Ronnie Russel, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Instructor

Ronnie Russell understands that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can be difficult for beginners. He remembers vividly his first day of training many years ago: He worked out so hard that day that he went in the back room and threw up. “I remember everything — the smell of the school and the difficulty I had getting my body to move the right way,” he says, laughing.

These days, he moves like a cat — or, if he’s got you in a choke, a python. Ronnie earned his purple belt under Pedro Sauer, and he teaches Jiu-Jitsu to both adults and kids — often teaching or training five to seven days a week.

Ronnie’s structured classes tend to emphasize the basic fundamental aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He drills his students on the basic holds, chokes, arm bars, escapes, and other techniques that start to build the foundation of good, technical Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Rickson Gracie

“I love teaching,” he says. “You learn so much from it — from slowing down the techniques and being there in service to the student. I want to give them every detail and make sure that they are training the right way.”

His devotion to the Gracie style of Jiu-Jitsu is so pervasive that he even follows a strict diet advocated by the Gracie family: The diet involves combining certain types of healthy foods and spacing the meals properly, along with prohibiting pork, alcohol, and drugs.

Heart disease runs in his family, and yet he has managed to stay healthy through the diet and through regular exercise on the mat. “I’ve seen a huge difference in my health and my training,” he says. “My family history made me want to follow a different path — to live a happy, stress-free, empowering life.”

Marcelo Garcia

So much has changed since that first day he walked into the club. Early on, he says, he used to train like a maniac — fighting roughly, without good technique. “I heard Professor Sauer say, People don’t want to come to the dojo to fight, people want to come to the dojo to train Jiu-Jitsu,” Ronnie says. “There is a big difference. Now, I don’t come to the dojo to fight — I come to the dojo to train Jiu-Jitsu, and through that, to feel good about myself and to have fun.”

See Ronnie demonstrate some Jiu-Jitsu techniques in the video below:

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