The Gracie Academy has been able to reach out and gain influence
in the jiujitsu community effectively acquiring schools through a de-facto
affiliation. The attraction has been through marketing their teaching
methods via Gracie University, using that as a tool to gain and retain students
and to grow your school and profits. The gateway is Gracie Combatives
(GC).
I recently
completely and passed the GC online test, scoring high enough to qualify to
attend the instructor certification course held at the Gracie Academy in Torrance,
CA. Currently a brown belt with over ten years jiujitsu experience I
found the program surprisingly challenging and effective as a tool for teaching
good self-defense techniques and providing an organized baseline by which to
engage and measure my progress.
The good, the bad
and the..the "it's up to you":
The Good:
There is an
organized curriculum with highly detailed instruction on the philosophy of the
training ethos, the reason for the techniques, and how to most effectively and
efficiently practice the techniques. Having to perform the techniques
exactly as shown forced me to drill each move well over a hundred times to make
sure every detail was exact, precise, and done with purpose and
confidence. I honestly thought that since I had well over 1500 hours of
mat time already that it would be easy. It wasn't.
I think that the
reason it wasn't as easy as I thought was because of the precision demanded of
the test. You have to be very detail oriented and perform the techniques
consistently precise. Typically in any jiujitsu school I have practiced
in, under any instructor, there's is plenty of wiggle room for personal
preference, style, and doing what feels right. With GC there are the
details and how they want it done, period.
I don't think this
is good or bad, just the way it is. It makes sense that as a beginner one
should have to learn something in an exacting way in order to build a solid
foundation and be allowed to expand on that and learn more stylistically after
that solid foundation has been built.
I wondered if the
techniques would be effective. They aren't the same as what I had been
practicing before. The philosophy of the GC is that you are fighting a
non-jiujitsu trained person. The presumption is that the attacker would
be mostly offensive and highly aggressive, versus a jiujitsu person who may use
posture, fluidity, and misdirection. It makes sense in theory but it also
meant most of what I was learning was counter-intuitive to what I have been
practicing for over a decade. No need to break down someone's posture for
the most part because they are already pushing forward into me. Or the
opposite where I would be holding them down to me so they cannot punch
me. Basically everything is opposite because honestly for the most part
you aren't worried too much about getting punched with you are rolling with a
jiujitsu person.
I didn't have to
wonder anymore after I competed in a judo tournament, where due to the rules a
judoka have to continuously push the agenda of the fight and be offensive for
the most part. I found myself on the ground getting very fast arm-bar
submissions using the framing I had been practicing during GC training when my
opponents pressed the offensive on the ground in ways that a jiujitsu player
would likely prefer to posture, prevent and keep their elbows much tighter.
I had my proof
that the techniques work and that increased my enthusiasm to train in the
system.
Once completing
the GC there's the Master Cycle, which is the colored belt techniques to
advance in the Gracie Academy system. Most are great, but none of it is
anything I would want to replace my professor’s curriculum with. I think
it is great supplemental information though. If you come from an academy
or club that teaching a random technique of the day, then the Master Cycle will
benefit you greatly.
The Not-so Good:
Having a
curriculum and methodology made it easier to teach. I already knew what I
was going to teach from week to week. They pretty much tell you exactly
what to do, when, and how often. It's a formula that works.
However, with that said, it is a mandated formula from which there can be no
deviation. Once being a Certified Training Center (CTC) you aren't just a
de facto affiliate, you are a franchise. You have to follow the formula
to a "T" or risk losing your certification, and therefore your financial
investment in the thousands of dollars. I will come back to that
later.
My academy already
has a curriculum that I followed rigorously. The curriculum and way to do
similar techniques is very different, however. So the difficulty there is
how to administer it with the new GC system. The answer is
apparently to do the GC first, then your own academy's curriculum once the
students pass their GC exam. Seems great in theory but in practice it
looks like that will be a bit of a challenge due to building a schedule around
that. You have to have a GC class on its own, a white to blue
class, and a blue and above class. This doesn't include the other
programs that are necessary at a CTC such as Women's Empowerment, kids
Bulleyproof, and the sparring with gloves, called Reflex Development. An academy only has so many
hours and so much mat space.
So now once the students have the GC belts they pivot to the
academy's curriculum, presumably. Now you go about teaching them how to
fight against a jiujitsu trained person. They have solid basics and
physical coordination and can start sparring. They likely have a good 6
months or so of jiujitsu. Few to no injuries. Some decent confidence that
they can start to roll and not get hurt or squashed. That's good.
But there may be some challenges that the techniques they recently learned in
GC aren't effective at all against the blue belts and above because those
people have learned to not press the action with aggression and continuous
offense. But at least they are on the mats with time invested and far
less likely to quit.
Financially I am
already seeing that it's an ingenious money grab that I give the founders lots
of credit for. They figured out a way to make serious money from
jiujitsu. You have to do it their way, or the highway, and in the process
pay them lots of money for teaching, certifying, and owning or having online
membership to access the curriculum. It's INGENIOUS and I give them lots
of credit for it. With that said, if I had my own affiliate academy,
that's basically two affiliation fees I now have to pay along with buying all
this stuff, so there's a financial drain there. But the financial
incentive is gaining and maintaining students.
For the individual
it means paying for a membership on the site for most content (membership is
free until you want to see techniques beyond the freebies.) That costs
about half of what you pay to be at an academy. If you are a jiujitsu
geek you probably don't mind buying the DVD's or having the online videos anyway.
Academy memberships cost from $100-$185 per month. Online content is
another $50-$100-ish. It starts adding up. This doesn't even get into the testing/belt fees.
Bottom line:
It's a great
program. If you can swallow the blue pill, drink the kool-aid, and want a
nearly fool proof way to grow your business, this is it. You don't have
to reinvent the wheel or figure things out for yourself. But you have to
follow the program, period. It takes humbling yourself to do it in a
proven method, and being OK with making someone else money and not caring about
it. You will not ever be at the top of the food chain business wise, but
at least you have a seat at the dinner table and may be able to maintain and
grow an academy, which may lead to opportunities later to make more
money. But we all have to start somewhere, which is the purpose of
affiliate programs to begin with: using someone else's name and process to
build a business. That's what this is.
For the individual
it's a great way to learn especially if you have a training partner to work with
and if you are at an academy that doesn't have a curriculum or organized format
to follow. It's also a way to potentially get an edge on your peers at
your academy in terms of great tools for learning and improving on fundamental techniques techniques, and understanding techniques in ways that maybe you didn't already.
Comments