At 44 She Does Not Go to the Gym: the Martial Art in Which the Smaller Person Controls the Bigger One

At 44, Ivanka Trump does not go to the gym. Her training is Brazilian jiu-jitsu - a martial art that teaches you how to get out when someone heavier than you already has hold of you. Demi Lovato and Ashton Kutcher train in the same discipline.

She trains at the Valente Brothers school in Miami, associated with Joaquim Valente - the same coach who works with Gisele Bündchen. On her profile, with over 8.3 million followers, she posts clips from training with defensive techniques that are not posing for a camera, but drills people genuinely repeat for years.

Why this discipline and not running

Jiu-jitsu differs from most martial arts in that it does not rely on strength. The entire logic is how a smaller person neutralises a bigger one with leverage, weight and technique. That is also why it is one of the few disciplines in which a woman who trains regularly really can control an opponent far heavier than herself.

The sentence she posted describes the thing: "Jiu-jitsu is more than a martial art - it is a path to physical confidence, mental clarity and emotional balance." It can sound like marketing, but anyone who has spent two months on a mat knows that the first thing that changes is not the body, but how much panic you feel when things go wrong.

The second thing she does

Besides the mat, she surfs. In April 2025 she took lessons at a school near Playa Hermosa and Santa Teresa in Costa Rica. Surfing works on balance, coordination and endurance, and engages almost the whole body - but the main benefit she names is not muscular. It is time in which the phone stays on the beach and the head thinks about one single thing.

The combination of two different disciplines is not accidental. One teaches you to stay calm under pressure on the ground, the other on the water. Neither requires a gym membership of the kind people use for three weeks in January and then abandon until the following year.