- Joined
- Jul 24, 2008
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I'm not looking for congratulations. I'm wanting to share something with people that might be interested in getting into BJJ and I hope my story might be motivating.
I started training BJJ three years ago, in a local school in my small town. This school was working to get something legitimate started here, at least that is the way it started. They affiliated with a legit black belt in Florida and trained extensively with him on numerous occasions. After about a year, they opened the school. As soon as we saw it, me and a number of friends joined. We'd been wanting something local for years.
For the first year, things seems to go fine. They were teaching us stuff that we'd never seen before. Everything felt legit. We had visits from the black belt and our instructors were still taking numerous trips to train. Then things seems to stall out. Nothing new was coming into the school and it felt lost. I approached them one day to ask if they'd mind me training with the black belt while I was visiting in Florida. They let me know, for the first time, that the affiliation was no longer in place. They claimed a connection with another team now. This is now around 20 months into training. I was up for my "blue belt" there, but things just didn't seem right. I contacted the new team and they confirmed that there was not an affiliation.
I left the school that day, along with others, and started driving over an hour (both ways) to train in another town, under Ed Shobe and Rodrigo Vaghi brown belt. He listened to our story, made us all fresh white belts but he paid special attention to us. He made sure that we were progressing.
Today, two of us were able to go through Rodrigo's test for blue belt, after a year of training with the new school. We were both awarded blue belts.
I tell this story simply to say this. If you want to do something, you can find a way. Maybe not an easy way or a convenient way, but still. Not everyone is going to be blessed with a black belt next door to them, but you can make it happen if you really want it.
I started training BJJ three years ago, in a local school in my small town. This school was working to get something legitimate started here, at least that is the way it started. They affiliated with a legit black belt in Florida and trained extensively with him on numerous occasions. After about a year, they opened the school. As soon as we saw it, me and a number of friends joined. We'd been wanting something local for years.
For the first year, things seems to go fine. They were teaching us stuff that we'd never seen before. Everything felt legit. We had visits from the black belt and our instructors were still taking numerous trips to train. Then things seems to stall out. Nothing new was coming into the school and it felt lost. I approached them one day to ask if they'd mind me training with the black belt while I was visiting in Florida. They let me know, for the first time, that the affiliation was no longer in place. They claimed a connection with another team now. This is now around 20 months into training. I was up for my "blue belt" there, but things just didn't seem right. I contacted the new team and they confirmed that there was not an affiliation.
I left the school that day, along with others, and started driving over an hour (both ways) to train in another town, under Ed Shobe and Rodrigo Vaghi brown belt. He listened to our story, made us all fresh white belts but he paid special attention to us. He made sure that we were progressing.
Today, two of us were able to go through Rodrigo's test for blue belt, after a year of training with the new school. We were both awarded blue belts.
I tell this story simply to say this. If you want to do something, you can find a way. Maybe not an easy way or a convenient way, but still. Not everyone is going to be blessed with a black belt next door to them, but you can make it happen if you really want it.
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