Hi All,

Jacques here from South Africa.

I had my 1st BJJ class at the American Taekwondo World Champs in Little Rock Arkansas in June of 1996.
Didn't really think to much about it and had my second lesson in 1997 in Jacksonville in Florida when I visited my Taekwondo coach and there were 2 Purple Belts visiting from Brazil.

Officially I started training in August of 1999 under Rodney King who was under Chris Haueter. Since then I have trained with Matt Thornton on numerous occasions, Master Rigan Machado and even Forrest Griffin.

I converted my Taekwondo studio to a MMA and BJJ studio in January of 2000 and haven't looked back since.
At that time there were only 3 Official coaches in South Africa teaching BJJ. So we made do with what we could, the good old days of VHS, no Google or YouTube.

I pretty much started coaching from day one. I would learn the techniques in the morning in my class and teach them to my students that night, until I had enough of a library that I could coach freely.

I trained in gi till February of 2006 and then focused only on no-gi till 2010 when I decided to put on a gi again.
I was awarded my Black Belt in November of 2017, got my 1st stripe in December of 2019 and now my 2nd stripe in February of this year.

I run a BJJ studio called Crazy Monkey Centurion in South Africa, close to Johannesburg.
I coach mainly private and semi private classes as our studio in marginally bigger than a garage studio. I coach about 45 to 54 hours per week and absolutely love my "job". I have been a full time gym/studio owner since 1993.
As they say, make your passion your job and you will never work again.

From what I understand I got my second degree faster than I should as it should have taken 3 years instead of the 2 to go from Black Belt to 1st degree. But my coach thought it good to advance me when he did and I am not going to complain to him about that.
If he promoted me to fast, that is on him (Rodney King 4th Degree) and Master Rigan Machado as he represents Master Rigan in South Africa and Worldwide.

I would greatly appreciate if you could have a look at my profile.

Thanks in advance,
Jacques