Din Thomas revealing his ‘secret moves’ with new online academy
“A lot of people don’t realize it but at the end of the day my love and my passion and the reason I started fighting was my love for Jiu-Jitsu.”
After a long career fighting and coaching MMA at the highest levels, it can be easy to forget that Din Thomas’ first martial arts love was and is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The BJJ black belt (ranked by the legendary Ricardo Liborio) hopes that he and Kenny Kim’s soon debuting online video instructional website, TrainBJJOnline.com, will open up Thomas’ grappling knowledge to the general public in a way never before possible.
I decided to do this project for two reasons, Thomas tells us. First, I’m a Jiu-Jitsu guy. A lot of people don’t realize it but at the end of the day my love and my passion and the reason I started fighting was my love for Jiu-Jitsu. I ran my own schools before, and I’ve coached pro fighters but I wanted to reach out and touch as many people as possible.
The second reason is that when we think about Jiu-Jitsu, the thing that really markets Jiu-Jitsu the most are MMA fights. But Jiu-Jitsu is mostly not being represented properly in MMA fights. I want to shine a light on Jiu-Jitsu, properly. Most people in MMA are not using Jiu-Jitsu right – they’re using sport Jiu-Jitsu.
Thomas’ perspective on the effective application of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is borne out of his fight experience and the time he came up in the BJJ and fight world, dating back to the mid-1990’s, where it was understood that Jiu-Jitsu was for real fighting, and grappling-only, sport Jiu-Jitsu wasn’t yet the big stand-alone business and culture it is today.
I came up around the same time you did, in the late 90’s. I was doing Jiu-Jitsu of sorts in ’95. Back then we understood that it was the basis for being able to defend yourself in a real fight, he remembers. Then along came sport competitions and people started using Jiu-Jitsu for other reasons – to score points, to beat other people who also trained Jiu-Jitsu. The art was lost, or it never evolved. The Jiu-Jitsu I use now didn’t even exist back then. There’s a whole art of Jiu-Jitsu for MMA, and that’s why I created my system on my own.
It sucks that the general consensus around gyms is that Jiu-Jitsu ‘doesn’t work.’ I’m like, ‘what do you mean it doesn’t work? Of course it works!’ If you choke somebody, it works. Real Jiu-Jitsu exists it is just hard to get to it because of the way it is played in MMA. This instructional series, my portion of it, is my two cents on the issue.
Thomas and fellow longtime black belt Kenny Kim’s The Rooted Blueprint of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”, which they say will launch mid-January 2019 at TrainBJJOnline.com, will include the MMA perspective, but will also be rounded out with modules focusing on sport Jiu-Jitsu and self-defense.
Sport Jiu-Jitsu is a beautiful thing to watch, Thomas allows. If you watch it, it is beautiful the way they move. You have guys like Gordon Ryan and Keenan Cornelius and they’re doing amazing things on the mats. Sport Jiu-Jitsu doesn’t necessarily always transfer to MMA but it is still a beautiful thing. I believe it’s a great thing to compete and there are people who train Jiu-Jitsu who don’t want to get punched in the face but they should still compete, and sport Jiu-Jitsu allows them to do it. My partner professor with this project, Kenny Kim, really excels in that aspect.
Thomas says that he and Jim met at UFC star Cole Miller’s Georgia academy some time ago after being invited by Miller to teach seminars. After getting along well and appreciating one another’s technical and teaching abilities, Kim and Thomas began to brainstorm on putting their talents together to create a unique online academy.
Kenny was doing a competition-style seminar and I was doing a seminar on the MMA aspect of it. He came up at the same time as us so he remembers a Jiu-Jitsu where we would slap each other in the face during rolling to get ready for fighting. But, through the years, he just paid more attention to the sport aspect. Kenny competes and trains competitors, so we thought of a project that would teach all aspects of Jiu-Jitsu, together.
Thomas says that students can expect The Rooted Blueprint of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to be structured much like an in-person academy. They’re also currently running a half-off special for anyone who signs up before the site, TrainBJJOnline.com, launches around the second week of January, 2019.
I wanted it to run the same way as if it were a real academy, he explains. When we launch we’re obviously going to include a lot of the base moves that you should learn when you first get into Jiu-Jitsu. Then, every week we will release a new technique. We’ll also have special moves of the week. We want to be engaged with the students as well so students can reach out to us and request we do a private for you. I’m all for it. I just want to share the information I’ve accumulated, all this knowledge from dedicating the past 22 years of my life to this.
People have a little less than a month to sign up and get half-off the entire year. It’s going to be worth it.
Thomas promises that he isn’t holding back anything with this endeavor, from a passion or technical standpoint.
I’m putting my heart and soul into this, he concludes. I’ve trained world champions and collaborated with some great, great Jiu-Jitsu minds. This will have all the information that you ordinarily don’t want to tell people. A lot of people don’t want to tell you their secret moves but I’m willing to show my secret moves.”
About the author:
Elias Cepeda writes a weekly column for The UG Feed; you can find Elias on Twitter @EliasCepeda.
