"Parts Unknown" host and world renowned foodie Anthony Bourdain recently got himself involved in the physically challenging art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
The Emmy award winner decided to get himself into training what is dubbed as "The Gentle Art" in 2013, since his wife Ottavia and their seven year-old daughter have been doing so long before he did.
In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose the 58-year old Bourdain narrated his experiences training under the Renzo Gracie Academy in Manhattan, New York.
"It's the last thing in the world I could have ever imagined wanting to do or enjoying," he explains. "I've never hung out in a gym, I've never really cared about these things."
Bourdain has attained a generous amount of success throughout the years, through his televisions shows such as "No Reservations", "The Layover", and "Parts Unknown", where he generally gets to test different cuisines from different parts of the world. The manner of which his hosting duties are done cater most to foodies from around the globe, hoping to find the must-try delicacies from various destinations.
As an accomplished chef, Bourdain admits to having experienced the trials and tribulations of being a beginner. With this journey in training BJJ, he reveals that the experiences do not differ that much.
"At my age, to learn an entirely new skill is deeply satisfying," Bourdain said. "To recreate that feeling of being the lowest person on the totem pole in a kitchen when I was 17, knowing nothing in a very hard world: The incremental tiny satisfactions of being a little less awful at something every day, it's like that with jujitsu for me."
Since he began training in the early half of 2013, Bourdain had already received his second stripe as a white belt in jiu-jitsu, and has traveled in different places around the world such as Scotland to train with the country's Gracie affiliate schools.
Bourdain describes his experience thus far as a "very difficult and physically demanding one". But his resilience to continue training, despite what conventional wisdom tells him as far as his age and body are concerned has helped him have a good grasp of its intricacies, both as a martial art and as a sport.
He even aptly describes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a game of "physical chess."
"There's a lot of engineering involved," he says.
Watch full interview here:
