Mark Zuckerberg Won Gold and Silver Metals at Jiu-Jitsu Tournament

Mark Zuckerberg competed in his first Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament on May 6 and left with gold and silver medals. The sport, which the Meta (META) CEO began practicing during the pandemic, helps him maintain energy and focus, he told podcaster Joe Rogan last year.

The tournament took place at a high school in Woodside, California, according to CNN. After drawing the first match, Zuckerberg won gold and silver in the white belt division. White is the first belt athletes receive. Zuckerberg posted his results on Instagram and Facebook, where Ultimate Fighting Championship winner Conor McGregor and jiu-jitsu world champion Bernardo Faria commented their support.

Zuckerberg has taken up a series of extracurriculars while running his company, many of which help him maintain a healthy lifestyle. During the pandemic, the executive began surfing and foiling, or a kind of surfing where the board lifts the rider higher above the water. In other years, he pledged to read a book every two weeks, run 365 miles in a year, learn Mandarin and practice vegetarianism. During his vegetarian year, he allowed himself to eat meat only from animals he had killed, as a way to practice gratefulness for the lives of living beings.

Physically and mentally stimulating activities like jiu-jitsu get Zuckerberg ready to solve problems at work and help him process the news each morning, he told Rogan.

In his work life, Zuckerberg is building up his social platforms to compete with TikTok, which has gained popularity for its short-form video content—a trend Zuckerberg admits he missed. He is also continuing his attempt at convincing shareholders and consumers that Meta’s Reality Labs division, which is developing metaverse and artificial intelligence technologies, is a worthwhile investment. The division lost $3.99 billion from January to March, slightly less than what it lost the previous three months but up 35 percent from the same period last year.

Practicing the mixed martial art is similar to running Meta because Zuckerberg must follow the “flow and momentum of things” and know when to push on a person or idea, but the feedback loop is much longer at his company, he said. While it might take four years to know if a decision about Meta’s virtual reality headset was correct, in the combat sport, he’ll know immediately if he made the wrong move. “There’s something that’s so primal about it,” he said on Rogan’s podcast.

In his social media post, Zuckerberg also thanked his trainers, Dave Camarillo, Khai Wu, and James Terry.