Welcome the TheBJJRonin.com!
Hi! My name is Luke Rinehart and I want to share
with you my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu story.
You can watch my video above to view my story or you can also read about it right here.
Hi! My name is Luke Rinehart and I want to share
with you my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu story.
You can watch my video above to view my story or you can also read about it right here.
The point of this website is not to boast or to build myself up. The goal is to put out into the open my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu story so that my current and future students all understand their lineage. All though I have proved myself competitively and believe that everyone who attends my classes can clearly see that the Instruction at my school is World Class, there are always still skeptics out there (people who don't know me and have never been to my school) who question my legitimacy. This website is meant to clear the air and to say that although my situation is different than most people's, it is fully legit and hopefully inspiring to you. Because if I can do this, you can certainly learn to excel new ways in your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game as well.
I am not some unknown person working a scam to get more students. I did not pay someone off to earn my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt. Both myself and my students have excelled in BJJ and or MMA competition and have proven the technical efficiency of our Academy. I am well known in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts community and have trained with many different and well respected Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athletes and instructors who totally respect me, my school and my situation. This website is primarily for those who don't know me and don't understand my situation. I hope that you can watch my story and be inspired by it. I hope it helps you to work harder at your own game and learn to become more than just a follower but also an innovator.
My experience in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has taught me many things that I think the regular student may never learn. Here is something that I think may be of value to you. A lot of people say that if
you want to get better faster, you have to roll with higher belts. You
need to roll with the best. However, I have learned differently. While it is always good to train and roll with higher belts, this is NOT the total truth. I have learned that there is TREMENDOUS VALUE in training with 3 different types of partners on a regular basis:
1. Lower Belts
2. Same Level Belts
3. Higher Belts
Rolling with HIGHER belts is going to help EXPOSE you to NEW MOVES and RAPIDLY IMPROVE your DEFENSE.
Rolling with LOWER belts is going to give you the opportunity to be offensive and more creative. Fact of the matter is, a white belt can't REALLY be OFFENSIVE with a purple, brown or black belt. A 3 and 4 stripe white belt needs to be rolling with new white belts in order to practice any kind of offensive game. The same goes for Blue belts and etc. As a black belt, when I am trying to practice and perfect a new technique, I first begin to try it out on white belts and work my way up the ladder. If I get it to work on white belt I move to blue belts. If it works on blue belts I move to purple belts and so on. This is the BEST way to REALLY DEVELOP an UNSTOPPABLE OFFENSE.
While it's EXTREMELY important to develop both a SOLID defense and an UNSTOPPABLE offense, there are other factors that are KEY to being able to be a CHAMPION BJJ competitor OR even being able to use BJJ effectively for self-defense. This is where rolling with SAME LEVEL BELTS becomes so valuable. When you roll with a Black Belt you know you are going to be defending unless he is letting you be offensive. When you roll with a lower belt you know you can relax and be creative or offensive. Only SAME LEVEL BELTS can create a situation where you are not sure if you are going to win or lose. There is no emotion when you roll with higher or lower belts because generally you always know the outcome. When you roll with same level belts that sometimes tap you and you sometimes tap them, there is emotion involved now. There is excitement when you come close to submitting them and there is fear when they come close to submitting you. How you learn to deal with and perform when faced with these emotions is what makes you a CHAMPION COMPETITOR or effective in self-defense. ONLY same level belts can REALLY create these type of emotions for you.
Since I personally didn't have any higher belts to roll with on a regular basis for a long time, I was rolling MOSTLY with much lesser skilled opponents and yet I would still submit & defeat Black Belts when I competed. I say this because I want you to understand that it is NOT TRUE that you should ONLY roll and practice with HIGHER belts if you want to improve faster. If that is really what you did, I believe you would stunt your growth in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It is equally important to roll with all 3 groups of training partners on a regular basis if you want to excel quickly.
You NEED to be a STUDENT of the ART! Don't
just rely on your instructor 3 hours per week to be your only source of
learning. You have to be a student of the art YOURSELF. There are many
ways to excel your learning both inside and outside of the Academy.
Consider this quote...
"All men who have turned out worth anything, have had the chief hand in their own education." - Sir Walter Scott
So once again, my goal for this website is to lay my story out for those who don't know or understand my situation. On top of that, I hope that you are inspired by it and will learn how my story can help YOU excel faster in your own Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Journey by teaching you to become a true "Student of the ART". The job of every good teacher should not be to get their students to cling to them for all their learning but to inspire them in a manner that equips them to learn on their own.
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~Thomas Carruthers
Let me finish this page with an old competition highlight of mine.
This is from back in 2003-2004 before I started a family and was more active in competing. ENJOY!
