Steve Hordinski got his black belt in 2009. He opened Katharo Training Center in 2010. He's been training five to six days a week for nearly three decades. He's still rolling hard, coaching MMA, running seminars across Colorado — and his body is responding better to training now than it did at 35. The difference isn't a supplement stack or a TRT protocol. It's the way he moves.
This episode covered a lot of ground — military service, Relson Gracie lineage, competing against world champions, building a school alongside his father who is now a third-degree black belt at 75. But the through-line in everything Steve said came down to one question: why do most people who love jiu-jitsu stop doing it? And what separates the ones who don't?
The answer, in Steve's experience after coaching hundreds of students across two decades: it isn't age. It's how they trained their bodies to move — and whether they ever did.
Steve Hordinski — Black Belt · Navy Veteran · Academy Owner
Relson Gracie black belt. Navy diver. Founder of Katharo Training Center in Colorado. Head coach for Forge of Unity, raising awareness around veteran suicide. Almost 30 years on the mats. Still rolling and coaching at the highest level. Steve is one of the most thoughtful coaches in the game and one of the most direct voices on what it actually takes to stay on the mats for life.
The Movement Problem Nobody Is Talking About
Cameron Shayne at the Budokon seminar opened with a simple question: how many of you love jiu-jitsu? Every hand went up. Then he started narrowing it — who's in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s — and as the age went up, the hands came down. By 60, almost nobody. By 70, nobody at all.
"Everybody's saying they want to do it for the rest of their life," Steve said. "But if that's the case, how come we don't have a few? My dad's 75. He's on the mat. He loves it. But how many 75-year-olds in pain are going to show up just to do that? Not many."
The reason people leave, in Steve's view, isn't that the body gives out. It's that the way they've been training has no plan for longevity. No system for building a body that can keep grappling in its 50s, 60s, and beyond. They train hard, they stack injuries, they resist positions they've never trained in, and eventually something breaks that doesn't come back.
Budokon is Steve's answer to that — and he considers it more important than jiu-jitsu itself.
- A movement martial art — not animal flow, not calisthenics, not yoga. Precision movement with martial intent.
- Every movement you do in Budokon, you do in jiu-jitsu. The transfer is direct.
- It warms up the body, restores it, and builds strength — all in the same session.
- It develops body awareness in the positions grapplers actually end up in — inverted, scrambling, transitioning.
- Steve has run it at Katharo for over two years. His students are getting injured less and moving significantly better.
Why Standard Warm-Ups Don't Prepare You For Grappling
"How many upper belts are still doing front rolls and back rolls to warm up?" Steve asked. The answer is almost none — because experienced grapplers intuitively understand that a jumping jack or a lap around the mat doesn't prepare your body for what's about to happen to it. But without a structured alternative, most practitioners just roll slow and hope for the best.
Budokon gives you the alternative. It's a movement practice designed specifically around the shapes, transitions, and positions of grappling. If you want to be comfortable inverted, you practice going inverted in a controlled, deliberate way — building strength and awareness there — instead of waiting until a scramble puts you there against your will.
When you practice moving through the positions grappling demands, you build muscle and integrity around those shapes. The scramble becomes less chaotic because you've rehearsed the movement pattern. You're strong where your training partner expects you to be weak.
Steve's frozen shoulder improved. His knee clicking reduced. His back injury became manageable. His explanation: the spiral movements of Budokon create space between joints and discs, reset the joint structure, and build the surrounding musculature in a way that protects rather than compresses.
The fear of going inverted, of exposing your back, of scrambling — that fear is your nervous system telling you it doesn't know what to do there. Budokon removes the fear by building the map. You know what upside down feels like. You know how to transition from it. Your body doesn't panic because it's been there.
Training Smarter at 50 — What Actually Changes
Steve has been training five to six days a week for nearly thirty years. In that time, he's taken approximately two years off total — mostly injury-related. The rest has been consistent. What has changed is not the frequency. It's the intent.
"I don't train hard all the time anymore," he said. "I'm selective. I'll roll with the people I enjoy rolling with — not the people who are trying to test me. I don't give a shit about being tested anymore. If you wanted to test me, you should have done it in my twenties and thirties."
This is a shift that every long-term practitioner eventually has to make — or get forced into by injury. The ego that served you as a competitor becomes the liability at 45. The willingness to lock into a power struggle with someone half your age, to fight for a position instead of yielding and finding a better one — that's the thing that gets you hurt. And Steve has watched it end the careers of people who had no reason to stop training.
- Teaching Monday through Thursday and Saturday — movement-based, Budokon-informed methodology every class
- Full training for himself: 2–3 sessions per week maximum
- Rolls prioritised for students — feeling a world-class practitioner's pressure is something you cannot replicate without contact
- Technical sparring at technical intensity — never going all the way up unless both parties are aligned
- Budokon mobility work daily — spinal chain warm-up every session
The Ego Exit — How to Make the Transition
Steve didn't make this transition cleanly. He made it because of injuries and surgeries — and because he had an honest conversation with himself about what purpose maximum effort was serving at his age and in his role. The answer was: not much.
"My purpose is as a teacher," he said. "I'm there to teach, to lead, to learn from my students. Rolling with someone who wants to prove something — that's not my purpose anymore. I'll send them to one of my black belts."
He also talked about watching Grandmaster Helio Gracie roll at 86 years old — and how even then, as a young competitor, he couldn't get anywhere with him. The grandmaster wasn't strong. He wasn't explosive. He yielded, he redirected, he found exits instead of locking into resistance. That's the model. Not a reduced version of what you did at 25 — a refined version that works better.
Nutrition, Recovery & Protecting the Body
Steve doesn't run a complex biohacking stack. He eats organic, avoids processed food, stays away from sugar, and fasts intermittently — waiting until his body tells him it's hungry before eating, generally aiming for eight hours between meals. He's not on TRT. He's not on anything pharmaceutical. He's managing his training load with food, movement, and deliberate recovery practices.
- Steam room at Katharo — regular use post-training
- Red light therapy — nearby facility, used regularly
- Body work: once a month minimum
- Vibration / frequency plates — lymphatic drainage and joint activation
- Meditation and fasting — stress regulation as inflammation management
- Organic food, no processed junk, low sugar — the Gracie diet as a reference point
- No chiropractor, no needles, no pharmaceutical dependency
The inflammation point is worth sitting with. Steve made the case — and it's one I agree with completely — that inflammation is not just a training problem. Stress is inflammatory. Cortisol spikes are inflammatory. The mental load you carry off the mats gets added to the physical load you're carrying on them. If you're not managing the grey area between your ears, you're fighting recovery with one hand tied behind your back.
"Invest some time in knowing who you are," he said. "Why you react to things the way you do. And how to not react. Keep yourself peaceful. That's what Protect Your Peace is about."
The Mental Stack — Books, Belief, and Managing the Voice
Steve talked extensively about the reading and personal development work that has shaped his mindset over the years. Think and Grow Rich. The Kabbalion. The Science of Getting Rich. Landmark Education. Sadhguru. The Bible. Four years of leadership training while running a school simultaneously.
The common thread across all of it, in his framing, is choosing to live by intention rather than by circumstance. Stopping the internal narrative that tells you what you're not good enough for. Changing the story you tell yourself when things don't go the way you planned.
"When I get negative," he said, "I just flip it. I am abundance. Wealth comes from my teaching. Students come easy. Money stacks. It sounds simple but it changes the energy of everything."
"If this is a common thing — getting hurt — it's you, not the training partners. You have to ask yourself why."
— Steve Hordinski · @SteveHordinski · Katharo Training CenterConsistency Is the System
When I asked Steve for his word for the people at the end — one sentence, one takeaway — he gave it in one word. Consistency.
"The only way you get at this is you show up. There's something about being consistent for something. Showing up for 30 years consistently for jiu-jitsu — that does something. So consistency is what I'd tell people. And then: don't quit."
His father is 75 and still on the mat. His first black belts came from a school he's been running for 16 years. The students he's watching improve most dramatically right now are two girls aged 11 and 12 who are learning Budokon first — and whose movement already surpasses most adults he coaches.
The longevity question, it turns out, isn't about finding some special supplement or optimised recovery hack. It's about building a body that moves well, staying humble enough to stop ego-rolling before it costs you, eating real food, managing your stress, and showing up. Decades of showing up.
That's how you get to 75 on the mat. That's how you get to be hard to kill in midlife.
Katharo Training Center · Forge of Unity · Jiu-Jitsu On The Go
Steve coaches in Colorado, runs seminars nationally, and is one of the most thoughtful voices in the jiu-jitsu community on longevity, movement, and mental health for veterans and practitioners. Follow his work and get into his seminars — especially if Budokon is available near you.
Stay Dangerous. Stay on the Mats. Hard to Kill in Midlife.
