My wife and I began training together in our late 30's at a small school in Staunton, Virginia, USA (Valley Jiu Jitsu), which was affiliated with Leo Dalla/Big Brothers. We shifted the majority of our training to the Virginia Military Institute's BJJ Club. The VMI Club is under the umbrella of head instructor Dennis Hayes of Hybrid Martial Arts Center, in Roanoke Virginia. Dennis received his black belt from Pedro Sauer in 2008. Shifting our training to VMI made sense because we both teach there, enjoy working with cadets out of the classroom, and VMI was much closer to home. We split our training between VMI (Sep-April), and Hybrid in Roanoke and Total Defense Martial in Staunton (a Hybrid affiliate owned by Brian Rose) during the summer. Our training with the VMI Club was always under the direct teaching of coaches Seweryn Morgewiecz and Jim Whitten, who are both black belts from Hybrid that received their belts from Pedro Sauer. Because of our role as faculty members at VMI, we soon became involved in helping to coach the VMI Club despite our relative lack of experience on the mats. We competed at a couple submission only USA Grappling tournaments as white belts, but stopped competing because our training time is too limited to adequately prepare, and being there for cadets during competitions makes it hard to focus on one's own performance. We initially started helping to coach the VMI Club as blue belts, until Coach Whitten stepped down at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year. Since the VMI Club would have been shut down for lack of someone willing to coach, we assumed the head coaching role in the fall of 2021. The fact that we were blue belts was not ideal, but it worked with the help of Donnie Manness (purple belt from Hybrid) who served as an assistant coach. We've continued coaching the VMI Club and were promoted to purple belt by Dennis in 2022. Although we're setting a slow pace for promotions, our focus is on enjoying the journey. Training with cadets who are young, aggressive, and more athletic than the average BJJ practitioner has kept us sharp. The VMI Club attracts a range of cadets - most have no prior BJJ training, but each year we usually have some cadets with blue or purple belts, plus a cohort of former members of VMI's NCAA Division 1 wrestling team. Rolling with this mix of young athletes helps us to not lose sight of BJJ's self-defense origins! From a coaching standpoint, we focus hard on lowering the intensity (injury risk) and creating a team culture that prioritizes being good training partners. Our goal is to create a group dynamic that emphasizes having fun, avoiding unnecessary injury, and learning collaboratively. We favor forms of training that prioritize developing skills against resistance. Our classes tend to use a mixture of constrained learning/ gamification and 'traditional' teaching.