2/9: WELCOME, GB ROMEO
This weekend I had the opportunity to visit the new Gracie Barra Gym in Romeo. The gym is located inside of an old church and was formerly owned by a family that ran a karate school there. That school still uses space in the basement of the building while Jiu-Jitsu is run on the main floor. The building is absolutely beautiful and has a wonderful atmosphere with giant geometric shaped stained-glass windows providing a very cool visual appearance when training. The head instructor is Professor Murillo from Brazil, who moved here from Colorado to take on this role. If you happen to find yourself in that area, make sure you stop in and introduce yourself. Hopefully, we will see a few of them in Northville for the Carlos Lemos seminar.
I was talking with another instructor from Colorado who trained under Prof Murillo. He said the membership in his home gym is largely 35-45 year old guys who love the art, train hard, but have to get up and go to work in the morning…… kind of sounds familiar, eh?
About 20 years ago, Gracie Barra had some incredibly dominant competitors and many others right on the cusp of being world champions, including Roger Gracie, Romulo Barral, Otavio Sousa, Samuel Braga, Carlos Lemos, Vinicius Magalhaes (Draculino), Flavio Almeida, and most recently Felipe Pena. I have had the opportunity to train with all but the first and last of those. The first time I attended a seminar with Romulo Barral, he had a ton of aspirations that all revolved around his own competitive desires. The next time a trained with him years later (he actually remembered me) but more than that his aspirations changed to helping others. He realized he couldn’t chase both of those goals at the same time.
This is where I think Gracie Barra as an organization is. To me, it evolved just as Romulo Barral evolved. If you look online, Gracie Barra is often chided as a soft organization because they haven’t had the level of competitors that other organizations have. To that, I say: Who cares? When I look at the various things martial arts can be for people, the vast majority revolves around building a community of people getting in shape, learning a skill and bettering themselves. With over 1000 schools worldwide (the largest BJJ franchise in the world) the organization has clearly hit the mark!
I have absolutely nothing against gyms that only focus on competition and trying to develop world champions. People with those aspirations need that. But even those individuals have such a short lifespan in that window that they too will begin to fall into the hobbyist classification. If winning medals is all you are interested in, life becomes shallow. When you start focusing on how you can help people through the vehicle of martial arts, life develops so much more meaning, and this is where I have been since I got in this business over 11 years ago.
The fact that Gracie Barra caters to the average adult and child with a goal of creating a program and atmosphere where martial arts becomes a lifestyle is not a weakness, it is it’s greatest strength, and I’m very happy to see Gracie Barra’s presence grow in Michigan.
