Made the move to the 10th planet system.
Hi everyone, 10th Planet newbie here. Just thought I'd introduce myself and fill everyone in on my background and if anyone has any advice for someone who is new to the system then I'm happy to hear it!
I'm a Blue Belt 3 stripe from the UK and I've been training for 2 years under Gracie Barra. I've competed quite a lot on the UK competition circuit in these 2 years and I've had a fair bit of success with these smaller competitions (3 golds and 2 bronze medals, one being the British Open). As I've set my sights on competition at bigger competitions such as NAGA and ADCC trials along with my mentor (who is a 4 Stipe brown belt), we began drilling more leg locks, heel hooks and their escapes as previously we were only competing under IBJJF rules. This is where we started running into issues as our professor was against us practicing them or even just drilling the escapes. The point of going into this is to highlight that I had been frustrated for a while because of this. Then around a month ago, my dad hosted Ben Eddy for a seminar at his gym and I travelled a few hours over to take part. This was the first time I'd had the chance to roll with someone who was under the 10th planet system and prior to that I'd only seen things online. I'd always been interested but once again my professor was against using certain positions and as a result I never got chance to experiment with them. After the seminar i was hooked and decided to look for a 10th planet gym. I found that 10th Planet Darlington was 40 miles away from me and I travelled over for a session prior to my 2 week holiday I had coming up. I had a phenomenal session and I was getting tapped left and right. Even though this was the case, I was excited about it because I could see how much I had to learn from these guys and from the system itself. It was everything I was looking for. The next day I flew off to California with my wife and 2 kids as we had a road trip planned for a few months I was in LA for 3 of these days so I decided to train at 10th Planet HQ. I was obviously a little out of my depth with the warm up drills but everyone was really welcoming, patient and helpful. I got smashed in the positional sparring and the free sparring but I learned so much from it. It would have been easy for me to hide back at my old gym and stay comfortable...but what would that achieve? I want to be the best grappler I can and being out of my comfort zone is exactly what I need to achieve that. I've downloaded the warm up app and subscribed to MTS and I've been studying this every day since I got back. I'll officially be making the move to 10th Planet darlington starting next week so I'll be training there for all their weekly classes. Me and my mentor also have our own small gym (he teaches and I manage the business side) so I'll still be training 2 days a week in the Gi, but the rest of the classes will also give me chance to work on my 10th planet system.
All in all its been a huge eye opener experiencing the system and rolling with all the 10th planet guy and girls. Thanks to Ben Eddy, everyone at 10th Planet Darlington and also everyone at 10th Planet HQ. You've been insightful and welcoming and I'm looking forward to the journey :)
