Think it was 2008 and I had a daft idea I wanted to fight MMA even though I knew very little of grappling. I was currently teaching Thai so showing my total cluelessness I wanted to learn enough grappling to stay safe and get back to my feet! at least that was my ignorance to grappling at the time. I had already done a few privates in the Gi locally to me but as far as I was concerned that was not specific enough for MMA. lol so I found a club in Manchester that did nogi Jiu Jtsu classes as well as gi, so after sending an email a week later I travelled to Manchester to do a 4 hour seminar. Massive wake up call, I had no idea what I was doing but enjoyed it, did a bit of rolling at the end and soon realised my idea of getting back to my feet with a good grappler was never going to happen!
So I through myself into learning , traveling every week for a private and then doing a class after, after a while I started to show some of my Thai students bits that I had been learning and we ended up with half hour after Thai o look at the grappling, some how that turned to a separate class and no idea how it happened but I some how found myself teaching a nogi jiu jitsu class as well as my thai class, traveling to Manchester to learn more, but also now having some partners to roll with locally.
Id take in seminars, did one with Eddie in Nottingham and strated adding the 10th planet stuff to my game, brought the books etc!
At some point a fall out occurred between the main gym in Manchester and my friends gym all due to personal stuff nothing to do with the training, and it became difficult to train there, so I stopped going, and was left just teaching and training with my guys. We had started to fight MMA by now, id had 2 fight both won in the first round and all my students had won, we went on to be undefeated as a team for 4 years.
Not sure when but I was starting to look for a new coach for myself somewhere to train apart from just with my guys and I heard of a guy doing nogi type classes in Liverpool, so again an email sent and 2 days later im heading up to meet Marcelo Brigadeiro except I wasn't to meet Brig he was back in brazil for a couple of week and the classes were Luta Livre Esportiva. the class was taken by Paul Sass who has fought in the UFC and is pretty good with a triangle. lol
Loved the class, we worked entries to foot locks and basic foot locks, then rolling with the guys after was an eye opener, every one was going for leg locks as well as all the usual nogi bjj stuff I was used to, I had no leg defence and no clue really as we were kind of put off going for leg locks by my old coach. Rolled with sass and he put me n a twister at least twice. lol Anyway I kept going to the classes, met Marcelo and the club I was running went over to run under his name with me running it, I was graded as an orange belt under Marcelo and eventfully produced 2 yellow belt students. Unfortunately Marcelo returned back to Brazil after a few years I carried on but after a while it was hard with out my master, I hosted one of his black belts a few times at my club but really needed more contact and going to brazil with a young family just wasn't an option. eventually I closed the club, sat on my sofa and got fat...
Now im very out of shape, just recovered from being really ill with my chest an asthma but.. the grappling bug is hard to shift.... so her I am.... stumbling back on the 10th planet system and seeing you guys are now on the leg lock hype also
I love leg locks, so maybe im in a good place.
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Originally Posted by ben jones
