what’s it all about this blog thing?
Gracie Barra Gloucester Professor Murray Bruton
I’ve been pretty much continuously active in one form of Martial Art or another since the heady days of 1973!! Initially, like so many of my generation I was inspired by the late actor Bruce Lee and this (back then at least over here in the UK) completely new phenomenon of the eastern fighting systems that burst onto the scene as a result of his work. As a 13 year old boy I was aware of western Boxing because of exploits of one Muhammed Ali and Wrestling because of the Saturday afternoon slot on our household black and white TV! Also, around that time Judo had also entered my world when my brothers mate dragged him along to his dads club at the local community centre. It’s really difficult in this modern age to grasp just how rare training opportunities were here in Gloucestershire and equally, just how difficult it was to garner any information about training either. In the days before the internet, physically scouring all of the newsagents in the city literally every Saturday to try and find a magazine, public libraries for any books and the occasional trip to Foyles in London to scour the sports/eastern/Japan/orient sections for anything relevant at all! in those days the information was worse than scarce and it needed guile to find it …which neatly brings me back to what I intend this blog to be all about :-) It’s primarily aimed at the students of the Gracie Barra Gloucester Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy. I am hoping over time it will become a repository of wisdom as much as it will become a place of guidance and reference for new and established team members to straighten out their understanding. The thing is, the challenge of the scarcity of information of my early years has been replaced by an abundance of information today … whereas I was hunting any information, today’s students are avalanched with it … but here’s the rub … whether its scarce or abundant information! … not all of it is good information …. so on the important topics I’ll add my take … given I’ve had plenty of years (52yrs as a practitioner and 44yrs as an instructor/coach) of making mistakes and learning the lessons …. in essence I’m hoping to save you some time, and pain, by pointing out the dark alleys and dead ends of martial arts training and in particular your Brazilian jiu jitsu training, in favour of good information and the current best practice approach.
Murray