MY RETURN HAS BEEN REQUESTED
This is not a jiu-jitsu technique book.
This is not a story about chasing belts or winning medals.
This is a raw, honest memoir about what happens when life breaks you - and the mat is the only thing that can put you back together.
Sheldon Howard writes about the real shit: competition, injury, gym politics, betrayal, personal loss, anger, drift, and the brutal work of coming back after you've already quit. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He doesn't pretend jiu-jitsu is magic. He shows you exactly what the mat actually teaches when everything else in your life has failed.
If you've ever stepped on the mat...
If you've ever walked away...
If you've ever wondered whether it's too late to return...
This book is for you.
The mat doesn't care why you left.
It only cares if you're willing to come back.
Your return has been requested.
Additional Props
I also want to give real credit to the online teachers and systems that helped me keep learning when I could not always be on the mat.
To Tristar Gym: one of the best online systems I found for learning jiu-jitsu and MMA, whether you are a beginner trying to understand the basics or a more advanced student trying to connect the whole game. The way they organize concepts helped me think about fighting as a system, not just a pile of random techniques.
To Roy Dean: thank you for showing what clean progression can look like. Your approach to testing, structure, movement, and rank helped me understand that belts should mean something. Not theater. Not attendance. Not politics. Evidence.
To Jon Thomas BJJ: thank you for the clarity. Your instruction, your online lab, and the way you break down positions gave me a cleaner way to study. Some teachers show moves. You explain the logic behind them.
To John Danaher: thank you for showing what it means to think deeply about the art. Your approach helped me see jiu-jitsu as a system of control, problem-solving, and layered decisions, not just techniques collected one at a time.
And one of my biggest props goes to Big OSS and Marcos Tinoco.
Big OSS made me laugh, understand, and sometimes damn near cry. That material helped me connect with jiu-jitsu in a way that felt human, technical, and alive. It is also where I found one of my favorite chokes: the Canto choke. I studied it, drilled it, carried it back to the mat, and started catching people with it all the way up to brown belt level.
Big OSS.
