One of my favourite things about the BJJ schools I have called home is the lineage. From Helio to Saulo to Jorge to Ryan (to avoid namedropping ;) is as tight as you can get nowadays even training a few thousand miles from Brazil. One of the things that comes with that and another of my favourite things is the solid curriculum the instructors go through to ensure coverage of the basics. New students who come in and train for the 4 free weeks and decide not to continue training for whatever reason, leave with good skills to defend themselves. Others who stick with the training build from a very solid base to become well rounded practitioners.
This is class 1 of week one which is focused upon behavior, defending punches, initiating the clinch, basic defensive guard, and technical standup. This is not Ryan's favourite part of the curriculum but he sticks with it as a good start and practical application in the real world.
I will follow this with more sessions and you will see me in the background (like in this one) and see how the practitioners in our club start their journey and why I go back time after time to the white belt classes to hammer in the basics. (For the first few, you may have to wear headphones as he is instructing rather than performing......but there are plenty of jokes ;)
