Look, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. I do believe you were trying to be honest and objective with your reviews, however, you need to take some things into consideration...As someone who started at Renzo's a while back, left Renzo's on a sour note (i won't get into details) and have come back to Renzo's, I could tell you I'm very happy that I did. That's not to say you can't get great BJJ instruction elsewhere but let me tell you how I see things when it comes to Renzo's. (i can't speak about the other schools because while i have trained in several other places in the past, i have not trained in any of the two schools you reviewed)
1 - I could see why after a trial class at Renzo's you may have felt it was a little "cold", but as someone previously mentioned there are constanly new people coming in and out of there in addition to the hundreds of students already enrolled. You will not start to establsh relationships with people, and feel like your part of the family until you have been there long enough for people to get to know your face and you have proven that you are serious about training and you are in it for the long haul. After a while you will feel that comradery, you'll make friends, and even rolling partners.
2 - So you got matched up with a girl half your size, I won't lie, it sucks, it's happened to me and everyone else, but I realized that I can't complain if the girl is giving me a run for my money, and I'm willing to bet she gave you a run for yours! Listen, forget the fact that she is a girl cause if they partnered you with Kyra Gracie, I'm sure you wouldn't be complaining, she too was a white belt one day.
3- The instruction was "so-so", this is the one area that I think you were really out of line. I know you are only giving an opinion, but your are not in a position yet to say what is good and what is not. The credentials of the students and instructors at Renzo's speak for themselves, there is no debating that. Also, you've made a typical rookie mistake in your analysis that I made in the past also. You liked Josh's instruction because everything happend in progression, and not that this is bad, I'm sure he is a fine instructor. An example of what you mean is probably something similar to this: start in cross-side trying to apply a kimura, if the opponent defends by extending his arm out on the mat, you change to inverted arm-bar, if opponent defends by pushing his arm up, you transition to the opposite side with the arm for an arm-bar off your back, etc. It's obviously not exactly the technique you were taught, but it is an example of the kind of instruction you liked. I too had trained in other places that had similar techaing styles which I liked, but what I realized after training at Renzo's is that i couldn't pass someones guard effectively, I couldn't sweep someone from my guard when the opportunity was there, I didn't know how to properly position my hands so that my chokes are tight, etc. What I'm trying to say is don't worry about the flashy instruction in the beginning, make sure they are drilling the very basics over, and over again. By the way, they also teach those progressive techniques at Renzo's but not as much at the white belt level.
Finally, what I really like about Renzo's aside from the world-class instruction, is the amount of students that go there. You get to test yourself everytime you train because of the variety of skill levels (even within specific belt levels), and diverse amount of students with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. In a more personalized enviorment you tend to roll with the same people everytime and you are already expecting certain things from certain people. When you roll with the same set of guys, you already know who likes to do certain sweeps, or submissions from certain positions. You can't get too confident at Renzo's because somebody will always come along at some point and keep you humble. And you want that, because the more holes in your game you can discover while your train, the more complete your game will be when it matters most, whether it be in a real self-defense situation, mma, or sport jiu-jitsu competition.
At the end of the day, you have to decide where is best for you, and where you think you will get the best instruction for your hard earned money. I'm not saying that Renzo's is the only place that could happen, but it is for me. Finally, like everything else in life, it's not where you go to learn, it what you make of your learning experience.
