Rorion Gracie, credited with bringing BJJ from Brazil to the United States and helping launch it through the early UFC, says the sport’s global growth has come with a serious downside…
A shortage of instructors who actually know how to teach.
Speaking on The Ageless Warrior Lab podcast, Rorion said his concern isn’t with how many people are training, but with who ends up leading the class:
Everybody should learn Jiu-Jitsu. But not everybody can teach Jiu-Jitsu.
He described a common trajectory: a student progresses from white belt through blue and purple, eventually reaches black belt, and then opens their own school…
Without ever being taught how to actually teach:
That guy had never been taught the methodology on how to teach.
He just came rough, sparring into the ranks, he just became a black belt and now he thinks he can teach Jiu-JItsu.
Just because he’s a black belt, that doesn’t make him a teacher…Unfortunately, this huge expansion has opened this huge can of worms.
Now, everybody’s teaching it, but nobody’s really knowing how to teach right.
His own teaching philosophy was shaped by years of watching his father, Helio Gracie, on the mat, and centers entirely on the student’s experience:
There’s no such a thing as a bad student. There are (only) good teachers and bad teachers.