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Financial & Emotional Sacrifices You’ll Make To Get Your Black Belt in BJJ

Financial & Emotional Sacrifices You’ll Make To Get Your Black Belt in BJJ

Written by Brearin Land, BJJ Black Belt and instructor at Gracie Barra HQ in Irvine. He is also the CEO of  a wealth management firm Irvine Wealth, and is specialised in Retirement Income Planning. Check out his FB Page and blog Black Belt Of Finance .

Less than 1% of people who start will ever make it to Black Belt. By far the most popular excuse I hear is “I just can’t afford it right now…”

In my article Jiu-Jitsu Bum’s Guide to Paying for the BJJ Lifestyle I gave tips and strategies for eliminating this excuse altogether regardless of budget.

This time I wanted to share some of my best memories and financial sacrifices on my path to black belt.

 

Here are the 5 financial sacrifices I made to get my black belt…

1. Selling my truck and heading to California!

At the age of 20 I had never really left my small map dot. I grew up in a town of 1000 people in the middle of a cornfield in Illinois and had never left the state.

About one and a half years into my BJJ journey my academy hosted a training camp for the first ever No-Gi Worlds (2007). At the time I just had a construction job that wasn’t doing much to help me save up money.

Still I wanted to get out of Illinois and was weighing whether to go to Thailand to train Muay Thai with some other training partners or go to the Worlds in California.

The decision came when my professor came to me and said “Look machine, I don’t know how great you are at Muay Thai, but if you stick with Jiu-Jitsu I think you can be really good.”

He was being nice… I sucked at Muay Thai. Sure I would have gotten better, but I really did not like hitting people in the face. So California it was and since I didn’t have the money… Blue had to go 🙁

Blue was a 1983 Ford F-100, 3-Speed on the floor, and the best vehicle I ever owned. When I bought Blue she didn’t even run. We tinkered with it part by part until it ran like a beast. I loved that truck, but sacrifices had to be made.

This sacrifice was a small sign of things to come as a few years later I took my $500, bought 5 pairs of second hand clothes, and hopped on a plane to California for good.
brearin-oceanGuess I didn’t really understand how the ocean worked… flying face plant in freezing water.

The 2007 No-Gi Worlds was one of the defining moments of my life. Completely eye-opening. Seeing the ocean for the first time and getting out of the corn for the first time was an incredible experience on it’s own but I also got to meet so many people I looked up to.

I wasn’t a big sports fan. Sure I have my teams, but I was infatuated with Jiu-Jitsu. My friend and I walked around and spoke to all the people we’d seen in the magazines. We looked like a bunch of fanboys but hey… it made for great pictures.

2. Making a bunch of money… and blowing it all on Jiu-Jitsu

A couple years after the No-Gi Worlds trip I moved up to a small town about 40 miles outside of Chicago. My uncle got me a job at a railyard. It was TOUGH work. In the summer it was well over 100 degrees and in the winter it would drop to over 30 below with wind chill.

Whether I was on the ground, driving a truck, or operating a crane… they all sucked in that weather.

My motivation for working at the railyard is that it was the highest paying job I ever had and as a 21 year old, it paid GREAT money. Not that this mattered at all because I spent every single dime on trying to emulate an Olympic training regimen:

-The best BJJ membership around – Comprido’s
-The best MMA gym in the area – Randy Couture’s
-Crossfit membership (before it was cool, yet more cool)
-Gold’s Gym Membership
-Seminars
-Competitions
-Supplements
-If there was a seminar or competition within 6 hours, I was there.
-Jiu-Jitsu-Seminar-Collage

 

3. Passed up guaranteed income in pursuit of BJJ full-time

Some of you already know that I got started studying finance after I lost my job at the financial crisis hit the railyard. This was the point where I had to move back to my home town.

When I moved back the last thing I wanted to do was lose momentum, so without the same level of financial resources I began working just enough to pay for the gas and tuition at my local Gracie Barra.

This was the point that I started taking teaching and training seriously. Before I was working out a lot but now training full-time:

-AM Weights
-Noon training
-Drilling
-Kids class
-Fundamentals
-Advanced
-Sparring
-PM Conditioning

This was my life now. When my old job called up asking me to come back and offered me a steep raise I didn’t even answer the phone. I was possessed.

4. Time: Our most valuable financial asset

Control time and you can control the money you make. Fortunately and unfortunately I sacrificed a lot of my time just going to and from class.

When I was at the railyard we were working 8-12 hour days. After work I’d race home, grab a shower, and head to training. Comprido’s was the best gym around but it was 1hr 30min away… No iphone, no cd player, just a $15 mp3 player loaded with the 30 songs that fit on it (2pac and Toby Keith mostly).

On the way back was more of the same 1hr 30min of being bored to death.

When I finally moved back to my home town my drive was cut in half but it still took about 40 minutes each way. Up until I moved out here to California I spent a TON of time and money just driving.

5. Gave up stable living for couches, floors, and cars

One of the major financial sacrifices I made while on the grind was never having a stable place to live. The opportunity cost of spending all of my money on Jiu-Jitsu for the better part of 8 years was never having a place to call my own. I was staying at:

My Mom’s
My Dad’s
My Aunt’s
My Uncle’s
My Professor’s
Friend’s couches
Their floor
My car

I really was a Jiu-Jitsu drifter, but I was cool with that. . I was bouncing from house to house, floor to car, wherever made it most convenient to train the next day.
Whether you are trying to live the lifestyle of an active competitor or just trying to embrace your own take on the BJJ Lifestyle… It’s worth it.

Losing weight, reducing stress, self-defense, whatever your goals you are going to make them a reality on the mat.

The road to the black belt is a grind and when you get there you realize the journey has just begun. Just remember some days you are the nail, some days you are the hammer, and every day you learn.

If you want to be un-submitable, you need to check out Tom DeBlass’ “Submission Escapes” BJJ 3 volume BJJ instructional from BJJFanatics.com . In this series, he shares multiple escapes from all of the hardest to escape positions. Soon your training partners and opponents will be calling you Houdini.