reddit thread about Eddie.

[Brent Smith]

Haha we must have spies. Seems like comments always get back to the people they're about.

[Chris Herzog]

Hiya. That's me. And yes, I've been to your school. Yes, it was the beginner classes. Didn't say otherwise, though probably should have clarified that. I'll edit my post. Trained with you guys for two months before I moved to Nairobi, Kenya. To be honest, no disrespect was intended, and apologies if it sounded disrespectful.

In my head, I was comparing beginner class to beginner class, but it sounds like that's not how it was interpreted. I can't say shit about the content of your advanced classes, since I've never been to them. Would've gone, but you suggested I should stick to the beginner classes. Ralph's school you can show up to whatever class you like, you just get beat up more at the advanced classes.

In my post I said those guys had been training for only a couple months, but that's at least something I stand by. I learned not to reach forward and grab behind someone's neck while in full guard in my first week of class. And damn if I didn't learn that the hard way. Was icing my elbows every day for awhile because I kept forgetting not to do that. Can't remember who it was I tapped to it, but it happened twice for sure. I just kinda figured the first time was a fluke, but started drawing conclusions on the second time around.

Did two months or so with 10th Planet Rochester, starting with escapes from mount, into boa sweep series, moving on to full guard stuff, swim move, and spider web. But in two months of coming every single class, that was all we learned in terms of technique. Please understand, that's not a criticism. For me, at my own level of development, that's exactly what I needed. I don't actually do very well learning a different technique, completely divorced from positional context every single day. The shotgun approach sucks after awhile. I loved the way you taught the boa sweep series in particular, because I learned each of the entrances and exits in the course of a week and a half or so. The Guantanamo has become my go-to escape from mount, and even though I've seen the Gracies teach that one too, I learned it way better from you than I did from them, purely because of the way you taught it.

But I'm not convinced that's necessarily the best solution for teaching someone with precisely zero jiu jitsu knowledge. If I had been starting with nothing at all, I'd much rather have my first day be all about weight, leverage, positioning, base, center of gravity stuff, and the rest of my first week or two be about nothing but survival, defense, and counters. I don't know how you do that while avoiding a scenario where the rank beginners hold back the rest of the class, but I still don't think even a white belt a few months in should be getting tapped out to straight arm locks by virtue of sticking their hand in a really dumb place, and especially not by another white belt with shitty technique. Also when we covered Guantanamo, during sparring sessions after, a ton of the other guys were giving up their backs to me over and over again while trying to push down the knee, which was an issue that didn't get covered during the technique portion of the class. And I was a little surprised that you didn't correct them while we were rolling, because hell if I didn't get chewed out every time I did a shitty whip-up. I dunno, maybe chew people out for giving up their backs too?

In any case, I welcome my old-fashioned ass whoopin', assuming I'm still welcome when I'm in town. I'm a sucker for learning shit the hard way.

I will say this: My favorite thing about 10th planet is that you guys are creative and open minded. Hopefully that includes being open to a bit of well-meant criticism.

Dear Bob, Lets just clarify a few things as it seems your memory was cloudy.


1) You only came to beginner day classes.

2) Eveyone in the day classes are white belts.

3) You mention how terrible some of those white belts were, have you looking at yourself in the mirror. My guys in the day classes have an average of less than 6 months of training,some at time were less than 3 months. It speaks volumes, that you had your ass handed to you by a few of them. Worse than any blue belts that beat you at your other school.

4) You rolled maybe 1 day, and lets not forget how that went. As a reminder a large portion of it was sitting on the bench.

"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!"

5) The person you tapped out was Nick, a 15 year old kid with less than 1 month experince. Hardly noteworthy, but congrats!

6) Tapping people out during "1 Minute Isolation/Situational Drills" when you're using techniques outside of said drill defeats the purpose of the drill. Congrats on finding away around getting better, and cheating your partner of the oppertinuty to get better at the skill set we were working on, and then boasting about it.

7) Thanks for your input on how to Coach, I'm sure your vast knowlegde of modern coaching, kinesiology and sports psychology will add nicely to my 27 years of experience.

"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."

8)Oh please do come back, maybe getting your ass handed to you again will help to jostle your memory as to how terrible those other white belts were.

[Brent Smith]

HA! Love it

[bobaman]

Most of the people in your day classes were new guys, no question, and I could totally be mistaken, because as I said, I don't know what belt anybody is, but whoever it was that tapped me out with an unbelievably fast arm crush off a swim move into spider web... didn't sound like he was a white belt from the conversation you were having with him. I got the impression he was coming in for a bit more time because he had a competition in a few days. My assumption was that he was a blue belt at least, but since I don't recall anybody's names, I have no idea. This was five months ago. So yeah, memory can be foggy.

As for tapping people out in isolation drills with other stuff, uhm, I guess that's fair? But he literally gave it to me. Would you prefer he didn't learn straight arm bars exist? As for it being "Nick", I can say categorically that the person I tapped was not Nick since 1) it was two different people and 2) they were both substantially older than 15. But once again, I have no idea who since I am beyond terrible with names and this was 5 months ago.

Look, I could have ignored this thread and stayed pseudonymous on Reddit. In the interests of avoiding drama, I probably should have. But for much the same reasons that I trained at your school in the first place (curiosity), I replied here, with what I thought was a pretty reasonable and civil response. Wanted to know who you really are and how you would respond to some pretty tame criticism. But since I'm the bad guy all of a sudden, fine, I accept that role. Next time I'm home in Rochester, I'm happy to be the punching bag. I'm sure I'll learn a shit-ton about opening my dumb mouth.

[bobby rivers]

Yeah but, will you really?

[Chris Herzog]

Most of the people in your day classes were new guys, no question, and I could totally be mistaken, because as I said, I don't know what belt anybody is, but whoever it was that tapped me out with an unbelievably fast arm crush off a swim move into spider web... didn't sound like he was a white belt from the conversation you were having with him. I got the impression he was coming in for a bit more time because he had a competition in a few days. My assumption was that he was a blue belt at least, but since I don't recall anybody's names, I have no idea. This was five months ago. So yeah, memory can be foggy.

As for tapping people out in isolation drills with other stuff, uhm, I guess that's fair? But he literally gave it to me. Would you prefer he didn't learn straight arm bars exist? As for it being "Nick", I can say categorically that the person I tapped was not Nick since 1) it was two different people and 2) they were both substantially older than 15. But once again, I have no idea who since I am beyond terrible with names and this was 5 months ago.

Look, I could have ignored this thread and stayed pseudonymous on Reddit. In the interests of avoiding drama, I probably should have. But for much the same reasons that I trained at your school in the first place (curiosity), I replied here, with what I thought was a pretty reasonable and civil response. Wanted to know who you really are and how you would respond to some pretty tame criticism. But since I'm the bad guy all of a sudden, fine, I accept that role. Next time I'm home in Rochester, I'm happy to be the punching bag. I'm sure I'll learn a shit-ton about opening my dumb mouth.

Nick doesn't look 15, he looks closer to 20, and the other person was likely LJ his older brother, who had a few weeks more classes than him.

As for the straight armbar, you obviously went for it more than once, therefore defeating the purpose of the drills we were doing. Its not your responibility to education other students it is mine, and I don't need your help.

Does this sound civil and tame to you? "the skill level of many of their guys was pretty terrible" Did you also mention the day classes make up about 10% of the population of our Academy? No, you conviently left that out. So basically your referring to about half the day class? A resounding 5 people, who are also beginners with only few months experince.. Bob its the pot calling the kettle black, you are in no position to call ANYONE terrible.

The guys that beat your ass were likely Bryan or Anthony ,they were white belts at the time with about 14-15 months experience. The just got promoted to Blue Belt this past weekend by Eddie.

[Cody Kietzman]

Nick doesn't look 15, he looks closer to 20, and the other person was likely LJ his older brother, who had a few weeks more classes than him.

As for the straight armbar, you obviously went for it more than once, therefore defeating the purpose of the drills we were doing. Its not your responibility to education other students it is mine, and I don't need your help.

Does this sound civil and tame to you? "the skill level of many of their guys was pretty terrible" Did you also mention the day classes make up about 10% of the population of our Academy? No, you conviently left that out. So basically your referring to about half the day class? A resounding 5 people, who are also beginners with only few months experince.. Bob its the pot calling the kettle black, you are in no position to call ANYONE terrible.

The guys that beat your ass were likely Bryan, Anthony, Chris or Jeff. They were all white belts at the time. Bryan and Anthony just got promoted to Blue Belt this past weekend by Eddie.

Those guys must have been putting in work to get their Blue Belt in under a year!!!!!!

[bobaman]

Does this sound civil and tame to you? "the skill level of many of their guys was pretty terrible"

Admittedly no. That was a pretty shitty choice of words.

[Chris Herzog]

Those guys must have been putting in work to get their Blue Belt in under a year!!!!!!

Bryan & Anthony got their blues in a little over a 1.5 yrs. And yes they work their asses off. They are usually in the gym 2x a day.

The time frame Bob is referring to was over the summer about 5 months ago. They would occasionally drop in to roll during the day classes to get some extra time in. But they usually trained in the evenings.

[bobaman]

Deleted my post from Reddit.