How A Pioneering Charity Is Changing Lives Through Jiu

Through the ‘gentle art’ of jiu-jitsu, Reorg charity has helped hundreds of veterans, military personnel and emergency services workers find purpose, brotherhood and unparalleled fitness, both physical and mental. As MH discovered, the lessons learned on the mat can be life-changing – or even life-saving

The pineapple symbolises life, the skull underneath it death, which is just another part of life.

Reorg is a charity that supports the wellbeing of its beneficiaries through martial arts and functional fitness classes. But with rails of pineapple-skull apparel, Reorg’s south-west London HQ could be that of a streetwear brand, were it not for the mats and workout equipment that dominate the space. The Reorg team breaks up the workday by ‘rolling’ – Brazilian jiu-jitsu speak for sparring – which must make for interesting organisational dynamics.

‘It’s all fun,’ says Reorg chairman Trent Scanlen, a rugged ex-rugby-playing Aussie, who is involved in the running of several operations, including his nearby gym, Elevate Martial Arts & Strength. He jokes that he’s Reorg’s ‘fifth Beatle’ – or should that be Ringo? – because people tend to be more interested in founder and frontman Sam Sheriff, a former Royal Marine who is also here to greet me today, or the other two trustees, notable not just by their absence on my visit.

One of them, Mark Ormrod, is also a former Marine, the first triple amputee to survive on the battlefield. The winner of 11 Invictus Games medals, he has raised more than £600,000 for Reorg by running a 5K on prosthetic legs, cycling 99.9 miles (as in the emergency services number 999) on a hand bike and swimming 1km with one arm. An award-winning author and an MBE, he’s also a jiu-jitsu purple belt. Which, to a white belt like me, makes him a ninja.

The other, Tom Hardy, is a Hollywood superstar and blue belt – one below purple and above white – who made headlines last August by winning two gold medals at the 2022 Reorg Open championship in Wolverhampton. A poster for one of Reorg’s fundraising 24-hour ‘Rollathons’ features the charity’s ‘fab four’ placed one behind the other in a human choke-tipede.

Part of the reason why jiu-jitsu forges strong bonds, says Sheriff, is that you have to trust your training partner to let go when you tap – because you’re not trying to hurt them. A ground-based, striking-free grappling system, jiu-jitsu is all about control, of your opponent and yourself. While it might seem counter-intuitive for a team-building exercise, never mind a friendly environment for, say, a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, jiu-jitsu has some powerful wellbeing juju.

While the sport itself is combative, the learning process is collaborative: you work in pairs to drill techniques as partners, not opponents. A form of active meditation – when your partner’s trying to choke you, your mind can’t be elsewhere – jiu-jitsu gets the juices flowing: blood, sweat, endorphins. You’re surrounded by like-minded people with whom you share a common passion, an appreciation of new gis (kimonos) and rash guards, and may even share a coffee and a chat.

Jiu-jitsu, says Sheriff, ‘brings people together’ – in today’s instance, that’s most of the wider Reorg team, with the charity HQ providing a safe space for newcomers to be gently introduced to the sport. Because as I know, having learned jiu-jitsu for an MH story in 2018, getting started is half the battle. A martial arts academy can be intimidating, even though, says Sheriff, it’s one of the most welcoming environments you’ll find.

These are the kinds of battles that Reorg has helped hundreds of its ‘athletes’ to win. If you don’t know where to train jiu-jitsu, Reorg can find the nearest vetted academy to you. If you don’t know anyone there and are apprehensive about going, Reorg can inform the coach to expect you and give you their name and number. If you don’t have any kit, Reorg can hook you up. If money is tight, Reorg can assist with your fees. And if jiu-jitsu isn’t for you, Reorg now works with functional fitness facilities, too.

‘We’re problem-solvers, facilitators, fixers,’ says Sheriff, with the can-do attitude and aptitude that comes from having 22 years in the Marines under his black belt, and a no-nonsense Yorkshire accent. ‘Come to me with an excuse and I’ll find a solution.’

Those battles may sound trivial, but the victories are existential. Reorg has received messages of gratitude from wives and children saying they’ve got their husband or dad back. The spectrum of people that Reorg helps ranges from those who are simply ‘not feeling great’, says Sheriff, to others who are ‘really not enjoying living any more’.

Sheriff was in 2019 appointed an MBE for Reorg’s work within the military changing – saving – lives. Initially established under the umbrella of the Royal Marines Charity, Reorg became a civilian charity in November 2020 with the mission of ‘helping the people who help us’, now including police officers, firefighters and paramedics, as well as the wider armed forces. The objective was 50 people in the first 18 months; such was the support that Reorg received, including Ormrod’s fundraising, that the final total was 227.

My own excuse is that I haven’t brought my gi, partly because I wanted to travel light on the train down from north-east England. And, if I’m honest, partly because I was apprehensive about dusting off my white belt after a break of more than two years owing to injury, a pandemic and an internal resistance. Yet I wanted to write this story partly for an excuse to get back into it.

Not so easily defeated, Sheriff hands me a black Reorg gi, a collaboration with jiu-jitsu mainstay Tatami, and a Reorg rash guard bearing the Royal Marines Commando dagger. I at least look the part: Reorg’s merch is in itself a great excuse to get back into jiu-jitsu. The man responsible, Joe Kensett, Reorg’s marketing director, graciously humours me as we roll and doesn’t completely smash me. He and Sheriff give me some pointers and offer encouragement. I’m not good, despite their protestations. But I feel good.

At this point, I should declare an interest. Another reason for wanting to write this story was for an excuse to talk to my dad about his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We don’t talk enough.

Ever since I’ve known him, my dad’s had a hair-trigger temper. The rest of my family trod carefully in the home I grew up in, before my parents divorced, because you never knew when he’d go off, although you could get early warning from the empty beer cans. Having served in Northern Ireland, he left the army in 1982, before I was born. He wasn’t diagnosed until a couple of years ago, after an industrial accident that preceded a sharp increase in his usual frequency of overaggressive workplace ‘incidents’. The diagnosis explained a lot: he was always fighting because, in his head, he’d never stopped.

Someone with PTSD, says Neil Greenberg, a professor of defence mental health at King’s College London and a leading expert on psychological trauma, can exhibit changes across four domains: cognitive, emotional, behavioural and ‘somatic’, or bodily.

A PTSD sufferer may begin to think negatively: that things are never going to work out or that they’re worthless. They may become angry or upset unreasonably, or emotionally numb. They may avoid socialising, talking about what happened and the precise situation or location where the trauma occurred. And they may experience physical symptoms: chest pains, bowel problems, feeling jumpy and nausea.

From the Greek word meaning ‘wound’, trauma in terms of PTSD is, says Professor Greenberg, ‘real or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence’. Between a third and a half of us will experience such a trauma: a car crash, a terrorist incident, a difficult birth. During the pandemic, one study of frontline healthcare staff by University of Oxford researchers found PTSD in 44%; for 76% of those, the trauma preceded the pandemic. PTSD can also be caused by chronic, cumulative exposure to ‘type-two’ trauma – the sort that for, say, a healthcare or child social worker is just another day at the office.

Brain scans of people who suffer with PTSD show an overactive amygdala, the alarm, which can cause hypervigilance. The hippocampus, the memory store, can link new input to a past trauma – say, a loud bang to a gunshot – and cause flashbacks. The prefrontal cortex, which with the hippocampus normally quells the amygdala and manages emotions and impulses, is dampened, leading to avoidance, coldness and irritability. The stress hormone cortisol is elevated, which can disturb sleep and digestion. The charity PTSD UK calls the disorder ‘a form of injury to the brain’.

The rate of PTSD in serving and former military personnel in 2014 to 2016 was around 6%, just 2% higher than that seen in the general UK population. In veterans specifically, however, it was 7.4%. Drilling down further, for veterans with a history of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, the rate was 9.4%; if their last deployment was in a combat role, which like a younger age is associated with a worse prognosis, it was around 17%. Compared with the general population, a new study by the University of Manchester found that the suicide risk of veterans under the age of 25 is two to four times higher.

Some of the disparity in PTSD rates between serving military personnel and veterans is, says Professor Greenberg, because those with a mental disorder are more likely to leave. PTSD vulnerability factors include time since leaving (the more recent, the more vulnerable), alcohol misuse, childhood adversity and antisocial behaviour. But there’s also something, he says, about leaving. Some join the military to escape situations to which they may then be forced to return.

Outside of the chaos of combat, military life is ordered and regimented, with consequences for not following rules or paying attention to details that could cost lives. Whereas in civilian life, says Professor Greenberg, people don’t always do what they say and don’t always get called out. Veterans have to find a new job where they may not be valued as much or paid as well. They may not be given the same sense of pride or identity, the same leadership, training or support. And they may begin to dwell on things.

Discovering jiu-jitsu was, says Sheriff, ‘like discovering magic’, except he found that he wanted to reveal the secret to everyone.

Introduced to the sport on the close combat section of his physical instructors’ course, Sheriff immediately grasped the ‘operational effectiveness’ of being able to subdue an opponent, even one much bigger and stronger, with skilful application of chokes and locks, and without resorting to fists. More than that, Sheriff recognised jiu-jitsu’s psychological benefit of confidence, especially for the lads who’d been hardened by months of the Marines’ infamous training programme but may only be as tenderly aged as 16. And some of them may not have ever been in a fight.

Sheriff knew how great he felt when he was on the mat and when he came off it. His enthusiasm spread until the martial art became the Marines’ most participated sport and part of its culture, just another skill that recruits acquired, such as map-reading or marksmanship. Then he switched fire to what jiu-jitsu could do for former comrades. A military term, ‘reorg’ is what Marines shout when the smoke clears: everyone comes together, checks each other off, moves forwards. Reorg aligns with Sheriff’s jiu-jitsu ideas: ‘reversal’, ‘switch’, going from a bad position to a better one.

Sheriff introduces me to a Reorg athlete called Dave, whose childhood was, as he describes it, ‘volatile’, with periods of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. He couldn’t talk to anyone, so he skipped school and roamed the streets. When he was old enough, he joined the fire brigade and spent his first callout looking for body parts. He joined the Navy to find an identity, to get away, but left after five years and experiences that compounded his already poor mental health.

Dave held down a few jobs but his ‘bubbling’ anger made him difficult to be around and his marriage suffered for it. Drinking didn’t help. He fell into a three-year cycle of being arrested or detained under the Mental Health Act and dumped back at his camper van. On a couple of occasions, he attempted suicide. He’d already started jiu-jitsu training but because of his state of mind he was inconsistent. One day his coach, a friend, asked him if he’d ever heard of Reorg. ‘Without Reorg’s support, I’m not sure I’d have made it,’ he says.

Jiu-jitsu’s role in Dave’s recovery has been ‘integral’: he’s now 4st lighter and ‘way more relaxed’. When you’re on the mat, he says, you can just switch your mind off to everything else. And when you want to tap but don’t, and get yourself out of a hold, you learn resilience. Jiu-jitsu and Reorg are his ‘safety net’. Sheriff came to present his blue belt.

The complex PTSD that results from prolonged trauma ‘robbed’ Dave of a lot. But he gets on alright now with his ex-wife, and his daughter lives with him. He’s a support worker at a Crisis centre, which he was shown round when he was himself homeless. He feels like he’s in a good place.

The remains of Mark Ormrod’s legs reminded him of a present with the wrapping paper torn off, which was apt because it was Christmas Eve in Afghanistan. His right arm reminded him of The Terminator, when Arnie peels his skin off like a glove. The blast from the IED (improvised explosive device) had peeled open the 3mm-thick steel tube of Ormrod’s mortar like a banana.

A T1 casualty, Ormrod – affectionately known as ‘Rammers’, as in ‘Ramrod’ – was as seriously injured as you can be without being dead and, he thought, for nothing: he hadn’t even been in a fight. His girlfriend and little girl wouldn’t want him back like this. He asked the first comrade who arrived to shoot him. ‘Endex’, as the Marines say. End of exercise. ‘No way, Rammers,’ his comrade replied. ‘We’re going to get you out of here.’

According to Professor Greenberg, whose own 23 years in the military included acting as a general duties doctor with two Royal Marines Commando units and earning his green beret, there are good and bad wars – psychologically speaking. In contrast to, say, the Falklands, a ‘good’ war fought for British-identifying people that was short and successful, Iraq and Afghanistan were for people who didn’t necessarily want us there, protracted, pointless. Finding meaning in struggle is a vital psychological defence mechanism. ‘When you come to reflect on it all, what you did has to have some sense of meaning,’ he says.

For Ormrod, you can’t ever underestimate ‘the power of being around good people’. Four days after his accident, from his hospital bed, he asked his girlfriend, Becky, to marry him: she said yes. A month later, after he’d struggled to crawl 2m from a wheelchair to a sofa, he asked her to help him die: she said no. Every day, he tried to find something that was a little better than the day before. Six weeks after his accident, he was upright on specially moulded plastic sockets; not long after, he walked 2m on prosthetic steel legs. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his comrades to receive his Operational Service Medal and first- danced with his wife at their wedding.

Still, Ormrod was sceptical when Sheriff offered to introduce him to jiu-jitsu. He didn’t want to be a sympathy case or promotional tool. But Sheriff was a fellow Marine, so Ormrod gave him the benefit of the doubt. Jiu-jitsu was ground-based, said Sheriff, and Ormrod, already on the ground, was ‘halfway there’. They’d figure the rest out.

On camp for a charity do, Ormrod had met Sheriff by chance and opened up to him. Following his injuries, he felt vulnerable: what if someone in the street got aggressive with him or his family? Jiu-jitsu gave him back some confidence. More than that, jiu-jitsu gave Ormrod something to do better, to be better at. He’s at his happiest learning something new, pushing himself. ‘And jiu-jitsu gave me that, because everything for me was difficult,’ he says. The cliché that ‘what you learn on the mats, you take off the mats’ is, in Ormrod’s case, literally true: he’d never considered his armless right shoulder useful until he was taught to grind it in an opponent’s face. He started using it in his life to carry stuff, open doors.

‘My situation now is more an advantage than a disadvantage,’ says Ormrod. He’s chipping away at ‘a million projects’: more jiu-jitsu, more books, a movie, documentaries highlighting not just the negative side of leaving the military or disability but also the positives, wins and struggles.

For a lot of veterans, lack of purpose is, says Ormrod, ‘a big one’. Who or what are they fighting for? Jiu-jitsu gives them back some sense of purpose. It not only gets feel-good chemicals flowing, but also conversations: high on endorphins, people will say things that they otherwise might not. ‘It’s a little bit like sprinkling magic dust,’ he says. ‘Like truth serum.’

In the realm of science, pain or discomfort has been proven to promote ‘affiliative’ behaviour or social connection, which helps avoid or lessen pain. We’ve survived and thrived, it’s theorised, by responding to stress with not only fight or flight, but also ‘tend and befriend’.

One of the biggest things that veterans miss from the military, says Ormrod, is their comrades: he can meet another Royal Marine and instantly bond ‘because we know we’ve been through the same shit’. And it’s the same with jiu-jitsu, which is the closest thing that he’s found to replicating the military’s camaraderie. You can roll up at an academy on the other side of the world and be welcomed by strangers. You share the same journey. There’s a ranking. Even a uniform.

Anyone initiated into functional fitness is certainly no stranger to the camaraderie that’s founded on shared hardship: that’s part of the secret sauce, the magic. CrossFit has strong ties with military and emergency services, helping them train for ‘the unknowable’ and honouring them with hero workouts; there are rankings if not belts and an unofficial uniform of Stance socks and Nike Metcons. Last year, Ormrod competed in the inaugural NFG x Reorg Adaptive Games, powered by the gyms WIT and Marchon. Functional fitness, like jiu-jitsu, brings people together.

In the aftermath of trauma, there’s good evidence of the benefits of social support from people who can help you ‘avoid avoidance’, says Professor Greenberg. Some trauma sufferers don’t want to talk and that’s okay, but someone who’s not alright ‘should be trying to talk about it, and reduce pressure for a short time’.

For those diagnosed with PTSD, there’s good evidence for two talking treatments in particular: trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy, which challenges and changes unhelpful thoughts and behaviours, and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, a psychotherapy that incorporates side-to-side eye movements in order to stimulate both sides of your brain, access and process what’s buried in your subconscious. Medication can also help to alleviate some symptoms. Recovery or ‘a very good deal of improvement’ is possible, says Professor Greenberg. The real damage of PTSD isn’t just the disorder, he says, but that it ‘wrecks lives because it spoils relationships’ and ruins careers. By the time that sufferers can seek – and receive – help, they’ve often lost so much already.

One evening, my dad talks to me over the phone about the things that ‘you’ saw in Northern Ireland, the things that ‘you’ did. So many veterans drink, he says, so that they don’t dream. Talking to an ex-RAF therapist through the charity Combat Stress probably stopped my dad doing ‘something stupid’ to someone; he’s lucky that, unlike some of his former comrades, he’s never harmed himself. He still struggles with anger and sleep, but he’s part of an informal group of disparate veterans united by PTSD who talk, sometimes in the middle of the night. I don’t know them, but I feel like I know him better.

Sheriff invites me to a jiu-jitsu seminar he’s hosting, so we battle the traffic in a pineapple-skull van to east London’s Fight City gym. On the way, Sheriff explains that Reorg is the ‘glue’ that binds jiu-jitsu academies and associations that can otherwise be tribal. Reorg recently started work in the US, where the We Defy Foundation already has a similar mission to support veterans with jiu-jitsu and fitness, but again, they’re allies. The plan is to roll Reorg out to Australia, New Zealand and Canada, to further spread the message that, no matter what you’re going through, the chances are that jiu-jitsu can help you move forwards with your life.

After a video presentation and talk by Sheriff about Reorg, the Fight City inhabitants start to warm up together. Apart from Sheriff, I don’t know anyone, but a fellow white belt called Steph offers to partner up with me for the drills, and thankfully has more of a clue. Afterwards, everyone poses for a photo, sitting cross-legged in lines by rank, all feeling part of something.

In the changing rooms, one of the guys in the seminar who works at Fight City asks me where I usually train. I don’t, I say: it’s a long story, but the short version is that I moved out of London. He says, ‘Any time you’re in town, you’re always welcome.’

We would encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Organisations who can offer support include Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org) or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to visit mentalhealth.gov or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

This feature first appeared in the March issue of Men's Health. On sale now.

Jamie Millar is a freelance journalist and regular Men’s Health contributor, writing about style, grooming, fitness and culture. Follow @mrjamiemillar

Why Match Day Is a Win for Your Mental Wellbeing

Achieve a Flow State with Virtual Co-working

Tips for Success from Tom Brady's Mental Coach

Steven Bartlett on How To Invest Successfully

This man completed 105 Triathlons... In a Row

Sadiq Khan Attempts to End Violence Against Women

Eddie Hearn: How I Deal With Down Days

Is Ketamine the Cure for Chronic Depression?

UFC's Nathaniel Wood Shares His Journey with OCD

Nick Kyrgios: Bad Boy Come Good

Ivan Toney Asks for More Help for Gambling Addicts

Schwarzenegger Reveals Body Dissatisfaction