Something terrible has happened.

My gym is splitting.

Total bummer for me. We have a really high level competition black belt instructor who teaches at night, and a brown belt that teaches during the day. The brown belt owns teh gym, and teaches muy thai and some other things that dont interest me. The school has been around for 25 years. The black belt owns the building. black is teh one who is sponsored and part of the affiliation our bjj gym is under... brown is under the same affiliation now, but has trained witha hodge podge of bjj , csw, and sambo instructors.

brown is moving across town. i assume black is going to stay put.

I vastly prefer brown's teaching and mentality. But I assume all of the purples are going to to with black. So it comes down to the age old question of quality instruction vs quality training partners. There are some decent no-gi guys in browns classes, but I think i am probably the best "regular" grappler in browns classes. there are guys that come in from time to time and whip my ass.

the other factor is that i usually go to class once or twice per week over lunch and once per week at night. brown will offer day and night classes, black will offer night only.

I would go to both schools, but if i know black's attitude he wont allow that.

As you can tell, i have sort of already made my mind up about what im going to do. I will probably ask black if he cares if i train with borwn during the day, if he says yes, i guess i know what i need to do (brown already stated he wont care if i do both).

on a side note, brown promoted black to purple, and was over taken at purple/brown belt by black.

 

sad reality is, your situation is a pretty frequent event.
I have seen a lot of schools split.
good luck man.

 

we need names!

 

why?

Its still on the DL, but if you were in my area, it would be pretty easy to figure out. There are only a few legit schools. Ask me again after June 1 (when teh split is supposed to happen) and i will be happy to oblige. or PM me if you really need to know, but its probably no one you have ever heard of.

 

"on a side note, brown promoted black to purple, and was over taken at purple/brown belt by black."


say what????

 

brown was a purple when black started. he promoted black to blue, then purple. Then black was promoted to brown by a different instructor (this is all ten years ago, when a purple belt in IN was a badass) while brown stayed at purple. Black is also sort of independently wealthy and had spent alot of time in brazil and neww york where he trained with Nova Unaio and hooked up with what is now our affiliation, and got his brown and black belts.

now that i read that it is like a brain teaser. i shoudl have called brown belt instructor "A" and black belt "B" but i didnt.

 

You should have just called them bob and joe. After reading your last post it seems that "brown" has been a brown belt for a hell of a long time, you think he might get his black soon? Would that influence your decision?

 

yes, looking back that woul dhave been smarter....

he has been a borwn belt for a long time. but he was a purple belt for a REALLY long time. he doesnt compete and doesnt travel at all which has slowed his progress down some. Also he trains multiple styles and was a striker before he became a grappler, so he is not 100% devoted to bjj, which slows things down a bit too.

My guess is he would have gotten his blackbelt next march, when the brazilian namesake of our affiliation comes to town... but now, who knows? he got started under jj machado. maybe he will go back there for his bb? It doesnt really matter to me that he is a brown belt, seems an arbitrary line. he knows a lot more than me and he is a good teacher, thats all i need from an instructor. what he lacks is students that can beat me.

 

That sure is a difficult situation to be in.

 

Sounds like black would be incredibly petty not to let you train with the guy that gave him his blue and purple belt.

You'd think a relationship like that would warrant more mutual understanding.

 

Ah, another split, like everyone has said, good luck bro. I know nothing about the instructors, but what I do know is you can learn SO MUCH from your training buddies. Much of the shit I know was taught to me by friends. Also, you need guys who will push you, as opposed to target practice. But scheduling is important too, I'd rather train 3 days a week at a great school then once a week at an awesome school. Just go with the place you are happier to train at.

 

brown to black from purple to blue but brown does black the blue and another instructor puts brown to black and purple stays color for long time then black to brown?

 

really i think the deciding factor is going to be teh daytime classes, i can train 3x/week with shatty training partners and a great instructor... or 1x/week with great partners and a good instructor.

also i just dont like the black belt instructor as much, so that plays into it. having said that, if he is ok with it (but he wont be) i will still train there at night.

 

eat shit.

 

My school split too, and now I train (or really will train, I've been off re-habbing a broken hand for nearly 3 months) at 2 schools. My kid is involved, there were hurt feelings, it's costing me extra money, it sucks.

 

I went through this last year. you need to go with your boy on this.

 

I wasn't really aware of brown belts handing out belts to other guys. I guess we have enough black belts at my school to render that point moot...

 

i hadnt even thought of teh cost IF i was to train at 2 schools. these bjj guys and their HS girl politics...

 

this was back in the day... brown belts dont hand out belts now.

 

just curious, did any (many) of the higher ranking guys follow to the new school?

at our school most of the mma guys train with the brown belt. But the bjj guys (who are much better as a group at grappling) train with the black belt. my fear is that i will be the only guy over there, me and a bunch of kickboxers that cant grapple for shit