Brandon Quick
Brandon Quick is a BJJ Black Belt, Instructor, Combat Vet, and Father. He got his Black Belt from Jamie Walsh.
The Journey of a BJJ Black Belt: Insights from Brandon Quick in an Exclusive Interview
Brandon, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Could you give our readers some background info on yourself?
Yea, I started training Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu when my friend Chris Insalaco introduced me to it. I was living in Los Angeles, and his dad was training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai at the Muay Thai Academy. And there was also a Jean Jacques Machado affiliate guy named David Dunn who also introduced me to BJJ. I was about 12 or 13 years old, something like that. And really started training hard when I was a teenager and my buddy Chris’ garage turned into a gym with weights, pads, mats and all that. We trained outside of the gym all the time too. And I stayed with it and ended up training in the Jean Jacques Machado system where I was introduced to Eddie Bravo. But he [Eddie Bravo] was just another dude on the mats, you know? At the time that I met Eddie, I think he was a high level blue [belt] and then he really started making waves when he was a purple [belt] with his Twister and Truck and all that but I was a white belt at the time and thought it was kind of light years beyond me. So, I didn’t pay that much attention to him. And I was a bigger guy at 200lbs. So I never rolled with him or anything like that.
Eddie, Tony Desouza, and Jamie Walsh, were using Twisters all the time in tournaments. I thought it was awesome so I stayed true to jiu-jitsu. When I went in the military, I trained everything from Combatives to Krav Maga to BJJ tournaments to MMA fights to Muay Thai to Boxing and pretty much trained in everything that had to do with the MMA world. I also trained in Greco-Roman wrestling and continued to compete in tourneys after I got out of Iraq. I was in operation Iraqi Freedom I, the first tour in Iraq. After I got back, I had heard Eddie Bravo had beaten Royler Gracie and opened up a school in my hometown. I went back to Hollywood and signed up at the Bomb Squad where Eddie was teaching jiu-jitsu. And then they moved over to Legends when Randy Couture and Bas Rutten opened up Legends MMA. And now it’s mainly Chris Reilly that runs that gym with Bas and Randy moving on to different ventures. I was teaching 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu in Texas and asked Eddie, “Hey man, can we do this official?” And within that month, there were a few of us and we opened up an affiliate school for 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu. And now we have had the school in Dallas-Fort Worth for about a year and a half now. And we’re wrecking the local scene and trying to move up in the rankings. I will be at Abu Dhabi trials, Pan Ams, Worlds, and NAGAs this year as well.
What prompted your move from California to Texas?
When I got out of the military, I got involved in a local church called Rock Community Church. And that church ended up moving to the DFW area and there were 92 of us that were from that church that moved to Texas when the pastor moved.
Besides Eddie, who are some other guys that you have trained under and how were those experiences?
Eddie by far has been my most influential guy to train under because of how innovative he is. Jean Jacques Machado is another huge influence. He is open-minded and it’s not his way or the highway. Another one is Gokor Chivichyan with the leg locks. I did privates and stuff over at his place in L.A. I like to train leg locks as much as possible. I had several people that I trained with in the military at random places but definitely the biggest influence was Eddie Bravo. The original guys that I trained under, David Dunn, Jean Jacques Machado, and Eddie Bravo were the main ones.
Who is someone you haven’t had the chance to train with but would like to?
Shinya Aoki
Explain why you prefer no-gi over gi jiu-jitsu.
I just prefer it because I believe it’s a different sport. Right now, pretty much the IBJJF and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community is run by the Brazilians and they pretty much dominate the gi. But in no-gi there are lots of up-and-comers from other countries such as the United States. And with the U.S. background of Greco [Greco-Roman], folkstyle, and freestyle wrestling, it’s a faster-paced, more aggressive jiu-jitsu. When I started getting shown chokes with the bottom lapel of the gi jacket and slow-paced moves with the gi, I started to lose interest. And the other thing is, you don’t wear a gi on the street, you know? I just didn’t like training in the gi as much as I liked training no-gi. It’s just a preference; I like the faster-paced mentality of no-gi. I also think no-gi is mandatory for MMA fighters. Wearing a gi for MMA makes no sense to me. I believe that one should train like he fights. Pretty much everyone today who trains either in a single art or in multiple arts takes what they like or adapts certain things for themselves. All the time that MMA and No Gi competitors spend doing gi sweeps, setups and subs is a waste of precious time.
And I believe that it’s a different sport in the way that the Olympic Committee says that Judo is the sport of throwing an opponent while wearing a gi. But once you take that gi off, the Olympic Committee says the exact same sport is wrestling. You take that opponent down in Greco-Roman wrestling and it’s an entirely different sport. Gi versus no-gi, it’s the same thing.
Also, there are a lot of people that say you need to learn in the gi and it will make you better at no-gi. That is absolutely garbage. You don’t ever see a Nebraska state wrestling coach telling his wrestlers that they need to put a gi on in order to get better at their wrestling. That’s just an insecurity factor, and it comes down to money, students, humble teachers, and various other reasons that people believe you need to train gi to be good at no-gi. In reality, just get better at your no-gi. You don’t need to wear a gi to get better at no-gi.
I know on the internet forums there is a lot of criticism towards 10th Planet schools not teaching the “basics”. Could you comment on this?
I would love to comment on that. The misinterpretation of no “basics” being taught is absolutely ridiculous. Eddie Bravo is a Jean Jacques Machado black belt. And the majority of the people at his original school were belted before they started with Eddie. The knowledge of “basics” was already there for most of those original students. Eddie didn’t choose to write a book on basic armbars because there are 100,000 books out there on how to do an armbar or how to do a side control escape. What people were interested in and what sells, is people wanted to know about the rubber guard, people wanted to know about the twister, about the half guard lockdown, about our mount, about our spider web. That’s what they wanted to know about so that’s what we put in the books. Why would we put the same escapes that every jiu-jitsu, Pankration fighter, submission grappler , MMA fighter on the planet knows? Everybody knows the basic armbar. Everybody knows the basic side control escapes. So the side control escapes that we threw into the Rubber Guard book and stuff like that, are different escapes than the norm. But they aren’t our only escapes. You have to be a fool to think that we only know what’s in the books and DVDs.
People’s perception of our system is understandable that we only use those techniques because that is all they see. The majority of our tactics in our system are what is in the books and DVDs but a lot of that has already evolved. The basics of what we have in jiu-jitsu is always there and has always been there. There are comments on Youtube about the “Pump” from “Crackhead control” and people will make all these sarcastic comments but they won’t make any comments on Youtube when you see Eddie doing an armbar. You don’t see people complaining about that. What about the “Underpass”? You don’t see people complaining about that. That’s on the internet. There is all kinds of basic stuff on the internet. People just choose to ignore those and harp on the other techniques. People are either 1. Not good at the techniques or 2. Don’t know about them. And the natural human thing is to fear what they don’t know. And therefore, they start hating.
Let’s say a new guy comes into your school with no knowledge of jiu-jitsu, how do you go about teaching him?
The area that I’m in, I’m the only guy that teaches jiu-jitsu. So I’d say about 85 percent of my guys have never trained jiu-jitsu. I’ve got several guys from other schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Travis Lutter’s, Carlos Machado’s, Mohler’s, Guy Mezger’s, and almost every school in the area has guys from it that come to train with me. They come to me for the specialization that 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu offers. But the rest of the guys don’t know anything about jiu-jitsu. They don’t even know the guard position, never even seen it. So, like a lot of schools, I have introductory classes. I have an intro to the guard class, intro to the half guard class, and an intro to the top game class. And either myself or one of my junior instructors teaches those intro classes. There are three of those intro classes and then you start class.
With rubber guard requiring a great deal of flexibility, do you feel that limits your student base?
No, that doesn’t limit my student base at all. I’ve got 5’6, 200lbs. bodybuilders. For example, one of my blue belts couldn’t even get mission control a year ago and couldn’t even grab his foot. And I tell guys the whole system is not Rubber Guard. Guys who don’t have the flexibility or have injuries have the benefit of mastering a certain position while they are rehabbing or working on flexibility; they can master their half guard, master their mount, master their twister side, whatever. And those guys tend to really get one part of the system down and then move on to the other parts. There are also ways to do the rubber guard without being super flexible. The whole point of the rubber guard is to get to the side, get to jiu-claw, and get a sweep to get on top. And of course, there are several submissions in the rubber guard that you can take on the way. We come up with ways for guys who aren’t as flexible or injured to utilize it as well. You have to benefit everyone.
And the whole flexibility thing that I don’t like about the rubber guard is it is not the only guard that requires flexibility. There are certain techniques in “traditional” Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that require flexibility as well. People who sit there and try to grab their foot over someone’s back and have no knowledge of rubber guard and only saw the technique on Youtube or in a book and do the technique wrong, will lose faith in the system. If someone better than you smashes you, it doesn’t mean that the system is flawed. In reality, the person hasn’t put their time in and done enough reps and stretching. It doesn’t take an incredible amount of flexibility, unless you start playing things like “Double-bagger” or for some people “Invisible Collar”. If you can get to mission control, you can go through rubber guard no problem. Just make some tweaks to the system. Practice yoga and practice stretching. Practice stretching while you are tired, practice stretching while you are talking, practice stretching while you are watching TV, practice stretching all the time.
We haven’t seen too much 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu in high level jiu-jitsu and submission grappling tournaments, do you feel that we will see more of it in the future or is 10th PJJ more geared towards the MMA crowd?
There’s a couple reasons for that. Interviews like this one haven’t really happened with guys outside of Hollywood. Eddie has the most transient city possible to have a school in so it’s going to be a little more difficult than say for example, Carlos Machado having students in Dallas. Because there are all those people that are going to be singers, actors, and music stars and things like that in Hollywood. So, you do get a lot of guys that are going in and out of that school. But it is jiu-jitsu for mixed martial arts. And we’re having a lot more MMA fighters come in and learn the whole rubber guard.
There are several guys who compete in no-gi jiu-jitsu. At my school, we compete almost every week. At least my kids compete all the time and my adults compete monthly or at least bi-monthly in jiu-jitsu tournaments. There are some high level tournaments, everyone knows that Denny Prokopos just won the World No-Gis. He got the gold medal at the brown belt level. Almost all of the top level brown belts have won some major tournaments. And actually this year, you will see myself and Denny, who runs 10th Planet San Francisco, in the North American Abu Dhabi trials. I will also be at the No Gi Pan Ams, Worlds, Grapplers Quests, and NAGAs. We’re in all of those events. But there are many people at the blue, purple and brown level that compete from 10th Planet. Too many to name!
And you have the sheer number of how many people we have. We are a brand new school. The actual headquarters has only been open since late 2003. So we’ve only been open 6 years. Eddie didn’t have a ton of students from the beginning. He just started making his name in the city of Los Angeles, California where there are tons of other black belts and tons of other established schools. You’ve got the Gracie Academy and the Machados there; it’s going to be hard to make your name right away so it took awhile for Eddie to build up. And most of the affiliates have only been open a year, with some of them only open for a few months. So, Eddie may have twenty affiliates right now, and probably only five of those have been open for an actual year. It’s going to take time, man.
Can you explain how you continue to learn and grow as a competitor when you are the instructor at your academy?
I’m always a student of the game. I’ll train with other guys in the area. I’ve got a Greco-Roman wrestler from Iowa that teaches takedowns at my school. I work my takedowns with him. I also bring people in for seminars. For example, I have Ryan Hall coming April 4th to my school for a seminar. We’re bringing in Jeff Glover. We are bringing in Eddie Bravo multiple times this year. Since Eddie is the head of the system, he will show us things that he has altered or added to the system. I also go back home to Los Angeles about every 3 months for a week to train over there.
You have a new DVD coming out entitled Fade to Black, could you tell us a little bit about it?
Yea, it’s definitely for no-gi jiu-jitsu and MMA. But if you’re a gi practitioner, you can use it as well. Everything you can do in no-gi, you can do in gi. It’s all about mastering chokes and transitions. There has never been a chokes DVD like this. It’s got a mini-documentary behind the scenes on it. We’ve got free rolling/sparring footage on it. And we’ve got 67 techniques that are on there. And probably about 10 of them there is something similar or a variation you may have seen before but the way that I teach and the way that I learn as well is that I build in a pyramid fashion. I build with one move and then also present counters and re-counters so you can always add on to your knowledge base so that no matter what somebody does in a certain position, you will always have an answer for it, a counter for it, a sweep for it, or a submission for it.
Another reason the DVD was made is because I’m a huge fan of chokes and I think that the D’arce is out there, the Peruvian [necktie] is out there, the gator is out there, and guillotines are out there. Everyone knows what they are but nobody has really taken any of it as far as I have. Some people have limited knowledge of some of these moves but I think this DVD will really open up some eyes as far as what is possible. There is also a very versatile submission call the RAT, the reverse arm triangle, that I show a lot of on the DVD.
I’m also working on the book deal. The book will be coming soon, probably some time by the Fall of 2009. We’re going to add a couple more techniques as well…some good transitions and variations.
How do you feel people can get the most out of instructional DVD’s?
They’ve got to watch it and they’ve got to train it, haha. If you just watch the DVD, then the techniques aren’t going to work! If you watch the DVD and then go train it or take what you think you can use out of it, then it might work. But everything is about reps, you’ve got to put your reps in before something works.You can do a basic armbar for a set number of reps, let’s say 100 reps for example. After the first 20 reps, I’m horrible. After the next 20 reps, I’m better. After the next 20 reps, I feel like I can submit someone. After the next 20 reps, I feel like they are outstanding. And the last 20 reps, I feel like I can win Abu Dhabi. It’s all about using those reps…the more reps that you use, the easier it will be for you to accomplish using that technique when you are competing or free rolling.
If you just watch a DVD and go, “Ah, I think that will work or I don’t think it will work”, then you aren’t getting the most out of the DVD. I always try stuff out, I always get my reps in before I judge a technique and try it in free rolling.
What else can we expect from you in the future?
Well, like I said, in the fall the Fade to Black book will come out. You’ll see another 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu Dallas-Fort Worth location being opened up this year. Right now, we have one location in the southern Dallas area and now we’re going to expand to the north of Dallas. I’ll be competing in the Abu Dhabi trials, Pan Ams, Worlds, NAGA, and some of the regional tournaments in my area.
The biggest news that we have is in September, we will have the new 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu Championships Series. It’s going to be our own tournament and of course it will be open to the public. But we are going to tweak the rules a bit and go against the grain as far as how a typical jiu-jitsu tournament is scored, what overtime is like, and what the rules are like. The categories of skill level will also be tweaked. We’re working with Lonestar Tournaments…Eddie Bravo, and myself. I think these tournaments are going to make some massive waves in the jiu-jitsu community and get more into jiu-jitsu as opposed to wrestling…more submission-oriented grappling. Not to take away anything from wrestling or takedowns of course…but definitely if somebody goes to the ground, the other person will not be allowed to back out and just continue to attempt takedowns. We’re in a submission tournament and the goal is to submit people. That is what jiu jitsu is, yes? Getting the submission, not just landing in guard and grinding out a point-win. More points for solid sub attempts and less for positions. We want to see more action, more submissions, and we’re also looking at having a 8-10 man superfight for some big “G” money.
Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, any last comments?
No, just look out for the new DVD, Fade to Black. And my online training website is www.10thPlanetDFW.com You’ll also see Eddie Bravo coming out with a new website this summer www.10thPlanetJJ.com and his new Twister DVDs as well…so be on the lookout for those as well.
Quick Hits
Favorite Takedown: For MMA, the suplex. For jiu-jitsu, the rolling kneebar.
Favorite Submission: The Twister. Well, the Twister is like the ultimate possible submission you can get but my most common favorite one I use is the D’arce.
How many days a week do you train? 6
Favorite music to train to: P.O.D.
Ratio of drilling to sparring you recommend? It all depends on your phase in competition preparation. I really start to intensify it about 6 weeks out. 6 weeks out I focus less on reps and more on hard sparring. I’d say about 25/75 when you are preparing for a competition and 45/55 during off season. But I ALWAYS do drills outside of class. No rolling, just technique and sometimes flow drills for cardio technique drills.
Favorite thing to do outside of grappling: MMA. I’m really big into MMA and spending time with my family.
Favorite jiu-jitsu guys to watch: Jeff Glover, Ryan Hall, Marcelo Garcia, and Jean Jacques Machado. I’m also really into watching the PSL [Pro Submission League] events. I think they are really well run and have lots of good competitors.
Biggest mistake that new grapplers make: They run in circles and are too frantic. When they roll, they look like the Tasmanian Devil. Also, they don’t take notes. Look at football players; do you see them doing a bunch of random stuff? No, they have a playbook of exactly how to do stuff and they follow it.
Contact
© 2023 BJJ Stories., All Rights Reserved.