My first class as a black belt

Since I got my black belt last month, people have been very cool about asking me questions about the various firsts associated with this milestone. Today I want to tell you about my first class at black belt. The reason I want to tell you about this: people have been asking what I chose to show during my first-ever class at this rank.

The answer. I didn’t teach anything. I took the class, and I took it from my good friend and partner David Porter, who has an extensive library of techniques at his disposal.

What kind of wizardry did Dave teach on that day — a sneaky D’Arce setup? Details on entering the Truck position to set up leg attacks? Maybe a dastardly wristlock from underneath a dominant position?

It was the hip bump sweep. For my first class at black belt, I chose to take Dave’s fundamentals class.

There are two very good reasons for this. One of them is related to my own journey, and the other concerns why we require new students to take our Intro to BJJ series.

You can never, ever get too good at the basics. Period. I’ve done the hip bump thousands of times in my life, and it’s a very high-percentage technique for me. But every time I see Dave teach something, I learn something — even about the techniques that are familiar. It might be a detail on the set-up, or it might be a tactic to finish, or it might be a way to defeat a defense. There’s always something to learn about these familiar moves.

It also helps to be exposed to someone else’s teaching style. Even if Dave and I did the hip bump exactly the same way, every time, and even if our knowledge about the move was somehow an exact copy … the way he conveys that information may be different than how I do. Even if we do the same things, we might teach those things differently.

Often I hear Dave use a metaphor that illustrates a principle — and it might be a principle I’ve tried to get across, too — and I’ll think, “wow, I should really work that in.” Different people learn different ways, and seeing how a great instructor teaches can give you ideas to add to your own teaching arsenal.

You never stop learning in jiu-jitsu, and even the most fundamental move has lots of angles. Whenever I travel to other academies, I always take the fundamentals classes.

Our Intro to BJJ class is an eight-week course with a four-week curriculum. The techniques we teach in that four-week curriculum are the same techniques we show in our rotating Fundamentals curriculum — the base of a good jiu-jitsu game.

We ask all new students to take this class because we want everyone on the same page about the fundamentals — that they’re important, that they’re valuable, and they provide a healthy base for folks to grow from. It’s also a way of onboarding new members to the way we do things here. We always want to keep our space friendly, open, safe, and fundamentally sound to train jiu-jitsu in.

Sometimes, folks who have a bit of experience balk at taking this class. But we’ve had blue and purple belts take it, and we’ve had grapplers with more than 10 years of experience enroll and complete the class. All of them have a good time, and — like me — all of them realize that you can never get too good at the basics.

These are the type of folks we want around: good people training hard and safely, with a solid foundation in the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu.

Every time I step on the mats — here at Bellingham BJJ or in another academy’s fundamentals class — I learn something. I get better, whether that’s at competing, training or teaching, or sometimes all three.

That’s why my first class at black belt was a fundamentals class taught by a high-quality instructor. I’ll never stop teaching, I may never stop competing, and I can tell you for sure: I’ll never stop taking the fundamentals classes.