A lot of BJJ practitioners use seminars to expand their game and take a little nugget of knowledge from an expert and add to their arsenal of techniques.
Have you ever wanted to take a seminar from UFC champion Royce Gracie? Have you ever wanted to know how Ciao Terra performs a Gi choke? Now you have a chance to access some of the best seminars on the East Coast by just liking a Facebook page.
East Coast BJJ Seminars page happened to be created by two guys that met at a seminar. They wanted a way to communicate seminars to the BJJ community and social media was the answer
After I had attended two seminars that I found listed on their page, I knew wanted to find out more about the page and tell others know about this awesome page. I conducted an email interview with, Saad, half of the dynamic duo that created this page.
Q:How long have you been training BJJ?
A:I have been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a little over 4 years. In addition, I have a 1st degree Black Belt in Hapkido and was heavily into boxing for many years.
Q:What was the motivation behind East Coast BJJ Seminars page?
A:I am in the military and transferred to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina last year. I wanted to train with some top level guys and I was always hearing about seminars after the event had passed. I went to a Renzo Gracie seminar in Danville, VA and met a guy named Brandon who suggested the idea for Eastcoastbjjseminars and I just sort of took it and ran with it.
I chose to only focus on the seminars on the East Coast for two reasons:
1. I live on the East Coast and am only going to attend seminars on the East Coast, so I am tracking these seminars for myself and just publishing it for everyone else.
2. If I tried to track all the seminars across the United States the page would consume a lot of time and really would not be very user friendly. As it is I get feedback from people who view my page asking me to break the seminars into a smaller geographic areas. For instance, people in Florida are not going to seminars in New York.
Q:I personally have taken two seminars thanks to the page, have you heard any other really interesting stories by using your page?
A:The best feedback I have received is a white belt that went to a Royce Gracie seminar and Royce awarded him his blue belt after the seminar. The seminar lasted over 3 hours and approximately an hour of the seminar was dedicated to competitive rolling that Royce monitored. Royce was so impressed with the young man’s skills that he awarded him a blue belt afterwards. To receive a belt promotion from Royce Gracie is an incredible honor and for this young man an incredible surprise, because he was not expecting it at all.
I have had a few school owners tell me that the page has increased their attendance at some of their seminars, which I am really happy about. The better these seminars are attended the greater the chance for more seminars in the future.Q:How many seminars do you average posting per month?
A:I would estimate that there are roughly 7-8 seminars a month that I find out about and post on the page. I think the most seminars I have advertised at one time were about 25. December is somewhat of a slow seminar month, because I think we only posted 3-4 seminars for December. I also advertise local jiu jitsu tournaments if the event organizer sends the info to me.
Q:How can a user submit a seminar to be displayed on your page?
A:You can either invite me to the seminar and I will post it on my page or you can post it directly to my page. I delete all events after they occur, so everything on the page is an upcoming event and nothing is expired.
If a person would like they can send me the info on a seminar they are sponsoring and I will create a Facebook Event for them and send it to all the people on my friends list as well as post it on my page.
I delete all MMA event postings and company advertisements, because I am just sticking with seminars and tournaments.
Q:There is obviously a huge following of your site with just under 1,700 followers. Are there any plans to expand this to a nationwide site or database for seminars?
A:Had a couple people ask me to start a page for West Coast BJJ seminars and I just said, “As soon as the military transfers me to the West Coast, then you will see me create the page.” I am not willing to dedicate anymore of my time running multiple geographic pages.
In the future, we may create a separate web page in addition to Facebook’s page, so the seminars can be tracked a little better. Facebook is an incredible tool with a lot of traffic, but it has serious limitations in regards to creating and organizing the seminars in a more user friendly format.
Q:Any other information you would like to share?
A:East Coast BJJ Seminars page is jointly run by Brandon and Saad (me) as a team, which is neat, because I have only actually met Brandon one time, which was at the Renzo Gracie seminar. We do all our communications via e-mail or text. Basically we are just two jiu jitsu geeks who decided to track seminars.
So whenever the military transfers me (Saad) to the West Coast or overseas then the page will become 100% Brandons and I will create something new wherever I go unless someone else has created something for that geographic area.
So all the questions you gave were just answered by half the team (Saad). LOL!
I do want to thank Saad, for answering my question and developing this awesome way to communicate seminars to the community!Share the link love and become a fan:
East Coast BJJ Seminars
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