When did you open your own Gym?
I opened the first Gym in which I had complete control in Salem Oregon
around 1993. At that time I was a blue belt with Rickson, and focused a
lot on my ground game for the next several Years. We kept the politics
and nonsense out of the Gym, and just trained hard, and as the Months
went by the place began to fill up. It was at this time that current SBG
Coaches Tom Oberhue, Dan Robinson, and Steve Boyd began training with
me.
I met up again with Burton shortly after that, and his focus in Kali was
really shifting thanks to the Dog Brothers. Thanks to Burt, and the DB
influence, I completely changed the weapons curriculum at that time.
In the past I had been told over and over again by all the Instructors I
had known that you could NOT run a Gym the way I was running it. . .with
no titles, no ritual, and lots of Alive drilling and sparring. . .
'people won't stay, they want the b*llsh*t drills, so teach them to keep
them in the door, or you wont make any money!'.Long story short, they
where ALL wrong. So many people where making the 40 minute commute from
Portland to work out in the tiny Salem Gym that I needed to open a
Portland location to respond to the market. Within 12 Months we had
moved to a large Salem location, a fair sized warehouse, which was the
first Portland Gym, and was able to quite my job.
I had assumed that those that had spoken about the need for those drills
to me in the past, knew what they where talking about when it came to
running schools. But I could not bring myself to teach people what I
knew was nonsense, just to make money. So I figured I would also always
have to work a 40 hour a week job.
The thing that I am happiest about is that all those people where
completely wrong, and it turned out to be just the opposite. People
loved the way we trained, and I have been able to make a living without
ever teaching anything I found questionable, or 'watered down'. That's
been a great satisfaction for me.
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