Landslide

What's with the Gracies lately?

In my first year Jiu-Jitsu they were pretty invisible to me. I knew they were out there, living in LA and doing seminars all over the world, but they've never been to the Vancouver area.

I knew they were the best people to learn from and I decided to travel to their Academy to train for an couple of months. My rank was a freshly earned Blue Belt at the time, and I decided to wait until I'd reached Blue Belt Stripe One.

I worked away at that, and reached the end of my second year. Up popped a weekend seminar in Seattle with Rener Gracie. My trip to LA was still four months away, and this became my first Gracie contact.

The seminar was great, and I discovered that another was planned in Seattle a year off. That meant that my third year, which started with a Gracie seminar, and which would contain two months of training at the Gracie Academy, would wrap up with a second Seattle seminar.

My third year is about 2/3 complete, and I've been back from LA a while. Suddenly, another seminar popped up in Washington state. This time the instructor will be Ryron Gracie.

Not only that, but yet another seminar will happen ten days later lead by Rener Gracie. This one will be the first ever in Vancouver. That's right next door.

Two years of no Gracies, and then a third with 4 seminars on top of two months of steady training in LA.

Year three is good.