Where It Started: Two Short Clips From My Early Jiu-Jitsu Days

I recently went back through some old footage and found a couple of short clips from my early days of jiu-jitsu. They’re only a few seconds each, so this isn’t a technique breakdown. It’s a quick look back at where this all started.

Clip one: two of us in the gi

The first Short, at the top of this page, is about six seconds of two of us rolling in the gi at the academy. We’re both in blue gis, one of us is working from on top, and you can see other pairs rolling on the mats in the background. It’s some of the earliest jiu-jitsu footage I have.

Clip two: phone on the mat

The second one is about fourteen seconds long. I set my phone down low on the mat, so you get a ground-level view of a roll in the gi, one person in a black gi and one in white, with the rest of the room training around them.

Why I started

I got into martial arts because I fought as a kid and wanted to shore up the places where I was vulnerable. What made me go full time, in late 2023, was realizing that training is really self-improvement through self-defense. Every round teaches you something about yourself, not just about the person across from you.

Today I’m a blue belt at Ralph Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in San Francisco. I train gi and competition with Coach Tay Crivello and no-gi with Coach Elia Yuriditsky. Clips like these are a good reminder that everybody starts somewhere, and the only way to get better is to keep showing up and rolling.

Your turn

How long have you been training? And what do you wish you’d known in your first month of BJJ? I’d love to hear it.

If you want to see longer footage, the full, uncut sparring and rolling sessions are in the Training playlist on my channel.

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