If you’re lurking on this page as a lover of BJJ who no longer trains due to gym crappery–being used exclusively as chum by high belts, verbal abuse, unsafe conditions, whatever–Rener Gracie over at Gracie Breakdown has an offer for you: Your August’s worth of training free of charge at any “participating Certified Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Training Center around the world.”
Gracie shares the story of a new white belt Albert as the motivation for the offer. When Al was looking for a jiu-jitsu school to make his home, he trialed Gracie’s and an unnamed other location to compare and contrast. At that other non-Gracie gym, Albert states he was given no instruction, no safety precautions were advised, no primer on how rolls work, told “just don’t tap,” and then thrown to the sharks as an appetizer when the sparring started. He was paired with a three stripe white belt for his first roll ever, and says the experience felt “hostile.”
“He was trying to take my head–make me tap as much as possible,” explains Albert. “He wasn’t tryin to give me any tips.” Getting savaged left him wanting to crawl off the mats immediately, and his nervous system was still kicked into “that felt like an actual fight” mode even after he was back home.
Saint Rener has some saintly advice for such wayward and abused white belts, however.
“If you’ve never done jiu-jitsu before, don’t go into a school and have a terrible experience, and think that that’s it. There is hope, and there is a better way, says Gracie.
If you live somewhere where Gracie CTC participants are scarce, don’t fear other gyms. Just pop in before training and ask about the structure of classes, including who new students are most likely to work with, what kind of resources are available to total novices, and what kind of safety precautions instructors use to keep students safe. If the owner or instructors cant answer those questions, you probably don’t want to train there no matter how good you are.
The full video is here:
