Well, my kung fu school got closed down
Most of you guys know the story of our little kung fu school in the middle of nowhere, but for those who don't I joined the place in the early 2000's and introduced them to grappling. I had done a little wrestling and some Judo and bought every jiujitsu book I could get my hands on. Like everyone else on here once I found 10P my fate was sealed and there was no turning back. I wasn't allowed to grapple during the regular kung fu class, but the teacher let me come early and stay late with whoever wanted to drill with me. We laid the books out on the bare floor and put numbers in teaching ourselves. Eventually my teacher retired and gave the school to me. I immediatly incorporated grappling into every sparring session, but with no lineage to speak of we were still just a kung fu school that rolled on the bare floor.
A few years later I found out about Gary Hoyd from 10th Planet Indy and booked him for a seminar at my place right away. After he left Bill Keeling took over that moon so I took some classes from him, and that year me and some of my kung-fools went to the Herzog seminar and Eddie's seminar at Indy. I was thrilled to death to be able to get some actual jiujitsu classes. Until then I was only able to be a drop in when I found a school when I traveled for work.
When Bill left the Indy school and Joe Durham took over I immediatly started blowing his phone up. I got my blue from Eddie at the Chicago seminar last year, something I'd only dreamed of. Me and my guys started hitting some of the sub only tourney's and winning. This year Mike Lawson booked Herzog for a seminar at my place and I had the privelage of making the Midwest Training Camp. All of this as a small town kung fu teacher.
Being in the middle of nowhere my student base has always been small and it finally caught up with me. Our host gym wanted us out of the room we used to make room for some more profitable aerobics classes. I managed to talk them into letting us keep two days, which were our "fight nights." We had to completely cut out the kung fu curriculum and reduced our classes to an hour of striking and an hour of grappling twice a week. In order to get a boost we had BJJ black belt Brad Maddox of Fight Science Gym out for a seminar last Sunday. He's Logan Cook and Nick Kroeger's coach and has a killer stable of fighters. He's also the guy who just cornered my wife for her mma debut. Super nice guy and super legit team.
After the seminar he gave me a blue belt under him in regular BJJ and offered my school affiliation with him. It was totally unexpected and I was blown away. With this affiliation we are now Fight Science Gym and Combat Sports Academy of Madison, a real jiujitsu school. I'm teaching most of the grappling and we have a Judo black belt who trains with us as well. One of my partners is a krav maga coach and he's doing the striking class. We're all 10th Planet fanatics and we're going to bust our asses to get affiliated with the system too. I message Joe all the time to make sure he knows everything we're doing and that I don't break any of the rules (like the troll we all just fell victim to). I can't claim 10P on paper yet but give us some time and we'll make our case.
