As general guidance of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and most Martial martial arts since the early days, the masters and instructor always signify a symbol of knowledge and life commitment to help others and to help students to become better on all aspects of life!
As time passes, sport has been evolving and academies getting more available, technology expanding, to get to the point where you maybe able to learn things at home this days with out getting of the couch.
We have seen a slightly shift in attitude from students and general over the years, as students in very early stages of they training due advancement of internet and the flexibility of people share knowledge a shift towards a lack of appreciation and deep respect towards instructors.
Is important to understand that for all this amazing things to happen , many BJJ teachers went through a lot sacrifice( injuries, disability, emotional distress)by doing challenge fights representing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, travelling far distances on the pursue of knowledge to get to the stage that is today.
To be able to pass knowledge on top of knowledge, to they students or other students. So we could get Brazilian Jiu Jitsu so big and popular the you can always find a academy near you to train.
So probably one of the most important things if not the most important thing a student can do on they journey of BJJ is to greet they instructor upon getting into they academy specially on the mat area where the exchange of knowledge will occur and the relationship between student and instructor will be build.
For a teacher one of the worse feeling you can have is having a student that comes into the mats with out greeting they instructors and simple get on the mat with out acknowledging they instructor ,that gives a strange feeling of no appreciation and almost the feeling of no respect.
Just as much as soldiers fought on the war to make a better country for you! Many black belts and the ones that came before you also fought to make jiu jitsu what it is today so everyone can enjoy in a fun and safe environment . This is not always have been the case.
You will only have to gain with that, if whenever you may be visiting another bjj academy this is one of the most fundamental things you should do by entry any academy to be welcome.
For me this has been a massive shift on Jiu Jitsu i have seen over the years. I seen sometimes things like this happen.
I have been training jiu jitsu now for 25 years now, in all this time i have never step on mat of the academy I train or in any other academy i have visit with out greet the instructor first . As much as everything evolves and get modernised i think is important not to forget some of the roots of what got us here to this day.
Hopefully one day you will get to your black or become a instructor and the same respect will be pass to you.
OSU
Daniel Lima
