial ArtsHis brother said okay. Drove him to class. Paid his tuition the first few months. They trained two and three times a day, most days, for a year — and then they opened Rising Tide Martial Arts as white belts. Mike wore his ninjutsu black belt early on to teach what he calls "shitty jiu-jitsu" while building credibility, until Helson Gracie took notice of him as a blue belt and offered the support of his black belts and brown belts to legitimize the school. Mike taught kids and fundamentals. The senior belts handled the advanced classes. Sixteen-plus years and five locations later, that early scaffolding has become one of the most respected jiu-jitsu academies on the East Coast.
Punches, Bites, and Eye Gouges: Surviving the Early Years of a New School
Opening a jiu-jitsu school as a white belt in a region with established academies — Lloyd Irvin's gym, Denilson Pimenta teaching nearby, Helson Gracie's affiliate network — is not a low-stakes decision. Mike walked people in off the street, seventeen years ago, before jiu-jitsu had cultural penetration, and got tested in ways that would not happen at a gym with an established reputation. New students throwing punches, biting, attempting eye gouges and groin shots on day one. Mike's background in MMA — he fought six months into restarting his jiu-jitsu journey — and his prior martial arts conditioning meant he could handle the physical test.
The institutional pressure was the bigger challenge: other academy owners and black belts pushing back on a white belt running a school. Mike's answer, once he had Helson's support, was simple — if you have a problem, talk to the boss. The framing he uses is the mafia comparison, and it is more accurate than it sounds: legitimacy in a competitive jiu-jitsu market often runs through lineage and affiliation as much as belt rank, and Mike built both deliberately, in the right order, by staying humble enough to ask for support and consistent enough to earn it.
Mike is explicit that this business is easy to over-leverage — sign up too many members, build out facilities and equipment before the revenue justifies it, and you create a structural obligation you cannot sustain. Rising Tide grew in small, deliberate increments: rollout mats in a rented community center, a 2,000-square-foot space, expansion, a flagship headquarters, additional locations. Every step was tied to actual capacity rather than aspiration.
Full-time coaches at Rising Tide get benefits and health insurance — treated like a real job rather than a side hustle. This is expensive and deliberate, and it is also the reason the school has been able to retain quality instruction across five locations rather than churning through underpaid talent. Mike credits a business mentor he has worked with for four years as one of the best investments he has made — financial literacy applied directly to the operational discipline of running a martial arts business.
After his second amateur MMA fight, Mike came home with a busted face to a confused two-year-old daughter and a business that was not yet stable. He had to make an honest assessment: am I a fighter and an athlete, or am I a coach and a business owner? He chose the lane that made sense rather than the one that looked more glamorous — a decision he frames with characteristic bluntness as picking your lane rather than trying to be the rapper-athlete hybrid that rarely actually works.
Mike is explicit that admitting someone else is better at a given role — coaching, finances, operations — is hard, especially as you age and your identity gets tied to being the best in the room. He let his brother run the behind-the-scenes financial discipline. He let senior black belts run advanced classes while he built a reputation as Maryland's best kids' instructor. He is now stepping back from teaching every class because the school's growth depends on developing people who can run it without him in the room.
Why the Best Coaches in Jiu-Jitsu Are Learning to Stop Rolling
One of the most striking parts of this conversation is Mike's reframing of a pressure that jiu-jitsu coaches impose on themselves almost universally: the expectation that the coach must be better than every student in the room, indefinitely. He points out — correctly — that this expectation does not exist in any other combat sport. Trevor Wittman is not expected to outspar Justin Gaethje. Firas Zahabi and John Danaher were never expected to beat up Georges St-Pierre in sparring. Eddie Bravo's senior black belts get caught by talented blue belts on lucky days and nobody questions the system.
Removing that self-imposed pressure made Mike a better coach. It also revealed something about the value of stepping outside the round entirely. Watching from the sideline gives a coach perspective on the whole room — who needs work on half guard passing, who needs better front headlock finishing mechanics, who does not understand the verbal cues being used — that is invisible from inside a live roll. He compares it to a soccer national team coach calling from the sideline rather than playing alongside one athlete and losing sight of the rest of the field.
"We are the only sport I can think of where the coaches are expected to be better than the athletes. That's not expected in any other combat sport. I removed that pressure from myself, and the athletes got better as a result."
— Mike Stewart Jr. · Rising Tide Martial ArtsThe Panama call — Rising Tide's coded terminology for blocking the inside hip during guard passing, borrowed from another black belt on the team and inspired by the strategic importance of the Panama Canal — is a small but telling example of the coaching sophistication that comes from treating jiu-jitsu instruction like any other high-performance sport: coded play-calling so the opposing athlete cannot adapt in real time, exactly like a football play call or corner instructions in MMA.
Mike's class structure reflects the same philosophy he praises in Gordon Ryan and John Danaher's teaching: control-based, methodical, one technique taught with real depth rather than ten techniques taught shallow. Wrestling serves as the warm-up — hand fighting, snap downs, collar ties, building toward body locks and front headlocks before any takedowns are live. Rounds are situational by design: know your partner's strength, and deliberately put yourself in the position that exposes your weakness to it. The approach treats every roll as targeted skill development rather than just competitive sparring — a model that scales especially well for the midlife practitioner trying to make limited mat time count.
Control-Based Jiu-Jitsu as the Long-Term Game
Mike's preference for pressure passing over standing guard passing is rooted in both longevity and martial realism. Standing passes are hard on aging knees and demand speed and explosiveness that diminishes with age. More importantly, he argues, standing guard passing barely exists in high-level MMA — a D1 wrestler being held in guard is simply going to stand back up, and a pure jiu-jitsu practitioner trying to re-engage a wrestler on the feet in a real fight is in serious danger. Treating guard and half guard like a pin — controlling, pressuring, holding position before attempting to pass — is both the more sustainable approach for an aging body and the more combat-honest approach to the art.
This is also why Mike has steered the gym toward leg attack development, control-based passing systems, and away from movement-heavy guards that demand the kind of explosive athleticism a 43-year-old body increasingly cannot supply on demand. The philosophy is not about avoiding difficulty — it is about choosing which difficulty to pursue as the body's capabilities shift.
"Being able to effectively take down, pass, and pin — as opposed to pulling, dynamic sweeping, standing guard passing — is very, very important as you get older. I almost never pass guard on my feet anymore. It's rough on the knees."
— Mike Stewart Jr. · Rising Tide Martial ArtsHis training schedule reflects the same discipline applied to load management: high volume paired with low intensity on some days, high intensity paired with low volume on others — never both maxed simultaneously, a lesson learned the hard way after overdoing two-and-three-a-day sessions plus lifting and recognizing it was compromising recovery and other priorities. Sundays off. Four to six sessions most weeks. The structure is built to sustain decades, not to maximize any single week.
The Honest Math on Alcohol, Weight, and What Actually Moves the Needle
Mike is direct about the recovery conversation in a way that I deeply respect: he still drinks, he is not on a high horse about it, but he is unambiguous that alcohol is genuinely bad for recovery and that the single highest-leverage change most struggling students could make is not a supplement or a technique — it is cutting their drinking from four days a week down to one or two. He has personally helped a meaningful number of people in the academy get sober from alcohol and drugs, and he counts that impact as more important than any trophy the gym has produced.
- Nutrition and macro tracking. He tells students directly: you can still eat a cheeseburger and pizza if it fits your macros, but most midlife grapplers carrying an extra 40–50 pounds will see dramatic gains in output and recovery from dialing in calories and protein — independent of any new technique they could learn.
- Sleep, with permission to nap. Mike used to feel guilty about napping when tired, framing it as laziness. He has since reframed it: if sleep the night before was poor, a nap before training or a podcast is recovery, not weakness. He practiced exactly this the day of this recording.
- Creatine, ZMA, omega-3s, and consistent protein and water intake. The basic supplementation stack, applied consistently rather than chased trend by trend.
- Significant alcohol reduction — not necessarily elimination. The single most impactful, least discussed lever for the average midlife grappler trying to get serious about the sport. Mike's framing removes the all-or-nothing trap: cutting from four days a week to one or two produces dramatic, measurable results in recovery and weight.
- Respecting actual injuries. Not training through genuine injury at high intensity. Letting the injury actually heal rather than pushing volume that delays recovery and risks compounding the damage.
Breathe or Tap — Recovery for the Guy Who's Still Figuring Out His Sleep
Mike's honesty about struggling with sleep and needing permission to nap is something a lot of midlife grapplers will recognize. Breathe or Tap — my breathwork deep dive for jiu-jitsu practitioners and midlife recovery — gives you a practical tool for exactly that gap: how to use breath to wind down faster, improve the sleep you are getting, and build the parasympathetic access that makes recovery more efficient even when the hours are imperfect. Find it at ThatJiujiteiro.com or on YouTube at @thatjiujiteiro.
Staying Dangerous After 40: Not About Fighting Anyone, Ever
Mike's answer to what staying dangerous after 40 means to him is one of the more complete reframes I have heard on this show. He grew up in the Baltimore club scene, witnessed real violence — shootings, stabbings, mob attacks — and spent his early twenties believing toughness was the goal. Jiu-jitsu humbled that belief fast, then rebuilt it into something more useful: genuine confidence in his ability to defend himself, paired with the wisdom and self-awareness to recognize a dangerous situation and leave before it escalates.
The version of "dangerous" that matters to him now has almost nothing to do with physical confrontation. It is about being the example — the grandfather who is still shredded, still training, still lifting, still chasing his grandkids around outdoors, decades from now. It is about modeling for the next generation that what actually looks cool is going to bed on time, reading, getting sunlight, hitting your protein and water targets, and being a productive, helpful member of your community. Being a tough guy on the surface, disconnected from those deeper attributes, is hollow. He has seen that hollowness up close and chose differently.
"I want to be that dude when I'm 60, when I'm 70 — where my grandkids' friends are like, 'holy crap, your grandfather is shredded, your grandfather still does jiu-jitsu, your grandfather still lifts weights.' I just want to get after it forever."
— Mike Stewart Jr. · Rising Tide Martial ArtsRelentless
He thought for a moment. Then:
Relentless.
Not unmerciful — unrelenting. The distinction matters. Relentless, in Mike's framing, simply means an honest alignment between what you say you want and what you are willing to sustain in pursuit of it. Do you want to get good at jiu-jitsu? Then you must be relentless in pursuing it. Do you want to lose the weight? Be relentless with the discipline that requires. Do you want to build something real? Be relentless in the boring, mundane work that nobody glamorizes — the financial literacy, the systems, the unglamorous reps that no one wants to do but that separate the people who actually arrive somewhere from the people who quit early and tell themselves a story about why.
Mike's challenge to anyone listening is direct, and I will not soften it because it should not be softened: if you are not willing to be relentless about a goal, that is fine — but admit it. Admit you would rather stay heavier into your sixties than do the work. Admit you would rather be mediocre at jiu-jitsu for the next ten years than show up consistently. There is no shame in choosing comfort. There is only dishonesty in claiming the goal while refusing the relentlessness it requires.
Rising Tide raises all the ships in the harbor. That is the mission Mike built sixteen years ago from two rollout mats and seven students who waited their turn to roll. It is still the mission today, across five locations, with a black belt and a Department of Natural Resources career on the way for his brother, and a relentless, unglamorous, decades-long commitment to making sure the next student who walks through the door finds something more valuable than a trophy. He found it. Now he is giving it away.
Fuel for the Relentless
Mike's most direct piece of advice to struggling students was about nutrition and alcohol — the unglamorous levers that produce the most dramatic results. Lineage Provisions holds to the same standard as everything on this show: real ingredients, no shortcuts, designed for people who are serious about the boring fundamentals that actually move the needle. Use code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at Lineage Provisions, or grab the link in bio.
Five Locations · Maryland · Gordon Ryan Seminars · A Community Built on Relentless Discipline
Rising Tide Martial Arts operates five locations across the Columbia, Maryland area, with two more opening. The school hosts top-level seminars, runs a competitive kids' program widely regarded as among the best in the region, and has helped numerous students get sober, rebuild confidence, and find genuine community. Follow on Instagram for technique content, seminar announcements, and a window into one of the most thoughtfully built jiu-jitsu organizations on the East Coast.
Stay Dangerous. Stay on the Mats. Hard to Kill in Midlife.
