Jean-Jacques Machado was on the Combat Base podcast recently. He’s always a good listen. Here’s one clip that stood out to me:
And I think it’s one of the biggest misunderstandings. And today, like, man, I trained Jiu Jitsu until I had my school, at least 10 years. And when I was teaching, I was teaching under my instructor. I was there every day. I was like learning. And what happened today is, it’s people have a book with 20 chapters.
They read the first two. “I’m a jiu jitsu guy. I know how to teach.”
Man, when you teach somebody, it’s a lot of things that go that you have to learn how to deal with human beings. It’s not just the technique of jiu jitsu. A lot of people come to a school and something’s not right with the person. You improve yourself of learning how to read people.
In a very positive way, you learn how, what to say to people through jiu jitsu to make the person feel better. Man, we have a lot of people today with depression, some kind of an addiction. And if I only read two chapters, I don’t know how to deal with that. But if I stay long enough, it’s a school.
I want to become a doctor, I go first year, okay, I know how to be a doctor. Am I going to go with this doctor? One year experience? Hell no. Am I going to, that guy has 15 years working as a doctor? Oh, yeah, he must know 15 years doing that. And that’s what happened. A lot of Jiu Jitsu schools are, some of the instructors are not ready. But based in tournaments, system. They opened this school.
You understand? Not to teach Jiu-Jitsu. Their classes are based in, okay, two points here. Go. It’s all robots. Kind of. And Jiu Jitsu is not just that. This is a small portion of it. You know what I mean? A lot more things because we’re dealing with human being. You know what I mean? And not everybody feels comfortable just going there like a robot.
Some people find, I want to lose weight. “Oh, you’re not good for tournament. You’re no good for my school.”
But no, Jiu Jitsu is for everybody. Yeah. But a lot of schools are making small groups of competition. Those are the important guys. Yeah. If you are not in this group, then you’re not important to me. You know what I mean?