Prof Greg Eldred received his 5th degree Black Belt from Master Caique at our Dec 7th Seminar. Master Caique is an 8th degree Coral Belt. Prof Eldred received his Black Belt (with red bar) from Caique in November 2005. Once receiving a Black Belt with a "red bar" all future promotions followed a fixed timeline. After receiving his Black Belt and a minumum of 3 years Professor Eldred received his 1st degree in 2008. After 3 more years in 2011 he received his 2nd degree. Then an additional 3 years in 2014 he received his 3rd degree. Then after 5 years in 2019 he received his 4th degree. And then in an additional 5 years he received his 5th degree here in December 2024. So what's next? In 5 more years 6th degree, then 7 additional years to reach Master Coral Belt. The Coral Belt is for the 7th and 8th degrees, then after that eventually the Red Belt is for 9th and 10th degrees. So the minimum timeline from Black Belt to Coral Belt is 31 years. You'll notice 2 additional stripes on the outer edges of the red bar. Those don't count as degrees, but rather they are called Professor Stripes. They show that the practioner has had the training and is qualified to teach Jit-Jitsu and be called Professor rather than an Instructor.

Let’s be real, the world we live in is not a safe place. There are bad people out there looking for victims to prey on. Therefore, you need to know how to protect yourself in case someone targets you for reasons of harassment, theft, rape, or to cause bodily harm. Not being prepared can result in serious consequences such as unwanted sexual proposals and action, serious injury or even death. You cannot control the desires and behavior of such bad people, but you can certainly take actions to minimize and prevent yourself from being the one chosen for the attack. And if you are attacked the use of self defense techniques and strategies can save your life.

Whether the attack is physical or sexual, the experience can leave both emotional and physical scars that can last a lifetime. You will never be the same. You will always replay the attack over in your mind wondering what you could have done differently to avoid or escape from the situation. You will question yourself as to why you never took a women’s self defense class.

There are three steps you must do to better protect yourself from would be attackers. 1.) You must have a greater awareness. You need to pay better attention to your surroundings, as this is your first line of defense. Attackers are looking for easy victims who are not aware, as they are easy targets, because they have the element of surprise at their advantage. 2.) You must take measures to reduce your risks. This can be from ... Read More

The goal of SAAM is to raise public awareness about sexual violence and to educate communities and individuals on how to prevent sexual violence.  Nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped at some time in their lives and about every 2 minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted.  Get involved by educating yourself about the issue. There are many online resources and state and local groups and organizations that can provide help.  Also, no matter how well you are educated about the topic, nothing can compare to having the self defense training which gives you the skills to escape from an attacker. 

I often get asked by my students what can they be doing outside of the academy to help improve their conditioning for Jiu-Jitsu? The advice I give depends on the goals of the student, i.e. if they want to compete, or just want to improve upon their everyday training at the academy. For the sake of this article, I’m going to focus on the average student, one who is learning Jiu-Jitsu as a martial art, as a self-defense system, who attends class 2–3 times per week and is not looking to compete for the time being. For the student who is training to compete in the sport of Jiu-Jitsu I would have different recommendations.

The average student may come to class 2–3 times per week. They have a job, or maybe go to school, may be married and have a family, and most have activities and commitments outside of the academy. They certainly don’t have the time or even the desire to train and workout 6 days a week as a Jiu-Jitsu athlete may do. One of the best ways to prepare your body for Jiu-Jitsu is by doing Jiu-Jitsu. But for those who ask what else can they do outside of the academy to help improve their body and performance here’s some recommendations.

1. If you already belong to a health club use the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike a couple times a week for at least 30 minutes. If you don’t have access to any of those, then fast-pace walking or jogging or jumping rope at least twice a week would suffice.

2. Anoth... Read More

Bullying is becoming a serious problem in today’s society. Whether it’s mental, verbal, physical, or even cyber bullying, it needs to be stopped. Bullying is more common than we realize. Studies show that between 15 – 25% of all kids up through high school age are bullied, while many bullying incidents go unreported. That’s almost 1 out every 4 kids are bullied. It is estimated that each day 160,000 kids will miss school for fear of being bullied.

Many adults don’t even know that their child is being bullied because many are afraid to report it. It’s important to talk to your children and get to know how things are going at school, social events, in the neighborhood, or even sporting activities. Specifically ask your child how are they being treated by other kids. That will help open the dialog, and could expose potential problems your child may be having with others. Even if your child is not encountering bullying problems it’s good to educate them about the topic, and prepare them with the means to deal with it if it happens to them. There are many good resources online for parents and kids to learn about bullying and more importantly to learn about prevention and intervention strategies.

In many cases if our kids simply stand up to the bullying they can stop it. But many don’t stand up for themselves because they don’t know what to do, especially when the bullying gets physical. That’s where, as... Read More