Opinions on JJ students abandoning their original schools

Alot of good ideas/arguments for both sides here.

In my mind, you can justify the decision to stay or leave based on what you are looking to get out of training. I train for personal improvement, as well as for the team/social atmosphere, so I would never dream of leaving my club. That said, if I was a younger man and my sole drive in life was to be the best BJJ player I could be, then leaving my gym for the sake of my art would be an option, definately.

For a dedicated athelete, there's nothing wrong with seeking out the best instruction you can, although in your example, it seems like maybe those other students who left didn't really investigate where they were headed, and simply left because of the new instructors higher rank? Either way, if one was working towards being the best one could be, wouldn't it be folly to stay at one club out of loyalty, if you could find better training elsewhere....for me, this is the hypothetical scenario where leaving your club would be justified.
 
Our school has had our share of turn coats.. People who leave to pay more at other schools with more familiar names.. I am always disappointed and offended whenever this happenes.. I find it dishonorable, and I think it speaks poorly of ones character. There are always exceptions, but this is generally how I feel.
 
Our school has had our share of turn coats.. People who leave to pay more at other schools with more familiar names.. I am always disappointed and offended whenever this happenes.. I find it dishonorable, and I think it speaks poorly of ones character. There are always exceptions, but this is generally how I feel.

why?
 
Our school has had our share of turn coats.. People who leave to pay more at other schools with more familiar names.. I am always disappointed and offended whenever this happenes.. I find it dishonorable, and I think it speaks poorly of ones character. There are always exceptions, but this is generally how I feel.

dude bjj is a hobby..
 
well i can see where he is coming from. whenever a school loses a high ranker, the quality of the school goes down a bit in a sense that there is one less skilled training partner to smash everyone else that is lower ranked.

i mean it is the higher ranking training partners that i learn the most from
 
I'm leaving my academy, but only because I'm moving from San Diego back to NJ. I plan on visiting San Diego as much as possible and stopping by to train.
 
you also have to remember that the purple belt doesn't have the "power" to promote students to anything above a blue belt. people, from my experiences, like belts and like to have the idea that they earned their belts with blood sweat and tears but from your school this was not possible. are they gonna be competing as blue belts in tournaments forerver?

so i can understand why people left.

people left my school because my instructor was rarely on the mat for a certain period of time. we would all be in class and he would just sit in his office and once class started we would kind of just look at each other and and think "open mat?" we would eventually drill moves we already knew or roll. and also he kept on making false promises. he would say stuff on the new syllabus like: "muay thai tuesdays and thursdays coming soon!" and "sunday classes coming soon!" but would never deliver on those promises. this made a lot of people feel like they were being lied to. the highs and the lows of expectations... they eventually got sick of it and left.

i understand why they left.


so i guess bottom line is that there are a lot of gray areas and all of this "loyalty" crap is just an illusion and TMA bullshit.

Good points I hadn't considered though the black belts actually were promoted by Royce as they would have even if they'd stayed put.

Those were the kinds of reasons though that I was looking for .... stuff that made sense, just not to me due to my beginners' perspective.

Thank you.
 
In fact he is criticizing them for leaving to "get promoted" yet of his own account says he doesn't really know why they left.

I just posted an observation for more experienced grapplers to consider and discuss. I thought I was pretty non judgemental. I didn't say they left to "get promoted" though they may or may not have.

I just noted the conciding sequence of events to frame the situation in.
 
Sorry to address this one so many months later but I don't get on this forum much. There are a few points that should be cleared up.

First let me start by saying only one of the advanced guys that came over to my school has been promoted, and that was Aki to Black Belt. Yes, this would have happened at the same time at the same place if he was training at either school. In the time my school has been open there have only been eight blue belts promoted under me, one black belt under Jorge Gurgel and a few stripes here and there, and that's it. There is one other brown belt, that in my opinion should be a black belt, that trains with me on a regular basis. The rest of the advanced guys show up once a week for open mat, which is free to everyone. They didn't leave their school to train with me, so you should ask each one of them why they left.

The brown belt mentioned before and a couple blue and white belts were the only ones who left on their own free will to train under me. I have never asked them or anyone else to leave their school and join mine. I invite everyone to come and train with me and my students for free every Saturday, and what ever happens after that is up to the student. I believe adults have the right to make decisions that serve their own best interest. If a student ever wants to leave my school to train at another I will wish them luck and welcome them back with no hard feelings if they find out the grass isn't greener on the other side. Loyalty is something that is earned and not forced.

I also have nothing bad to say about any of the legitimate schools in the area. The Harrisburg school has developed some very tough fighters long before I came to town. The fact is that we are not truly competition to each other. Snake is very tough, but our focus has been different for a very long time. My last MMA fight was several years ago, but I am still actively competing and winning as a black belt in BJJ. We cater to completely different personalities. His school has strong MMA with a BJJ program, and mine is a technical BJJ school with an MMA program. When a new student comes in and says he wants to be an MMA fighter I tell him to go see Snake. If he wants to learn technical jiu jitsu there is a big difference between a black belt and a purple belt. My back ground and my students speak much louder for me than I ever can.

I am blessed to have the amount of talented students that pass through my doors on a weekly basis. Some have come from other schools but most have started clean with me. If you think it is easy to change schools or even train at more than one talk to any of the blue belts from other programs that have crossed my mat. It is a very difficult decision to make, and an even more difficult process to get on the same page with the new instructor. If you want to know if an instructor is worth your time spend some time with his students, they can't hide the instructors true intentions.

All I offer is guidance to people that want to follow the same path that I have already been down, nothing more, nothing less.

Steve Hall
Royce Gracie Black Belt
 
i can imagine it would be hard for an instructor to lose a longtime student especially at smaller schools. I dont know about other places but i used to go to a pretty tiny school and our instructor javi was pretty tough on promotions but when he did promote someone, he would always take a lot of pride in it and it always meant a lot to him. i mean, that would kinda suck to give somone a purple or brown, then they go to another school and you have to watch someone else give them their black? or brown or whatever
 
The rest of the advanced guys show up once a week for open mat, which is free to everyone. They didn't leave their school to train with me, so you should ask each one of them why they left.

you do understand that you can be perceived as luring students from other schools by offering free open mat. i must admit from a business standpoint it seems like the right thing to do to maximize profits.

i don't know what your real intent is by offering free open mat to anybody. only you in your heart know your real intentions.

i'll give you the benefit of the doubt though.
 
I have to admit that the longer I train (just over three years) the less I think of myself as a "jiu jitsu consumer."

As our instructor put it a few weeks ago, higher belts (purple and brown especially) really help build a school. Loyalty aside, I can't think of anything more frustrating for an instructor than to bring guys (and gals) up from nowhere to levels of real proficiency and then, rather than having them around to help bring up the next cohort of students, they are gone. Regardless of the reason (good, bad or indifferent), that's got to make it tough to build a school.

Interesting thread. FWIW, I can't imagine training anywhere other than where I'm training now.
 
i can imagine it would be hard for an instructor to lose a longtime student especially at smaller schools. I dont know about other places but i used to go to a pretty tiny school and our instructor javi was pretty tough on promotions but when he did promote someone, he would always take a lot of pride in it and it always meant a lot to him. i mean, that would kinda suck to give somone a purple or brown, then they go to another school and you have to watch someone else give them their black? or brown or whatever

From my personal experience I have seen this happen at small schools. The story is almost tragic - the instructor takes a nobody, carves them into a somebody, and invests so much time and effort in teachings to get them higher and higher. Pretty soon they reach something of amateur fighter status, close to professional.

For one reason or another, even if it is valid (I want to take my ground game to the next level, so I'm going to train with X), I can't help but feel for the original instructor who has fingerprints all over the student's basic ground game. I've heard the quote from one instructor - "You cut / carve a diamond out of the rough, and then someone else just buffs it a little bit, and calls it their diamond".

I understand how lots of MA's are businesses, however I have lots of empathy for such instructors. It just sucks overall because no matter how valid (or invalid) the reason, you just feel like you lose a part of yourself - because the best instructors give so much of themselves away when teaching.
 
you do understand that you can be perceived as luring students from other schools by offering free open mat. i must admit from a business standpoint it seems like the right thing to do to maximize profits.

i don't know what your real intent is by offering free open mat to anybody. only you in your heart know your real intentions.

i'll give you the benefit of the doubt though.

I understand how it could be perceived that way, but my mat is open to instructors too. On several occasions I have taken time away from my own school to teach at Snake's school just to help him out, and every time I invite him to come over on Saturdays. I come from an area where jiu jitsu is shared, not hated. If you have ever been to Atlanta you will see around ten black and brown belts that get together at each others schools throughout the week to train. Everyone benefits from training with other high level students. No one tries to "steal" the other students and they still compete against each other at tournaments. It's just a better way.

If you live in Brazil and have 40 black belts at your school you don't need to train across the street. We don't, so we work with what we have. As a black belt in the US it is hard for me to push myself training with blues and whites. I don't care if those guys ever sign a contract with me as long as I get to train with them each week. If you look at it that way it is selfish, but it is for jiu jitsu not students.
 
If you have ever been to Atlanta you will see around ten black and brown belts that get together at each others schools throughout the week to train.

Whoa whoa whoa...really? Because when I was in Atlanta it felt like there was a blood feud between Alliance and Knuckle Up, the two largest schools in the area? Or are you talking about Tiger and Unit2?

That said, Saulo even says in his new book that you HAVE to train at other places or you'll be stagnant. You end up learning a subset of what your instructor knows, and it's a disservice to a good instructor to have a limited student.

Sure, if your instructor is Saulo or Rickson then maybe you can stay with him through black and not suffer for it, but if your instructor is a typical black belt then it's likely you'll still benefit significantly by training with other black belts that bring different elements to their game. Hell, I'm sure that even Saulo or Rou Harris could learn something from Tinguinha and Marcelo and Galvao right?
 
If you have ever been to Atlanta you will see around ten black and brown belts that get together at each others schools throughout the week to train.

Whoa whoa whoa...really? Because when I was in Atlanta it felt like there was a blood feud between Alliance and Knuckle Up, the two largest schools in the area? Or are you talking about Tiger and Unit2?

That said, Saulo even says in his new book that you HAVE to train at other places or you'll be stagnant. You end up learning a subset of what your instructor knows, and it's a disservice to a good instructor to have a limited student.

Sure, if your instructor is Saulo or Rickson then maybe you can stay with him through black and not suffer for it, but if your instructor is a typical black belt then it's likely you'll still benefit significantly by training with other black belts that bring different elements to their game. Hell, I'm sure that even Saulo or Rou Harris could learn something from Tinguinha and Marcelo and Galvao right?
 
From my personal experience I have seen this happen at small schools. The story is almost tragic - the instructor takes a nobody, carves them into a somebody, and invests so much time and effort in teachings to get them higher and higher. Pretty soon they reach something of amateur fighter status, close to professional.

For one reason or another, even if it is valid (I want to take my ground game to the next level, so I'm going to train with X), I can't help but feel for the original instructor who has fingerprints all over the student's basic ground game. I've heard the quote from one instructor - "You cut / carve a diamond out of the rough, and then someone else just buffs it a little bit, and calls it their diamond".

I understand how lots of MA's are businesses, however I have lots of empathy for such instructors. It just sucks overall because no matter how valid (or invalid) the reason, you just feel like you lose a part of yourself - because the best instructors give so much of themselves away when teaching.

What you're forgetting is that the instructor is being compensated to carve out the students ground game. Firstly, tangibly, he is being paid directly by the student to train. Secondly, intangibly, having top level competitors (or even semi-famous) on the circuit and in MMA raises awareness about the school and the coach.

While I understand that there is obviously a personal bond that forms between student and teacher over the period of time it takes to train someone, its firstly a business relationship. Unfortunately, most of relationships are predicated on student paying teacher for knowledge and skills. I can understand if the teacher is doing it gratis because he sees something in the student but for the most part (99%) this is not the case.
 
From my personal experience I have seen this happen at small schools. The story is almost tragic - the instructor takes a nobody, carves them into a somebody, and invests so much time and effort in teachings to get them higher and higher. Pretty soon they reach something of amateur fighter status, close to professional.

For one reason or another, even if it is valid (I want to take my ground game to the next level, so I'm going to train with X), I can't help but feel for the original instructor who has fingerprints all over the student's basic ground game. I've heard the quote from one instructor - "You cut / carve a diamond out of the rough, and then someone else just buffs it a little bit, and calls it their diamond".

I understand how lots of MA's are businesses, however I have lots of empathy for such instructors. It just sucks overall because no matter how valid (or invalid) the reason, you just feel like you lose a part of yourself - because the best instructors give so much of themselves away when teaching.

A. It may be hidden from the view of lower belts, but there is usually a good reason if a significant number of higher level students are leaving a school. The fact that the lower belts aren't clued into the reason may actually be a testament to the character of those leaving as they obviously aren't trying to start gossip or "steal" other students to go with them.

B. There are different levels of play for every sport. If you are training with a local swim club and reach a point where you decide you want to compete in college or the Olympics, you probably have to leave your current club (even if you like it very much) in order to prepare yourself and go to a higher level program. The original club owner should recognize the limitations of their program and wish you well, not get defensive and angry. You don't go play Recreational Softball to prepare for the Major Leagues, do you? That doesn't mean that Recreational Softball isn't perfect for many people.

The issue is that sometimes those at the lower levels of a given sport have a higher vision of themselves than fact and practicality often dictate and therefore get upset when someone leaves to further themselves. It shouldn't be taken as a slap in the face, rather you should encourage the individuals to attain their goals and you should go about your own business as makes you happy.
 
Sometimes I consider switching over to a straight BJJ school like GB or RG to get more BJJ time in because at CSW we only have BJJ twice a week. Then I remember that I get to train under Erik fucking Paulson and some days there are only like 2 or 3 of us there so it's practically like getting privates from a legend.

That and Erik absolutely terrifies me and I wouldn't be able to sleep much less look him straight in the eyes if I saw him driving around(we don't live too far from eachother) if I left his school for anywhere else.
 
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