Let’s say you’re a basketball fan. Let’s say Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, or LeBron James decides to come to your town.
For a certain amount of money, between $40 and $100, Steph, or Dame (or whoever your favorite player is) say they’ll spend hours showing you and a group of your friends their best moves. They might even play a game of one-on-one with you at the end.
Sound insane? For most sports, it is. In jiu-jitsu, this actually happens. It’s called a seminar.
Over the years, I’ve learned some incredible things at seminars. That’s why we continually try to bring in excellent guest instructors (like Junny Ocasio in June and Jeff Glover in July) to give students the opportunity to learn from and train with the greats.
Right off the top, I want to say this: no student is expected to go to seminars at our academy. These are opportunities, not obligations. Everyone has a limited amount of money and time, so the decisions about what you can do are personal. (Also, just coming to class regularly is the best way to get better. Going to a seminar is a terrific supplement, but the person who comes to class three or four days a week for three months is going to get better way faster than the person who trains once every couple of weeks but trained with Rickson Gracie one time).
Why are seminars useful? What are some reasons you should consider going to a BJJ seminar?
To get a different perspective on jiu-jitsu. All elite practitioners have excellent fundamentals — but everyone organizes information in their mind a bit differently. If you have one or two regular instructors, you get their perspective regularly: having someone explain a move you’ve seen 10 times in a new way often helps.
To get access to a particular BJJ move. Let’s say you’ve hit a deep half guard sweep or two, but you struggle against upper belts. When someone like, say, Jeff Glover comes to town, getting your move to that next level is often worth the price of admission. Or, if you’ve never done worm guard, having Daniel Frank come and break the position down for you is a very worthwhile thing. Or, let’s say you want to learn the de la Riva guard, and the guy they named it after is teaching it (yes, this happens!).
Jason Culbreth — himself a black belt masters world champion — told me once that he picked up a ton of moves over the years at seminars, and thought of them as “my $40 move” or “my $60 move.” One of those moves won him a gold medal at Masters Worlds.
To get to train with someone whose game you admire. This is a reason that some people are more up-front about than others: just like it’d be cool to say you got to play hoops with LeBron James, if you do jiu-jitsu, you may actually get to train with some of the current best — indeed, you may get to train with some of the best ever. Ideally, they teach you something life-changing. Even if they don’t, being on the same mat with coral belts, red belts, UFC pioneers and legendary badasses is awe-inspiring.
This isn’t to say you should train only with famous jiujiteiros and jiujiteiras, of course. Being a world champion isn’t the same thing as being an incredible instructor. I’ve been fortunate to train with many world champions, and most of them were mind-blowing teachers. Some others made me wish I’d just gone to a regular class.
One of the exciting aspects of owning an academy is being able to bring in the people you want to bring in. We’ll only bring in people that we know for sure are great instructors in addition to having killer jiu-jitsu themselves.
One other factor for consideration: this is how the greats of the art make a living, in many cases. There are very few folks becoming wealthy from jiu-jitsu, since most prestigious tournaments still don’t offer cash prizes. I think of supporting seminars in the same way I think of supporting a local artist I admire: yes, I like the work, and yes, I can benefit from having it in my space, but I also want to reward the hard work that good people have put in to build a quality jiu-jitsu scene.
These are all great reasons to go to quality seminars. But I had a question from a new student recently about whether he was ready for a seminar like the Jeff Glover event, since it will cover more advanced subjects.
I’ll get to my answer for that student in a moment, but it raises a larger question: when should you not go to a seminar?
All of my answers to this revolve around opportunity cost: the only reasons not to go to a seminar in my view involve money and time. If you can’t afford it at that moment, or you’re too busy to go, don’t go. There will be other seminars, and you want to keep your jiu-jitsu journey sustainable. Remember that seminars are dessert — going to class regularly is the main meal.
I do want to address the “what if the technique is too advanced?” issue, though. It’s definitely true that having more experience helps you take full advantage of a seminar: if you don’t know half guard basics, it’s going to be tough to fully understand the deep half guard.
But you will still learn something, and if you stick with this, you’ll still get value out of the seminar over the long term. This is one reason I take notes.
A quick story: one of my first seminars was with Dave Camarillo, the standout judo and jiu-jitsu mind who has also coached luminaries of MMA. This photo is from that seminar, and includes three guys who are black belts now and two who are quality brown belts.
I took many things away from it, but candidly, a lot of it was over my head. I had a blast, though, and learned a lot, and got to train with one of modern martial arts’ best instructors.
Fast forward three years. I’m reviewing my seminar notebook so I can upload it all to Google Drive (yes, I have notes from all the seminars I’ve ever taken). I started reading the Dave Camarillo notes.
It all made sense now.
Material I had no idea about suddenly came alive. In the years since, I’d learned more fundamentals, which allowed me to understand some of the concepts Dave was trying to get across.
I’ve trained with Dave several times in the years since, and the material from one of my first ever seminars is still in my game today.
In summary: don’t ever feel like you have to attend a seminar. Very few seminars are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
Conversely, I’ve been to dozens of jiu-jitsu seminars, and have only been disappointed twice (and one of those is because the guy didn’t show up). Learning is a process, and like most processes, the more you invest in it, the better off you are.
Figure out who you want to train with, and train with them. NBA fans don’t get the chance to do this type of stuff. Jiu-jitsu people do. Let’s try to make the most of it.