joe worthington
Bodyweight Strength, Mobility and Jiu Jitsu Coach
Experience/Qualifications
• Crossfit level 1
• Olympic weightlifting club level
• In-person and online coaching under Ido Portal
• In-person and online coaching under Emmet Louis
• BJJ brown belt, Alliance BJJ Sydney
• Multiple time gold, silver and bronze medalist from white to purple belt
• Yuri Marmerstein Workshop x2
• Fighting Monkey workshop attendee
• Co-Creator Bulletproof For BJJ
Background
It all started watching Van Damme and Bruce Lee films as a kid. My brother was training Kung Fu at the time and he would come home and teach me moves. We crafted makeshift nunchucks, staff, and whatever other weapons we could from materials in dad's shed. I dabbled in Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Kickboxing, and Wing Chun, all while playing soccer and being a keen skateboarder.
It wasn't until my mid 20s that I found Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I was hooked after my first class. From there I delved into the world of Kettlebells, Crossfit, Calisthenics, and Olympic Weightlifting. I started working as a Personal Trainer around this time also.
I soon found the work of Ido Portal, which was paradigm shifting for me. That led me to study under him personally, and down the track with Emmet Louis too. I was attending workshops and events around the world to expand my knowledge base and create a philosophy of my own.
I now work out of my gym (Jungle Brothers Strength and Movement), teach workshops and overseas retreats, and work privately with a few select humans. I also co-founded Bulletproof For BJJ where we help BJJ players become stronger and more mobile.
Joe's Faqs
I like to enjoy my coaching, and I want people to enjoy their training with me. I provide a solid mix of hard, disciplined training, while still keeping the vibe fun and a little loose. Fight, Lift, Move sums up what my training style is all about.
Don’t over complicate it. Move well, move often, and work consistently on improving your day to day habits. With consistency this formula cannot be beat.
I really enjoyed Crossfit. I was involved in a few different spaces who were using it in the early days, and it was kind of like the wild west. At the time I was somewhere in my mid-20s and basically bulletproof, so the hard training suited me well and I enjoyed the intensity. As I gained coaching experience I realised it wasn’t what I considered to be a sustainable approach for the majority of people, however.
Long and undulating. It’s been largely fulfilling and enjoyable, and has connected me to incredible people all around the globe. Like anything that takes a long time to develop, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu requires patience and focus. That said, the journey is not always easy and I think this is where the real satisfaction lies.
Competing overseas in BJJ was pretty wild. The size of the competitions in Japan and Brazil make ours look tiny and the energy in their arenas is hard to match. I remember being super nervous, especially in Japan as it was the Asian Championships and all of the top Jiu Jitsu players were there (not in my division, of course). Looking back I am so glad I did it.
Ido Portal has been one of the most influential coaches I have ever had. He is a one of a kind teacher. His views on movement development are unlike anything else out there. His training is hard and all encompassing which for a part of my life was great. I fall back on a lot of the lessons I learned under him still to this day.
Australian BJJ is growing rapidly. We have some of the world's best competitors crushing the international scene - guys like Craig Jones and Levi Jones Leary. We also have some of the highest level coaches running BJJ gyms around the country.
Injuries are everywhere. We must not be scared of them, but rather expect their occurrence and prepare our body's best we can.
The Movement Scene in Sydney is still very young. There’s a lot of practitioners out there doing great stuff but largely quite isolated from one another. We wanted our gym to be a place where Movement practitioners from all disciplines could come and train together and exchange information. This has been successful, and I hope we can continue to draw in amazing coaches and practitioners from all disciplines.
I’ll keep this brief. Ido Portal (movement) = paradigm-shifting, hard, turned me into a movement beast.
Emmet Louis (mobility) = high-quality training, crazy effective techniques, high-quality banter.
Adam Childs (BJJ) = tough, regularly pushes me to my limits, forging me into a warrior on a daily basis (also great banter)
People come to me to get strong and mobile. I also have a lot of people who come to me for help with the training outside of BJJ.