Today, Garry Tonon is one of the most elite submission grapplers in the world. But even he had to start somewhere.
Even Tonon was, once upon a time, a purple belt teaching at his coach’s school. And his coach was none other than Tom DeBlass.
Tonon recently took it to social media to share a great lesson given to him by DeBlass, during the purple belt days:
I remember one time I was teaching at Tom’s school, I was like a purple belt at the time, and much of the lesson I was referencing myself and my competitive experiences.
Afterwards he pulls me aside and says, and I’m paraphrasing: “Let me tell you something, you keep teaching saying I do this, I do that, when you should probably stfu because who are you!? You’re like 18 years old and you won juvenile Worlds at blue belt and some f***in Grapplers Quests at blue and purple belt level.
Who gives a f*** what you do or what you did. It doesn’t mean s**t you haven’t done s**t in this world yet.”He then encouraged me to reference other high level athletes in my teaching or to just teach instead of talking about my own experience because I hadn’t accomplished anything important yet.
Tonon explained why this was such great advice:
Now keep in mind this is a small snapshot of Tom.
He was incredibly encouraging as a coach and his encouragement was initially the only reason I believed in myself enough to try to be something in this sport.It was actually because he knew I would accomplish big things that he spoke this way to me.
He knew that one day I would be “somebody” and have experience worth sharing with the Jiu-Jitsu community, but that time hadn’t come yet.I had to EARN the ability to have people respect my experience as something worth listening to.
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