Traditional BJJ Academy Owner - Undercover Ronin
Hey Y'all,
My name's Shane and for the past 6 months I've been running a BJJ Academy in Idaho, and before that I ran one in California for 5 years. I'm a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Brown Belt under Robson Moura and have been teaching full time since about 09. We have NoGi on our schedule and have a pretty small following for it, most of our guys love the Gi (and I do too). However, the folks that have been showing up have been delving into the system with me and we really enjoy it. One day I hope to travel to a moon and link up and get some official training or even have a seminar at our place, but until then we'll just keep watching MTS and the material that's out there. Would be great to become the first moon in Idaho as well, but baby steps.
Questions are, some of my folks wanted to grab some rash guards and stuff from the site and I was all like absolutely go support the system - then it dawned on me, let me ask first. Since there is no hotbox program, and we're not a moon, and we have ZERO tenth planet ties it was a gray area for us. I know Ronin are encouraged to rep the system and wear the gear, and I'm good with my folks wearing 10P in NoGi, as long as 10P is good with us wearing it too. The other question was, do I tell them to grab white belt ranked stuff or match their corresponding BJJ ranks (myself included). I would hate to have them buy stuff and then have a 10P BB come visit for a seminar and see folks doing things the wrong way. I've done some searching but didnt quite find a situation like ours.
Either way, any guidance you could offer would be dope
BTW, Eddie - if you're reading this, I sent you a DM on IG but I know you probably get swamped with them. In 2007 a young military guy sent you a message on myspace while he was deployed and asked you for a copy of "Dropped" - you replied right away, and emailed the song. The song helped that guy through an ugly deployment, and then a mess when he got home with a failed marriage and a bunch of other shit. Dropped may have single handily kept this guy on the right side of the soil on a few dark days ... just wanted to say "Thanks" - in some strange way, everything I have now almost 10 years later, may in some way partially be because of you.
