From Redit:
"FWIW, I've trained at both one of Ralph Gracie's schools and the 10th Planet Rochester affiliate (Chris Herzog's school). I trained there for a few months while I was in the process of moving out of the country, partly because I was curious, partly because I wanted to see if their guys were any good.
On the one hand, I loved the way the 10th Planet school taught techniques. (Probably not indicative of how all 10th Planet affiliates do things.) Essentially, they'd teach a series on a particular half guard transition or a sequence in full guard or whatever, but he'd go into great detail and every single class for the whole week was the same exact thing, just with more details. During sparring, you were given explicit instructions to try to execute the technique covered earlier in the session. If you got too far away from that technique positionally, just reset.
So that was the good. On the other hand, the skill level of many of their guys was pretty terrible. I kept catching people in straight arm locks from full guard and at least twice, the response was something like, "Woah, I've never seen that before!" I feel like those things are pretty basic, and it's a bit embarrassing for anybody who's been training 3-6 months to have never seen some of the basics before. This is probably the down side to always going in-depth: You get deep knowledge of a particular move sequence, but without the broad knowledge of what's possible, you're going to have gaping holes in your game.
On the other hand, there were at least two guys at the 10th Planet gym who could effortlessly decimate me in seconds. Blue belts I believe. Not a single blue at the Ralph Gracie school in California could take me apart the way those two were. Mind you, there are a couple blues at Ralph's school that will consistently beat me, but not in seconds; they're working for it. And in that case, it was actually the same story: They were using moves I wasn't familiar with and didn't know how to counter or defend.
But on balance, there's no question that the Ralph Gracie school had more high-level talent, better sparring partners, better competitors, and I will probably always consider it to be my home school. I feel like there's a lot to learn from both sides, and as someone who trains both gi and no-gi, I feel like pretending that 10th Planet doesn't exist is a losing strategy. I think there are a ton of things in the 10th Planet game that can be beaten, but only if you're actually familiar with their game in the first place.
"
Then when asked if he was basing his experience on working with other white belts
"It's 10th planet, they don't exactly wear their belts. I can only guess what belts they are. I know the ranks of a few of them, since a few do the colored rash-guard thing, but completely uncertain on the rest.
Also see GarleyCavidson's comment elsewhere in the thread where he basically said something similar about 10th planet headquarters."
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LOL I have no idea who sporkmonger is on redit. But I can guarantee he never did what he claims. Chances are he never even rolled in my school, and for sure he was only in the beginner classes. He may have done minute situation drills, and if he was tapping anyone out with straight armbars from the guard it was against guys that had only been training a month or two. Ask around, anyone thats from an outside school and rolls at my gym, gets the shit tapped out of them. I've seen blues, purples and even brown belts from other schools get tapped out by my white belts while rolling in the Roc. This dude is full of shit, and if he ever comes back to my school, will get an old fashion ass whoopin, and I'll let him pick which white belt does it.
If anyone is on reddit can you ask him his name.
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