6 Months of Bliss: An Anniversary Post

Warning: mad gratitude ahead. If you don’t like shout-outs, maybe go back to watching that BJJ technique video you were checking out.

But it’s time for some love, because we held our first classes in downtown Bellingham 6 months ago today, on May 1, 2019. Since then, we’ve grown — as individual martial artists and as a community — beyond our wildest imaginings. We’ve trained with multiple world champions and legends of the art. We’ve reconnected with old friends and made a ton of new ones. We’ve become what we always hoped we had the potential to be.

It’s been an exhilarating journey. Like jiu-jitsu itself, it’s both hard work and amazing fun. We wanted to take a moment and celebrate that, including some of the people who made it happen. If you’re reading this, that almost definitely includes you.

Here’s a photo from a fundamentals class this week. We had 30 people on the mat, with a great vibe, in a beautiful space we’re proud of.

Six months ago, we ran our first classes downtown — due to some unexpected opportunities and challenges, that happened six weeks earlier than we’d planned to. We rushed to get the academy ready, knowing that it wouldn’t look the way we wanted it to at first.

Four guys we’re always going to be grateful to are Kendall McNab, Eric Meagher, Jose Lopez and Sam Hansen (who has since moved to Michigan — we miss you, Sam!). They were the first upper belts to really buy into our program and what we were doing. Even if all of these guys weren’t great training partners — which they are — we’d still be forever thankful. We won’t forget it. Mad gratitude also to Jesse Johns, one of our first blue belt promotions, and his favorite white belt, Brittney Boykin, who helped us pull the space together when we were trying to make sure folks had a place to train.

We got together, loaded the mats in, and set the place up … and to our surprise, lots of folks showed up before we opened, both to help build frames, tape mats, carry gear … and to drill on those mats even prior to those mats being taped down.

We had probably 40 regulars at this point. We can’t name them all in this post, but almost all helped us get this spot going in some way. We see y’all, and appreciate it.

We built things.

While the space was coming together, we kept building: our jiu-jitsu, our community and our academy. We always knew we wanted a mat cover (for hygiene) and wall padding (for safety), but while that was getting built out, we had classes.

Sometimes, we had classes WHILE things (like the logo) were in progress.

One thing we’ve always appreciated about our jiu-jitsu community: Y’all really love to train. It’s gratifying! Your hunger for jiu-jitsu was so strong that you didn’t want to wait for the place to be perfect, and that’s one of the things that told us we were on the right path. You wanted to get it, get after it and build something great for yourselves and others (so did we!).

There’s a metaphor in here somewhere: We didn’t wait for everything to be perfect. We just started building something together and trusted that we would find a way forward or make one.

Some of the earliest classes in the new space looked like this. Note the black mats with tape, and no wall pads. Also note that both mat rooms were beginning to fill up.

Sometimes you build something, like a house. Sometimes you grow something, like a garden. With Bellingham BJJ, it seems like a little of both to us.

With help from y’all, we built a space. We started our Intro to BJJ program. And then it grew.

So far, we’ve run 5 sessions of Intro. We love our folks that had trained jiu-jitsu before, but it’s also been amazing to watch people who had never stepped on the mat fall in love with BJJ and become core members of our academy.

Along the way, we kept building. We started with the necessities for safety (wall pads), hygiene and cleanliness (mat cover). From there we built out the features we knew we wanted to have (memory wall of photos, black belt signature wall, and Our Sainted Swayze).

Dave was the first black belt to sign the black belt wall on our first day. Now, we have four black belts regularly training with us, and many others who visit.

We’re up to 15 signatures on that wall, and among those signatures are true legends of the art, black belt world champions, and elite instructors that we’re proud to have gotten to train with and prouder for our students to have learned from in our first year. That includes gifted black belt instruction from folks like Felicia Oh, Dominyka Obelenyte, Jeff Glover, Cody Maltais, Seth Shamp, Seph Smith and fantastic guests like Pete McGregor, Bill Jones, Cindy Hales, and more.

Oh, yeah: those seminars were really fun, too!

Along the way, we’ve had an incredible time. Our students have done a tremendous job in competition, both at local tournaments and superfights (ayy, Terren Casson). We also got to support and corner D’Juan Owens — one of the best people any of us knows — in two high-level MMA fights that brought him to British Columbia.

We also had community events in downtown Bellingham. We hosted an art walk for our artists, a scavenger hunt for some team birthdays, and a ghost tour for one of our seminar guests.

We also got a unicorn.

We did our first round of in-house belt promotions. We’ve written about belt promotions elsewhere, so we won’t belabor the point. Suffice it to say: incredibly proud of all these people.

We take our jiu-jitsu very seriously. Anyone who comes to a fundamentals class here will tell you that it’s rigorous and challenging, and we want you to come away with a sense of having absorbed tons of information.

We’ll never compromise on that. But we also want to make it enjoyable, all the time. Whether we’re bringing you famous jiu-jitsu athletes to teach — or our dear friends who we know you’ll get a ton out of training with, we always want this academy to be a place where the learning doesn’t stop, and neither does the fun.

As of today, our core group of 40 or so has grown to nearly 190, and we expect to crack 200 students in January. It’s never been about the numbers for us, but the fact that so many people are excited about jiu-jitsu is a glorious thing to see.

Maybe you came in when the classes and mats looked like this:

Or maybe you’ve never known classes at Bellingham BJJ that looked anything different than this:

There are so many people who helped make this possible that it would be impossible to thank them all. If you’re a regular, thank you. If you’re an occasional student, thank you. If you’ve tried out Intro to BJJ or Self-Defense for Women & Non-Binary Folks, thank you. If you’re a member of the local BJJ community who has come and trained, or said a kind word, or offered your advice and assistance, thank you. If you’re one of our crew who helps out at the front desk or open mats, or with creative tasks (Britt, Chris, Clint, Karen, Kris, Grant, Phil, Jess, Jesse, Colby, Pat, Kendall, Eric and Jacqui to name a few) double thank you.

Whether you came to us as a seasoned upper belt who had trained extensively elsewhere, or a brand-new white belt who just decided to try this thing called jiu-jitsu; whether you’re into this for self defense, fitness, sport competition, a challenge or all of the above; whatever your age, gender, or body type; we’re glad you’re here. We’ve found a home at Bellingham BJJ and we hope you have, too.

Thanks for an amazing first six months. We can’t wait to see what the pictures look like for our six-year anniversary.

— Dave, Betsy and Jeff