My Seminar Tour

Recently, I was very fortunate to be able to travel to Europe to teach a series of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu seminars. It was a great experience and I just wanted to talk about it briefly. For two weeks, I traveled from Holland through Germany and into England. I love traveling and I love Europe and it was fantastic to visit and to teach while I was there.  It was also very eye-opening for me about a number of things.  First, as I told a friend, the world is gigantic but the Jiu-Jitsu world is small. Every place I visited treated me wonderfully. There were no egos, just people sharing in the love of our art. This is probably the best thing that Jiu-Jitsu practitioners discover when they travel: this bond is greater than politics, nationality, or race. I firmly believe this is why Grandmaster Helio wanted the art spread so far and wide.

Before I go too much further, I also want to thank the people who covered my classes for me while I was gone. My students were extremely fortunate to get, in essence, two weeks of free seminars from some of the most amazing instructors I know. I can’t thank these guys enough for traveling to my school and sharing their time and knowledge. I’m truly honored by the help they lent me. These are all people I consider my brothers and my teachers: Jason Culbreth, Seth Shamp, Mazi Heydari, Mark Cukro, JackJitsu, Sean Zorio and Jay Yovanovich, Larry Hughes, Tom Colby, Brian Urban, Jeff Shaw. I also want to thank Larry Carter for traveling to Ft. Bragg to cover my classes at the 82nd Airborne Fight Room. And, last, I’d like to thank Isaiah Monroe and Aran Stalls for covering my other classes.  I don’t know any other profession where you could get that many different, exceptional people to just freely help you.

And, I want to thank all the people who helped make my trip possible from the other end – people I now consider good friends. I began my trip at the NATO Base in Brunssum Holland and Lt. Col. Dave DeAtley and his wife Liliane were exceptionally kind enough to give me a place to stay and bring me in to teach. I really enjoyed meeting with his Combatives Instructors and all the people who made it to the seminars (including someone who has become a very good friend, Ross Hudson, who flew from England for the seminar).

Next, I can’t thank enough Andre Gunnel and Pilar Schene for setting up the next couple of seminars (Osnabruck and Munster) and also giving me a place to stay for a couple of days as well as taking me sightseeing. These two are like family and have a true passion for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Andre introduced me to the great Valentino Pantera who runs PanteraMMA and does amazing photography and is a high level jokester. The seminar at PanteraMMA was great and I thank all the people who came and spent the whole time guillotining each other. Next was Munster where I had a great turnout for a seminar on Gracie Self Defense. Martin Grafe was very generous and opened his Judo Club up for my seminar.

After this, I traveled to Giessen and did a very fun seminar (again Gracie Self Defense) at Christoph Hauch’s school (and thanks Conny Feistauer and Olaf for giving me a place to stay).

Then, I traveled farther South for two more seminars. The first was at Erkan Mete’s school in Aldingen. Erkan is a consummate martial artist and very kindly brought me into his home. He showed me all around the area (which is insanely beautiful) and I had a blast teaching at his place. He also set up my next seminar at the Buschkamp Brothers MMA School (these are 3 of the top MMA guys in Germany). Thomas Buschkamp was exceptionally generous and very humble and friendly for being so accomplished. One of the guys (Mehmet) came to both seminars even when the second one was on his birthday!)

This was supposed to be my last seminar but in a scramble, Ross Hudson put together a seminar at his school in Ormskirk, England. I have to say that I consider Ross to have become a very good friend and true Jiu-Jitsu brother now.  His school is doing fantastic and for very good reason! The seminar was a great turnout and was kind of an experiment for me. Anyone who trains with me knows that I am very concept focused. I hate just teaching moves without a conceptual framework of what you’re trying to accomplish in Jiu-Jitsu. But, this seminar was probably the most concept focused I’ve ever done, probably half concept – the other half being some of my favorite chokes. It was a lot of fun!

As I said, this trip was an enormous lesson for me and I took a lot away from it.  The first is that there is always an appreciation for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu as a self defense art. Not everyone is going to be well versed enough to learn complicated grappling moves but when I focused on real world self defense, everyone got it.  That said, I did teach sport and MMA focused techniques well.  It is all Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and if I bring my passion for it, I definitely find a worldwide community open to sharing it.  The other thing I realized is Royce’s genius. The more I teach, the more I am trying to focus on being a teacher and not just an instructor. I believe an instructor just teaches moves whereas a teacher tries to convey the whole art especially the concepts and philosophy of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. This is why I try to follow Royce’s goals for our art more and more. He is a direct line to the source and what GM Helio was hoping to accomplish.  But, on a more mundane note, I was able to utilize Royce’s teaching style when dealing with students who spoke no English and for whom my beginner’s German wasn’t good enough. If you’ve even seen Royce teach, he says very little. He instructs through the way he performs the move and the way he physically guides you through the move. This was a HUGE eye opener about how much I could convey this way.

This trip was a big gamble for me but because of the generosity of Jiu-Jitsu lovers half a world away, I had a wonderful adventure and can’t wait to go back!

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