Great to see another GB gym spreading the GB vision in Michigan….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"article":"This weekend I had the opportunity to visit the new Gracie Barra Gym in Romeo.\u00a0 The gym is located inside of an old church and was formerly owned by a family that ran a karate school there.\u00a0 That school still uses space in the basement of the building while Jiu-Jitsu is run on the main floor.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If you happen to find yourself in that area, make sure you stop in and introduce yourself.\u00a0 Hopefully, we will see a few of them in Northville for the Carlos Lemos seminar.\r\n\r\nI was talking with another instructor from Colorado who trained under Prof Murillo.\u00a0 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\u2026\u2026 kind of sounds familiar, eh?\r\n\r\nAbout 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.\u00a0 I have had the opportunity to train with all but the first and last of those.\u00a0 The first time I attended a seminar with Romulo Barral, he had a ton of aspirations that all revolved around his own competitive desires.\u00a0 The next time a trained with him years later (he actually remembered me) but more than that his aspirations changed to helping others.\u00a0 He realized he couldn\u2019t chase both of those goals at the same time.\r\n\r\nThis is where I think Gracie Barra as an organization is.\u00a0 To me, it evolved just as Romulo Barral evolved.\u00a0 If you look online, Gracie Barra is often chided as a soft organization because they haven\u2019t had the level of competitors that other organizations have.\u00a0 To that, I say: Who cares?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 With over 1000 schools worldwide (the largest BJJ franchise in the world) the organization has clearly hit the mark!\r\n\r\nI have absolutely nothing against gyms that only focus on competition and trying to develop world champions.\u00a0 People with those aspirations need that.\u00a0 But even those individuals have such a short lifespan in that window that they too will begin to fall into the hobbyist classification.\u00a0 If winning medals is all you are interested in, life becomes shallow.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nThe 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\u2019s greatest strength, and I\u2019m very happy to see Gracie Barra\u2019s presence grow in Michigan.","featured_image":"","featured_image_id":"","featured_article":""},"categories":[4],"class_list":["post-312","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","category-gb3-expert-jiu-jitsu"],"yoast_head":"\n