Daniel
brown belt
I met Luca in 2019. I was with Master Renzo at the time and we had just stopped by Dark Bullet for dinner. And then I met Luca, and with him was Professor Vinny, who would help us when we first opened the academy. My uncle—my father’s brother—has known Renzo since they were kids, like ten years old. That was my connection. I’d never met Renzo before New York, but we started texting, and he said, “Come stay at my house.” So I did.
I came to New York for a civil construction job. That was the plan—I’d studied it in Brazil—but at 21, I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted forever. I knew jiu-jitsu mostly from watching UFC, not from a gym. Then I spent time around Renzo and thought, “Let me try this. It looks fun.” And once I started, I didn’t want the job anymore. I wanted to stay with Renzo. I’ve been happy ever since.
Q: How many members did we have then?
Probably 100. It was very interesting because it was probably one of the fastest launches in terms of growth rate. We really built this academy from scratch. And in less than a year, in a couple of months, we were adding a lot of members.
I remember when I first arrived, I would come for a 6 pm class and the mats would be packed. A lot of white belts and a few blue belts. Professor Lucas had taught at headquarters for a few years, so he had a few students coming to his classes. That always helped. Sometimes people think they should not train with belts higher than their own. But it actually helps, because if it’s a beginner with another beginner, they don’t understand what they’re working on. They don’t know what they’re doing. So by bringing students from headquarters, we had a few people willing to help those beginners get their journey started.
Q: Do you think that helped build the culture here?
Yes. The culture here is mutual benefit: beginners learn safely, and upper belts sharpen their technique by teaching.
All types of gym cultures are valid, but we also have to understand our students. I would say that here, the majority are looking for health in general—body, mind, and soul. There’s no reason to push them to the edge. That’s not what we believe. The lower rank learns by training with the higher rank, but the higher rank also learns, because when you teach, you make sure you know the technique well enough to explain to someone who’s never seen it before. And I felt that, together with not forcing people to train, we made it very comfortable for people: “If you want to train, you can train. We’re going to help you find a nice partner who will guide you.”
The Upper West Side neighborhood also helped build the academy. Sometimes the kids would start, then after a couple of weeks, the dad would join, and then the moms would do self-defense classes. So one member of the family attracts the others. And even if they don’t train, it's so busy here on weekends. The mats are crowded with kids, and you have grandparents, parents, siblings, uncles, cousins, everybody watching. The whole family comes to the academy to watch the kids train.
We also have many cases where people stopped as white belts, but came back. Even people who stopped at purple belt or brown belt. They didn’t feel comfortable rejoining an academy because they were afraid of getting hurt again. But a mindset of helping rather than going hard helps in those cases. We try to embrace everybody. If you want tough rounds, you’ll have tough rounds. If you want to help someone, you help. If you want to leave and hang out with your family, that’s fine too.
Q: Was it odd working here when everyone else on staff was a black belt or brown belt, while you were a beginner?
Luca’s advice was simple: take as many classes as possible, but don’t roll yet.
Back then, we had three classes every evening: 6 pm, 7 pm, and 8 pm, as we do now. But the classes were longer and some overlapped. So I would start at 6 pm and do only the technical part. When rolls were about to start, I’d jump into the 7 pm class and redo the technical part. Sometimes, when rolling was about to start for the 7, I’d move to the 8 pm and do the techniques there too. And that helped me so much. I didn’t get hurt, which would have stopped me from learning and delayed my progress a lot.
Because I’m not the biggest guy or the heaviest guy. I would just do the techniques so I could do it every day. I literally trained every day and did more than one class a day, without rolling for months. And I guess that helped my body understand what was going on. So when I started rolling with people, I kind of knew what to expect from all the technique training. I knew how to move my body so I wouldn’t get hurt. I kept doing it for many years without any severe injury. I’ve never had a broken leg or broken arm or anything major happen to me. In all those years, I just had a small knee injury, where I didn’t have to do anything other than put ice and rest for a week.
So I guess starting and doing it slowly helped me so much. But I was also lucky enough to start helping with the women’s self-defense classes here when I was a one-stripe white belt. So that also helped me a lot. Because I memorized the entire self-defense curriculum, which is fundamental. So it helped me a lot. I was very fortunate to start at a good age and not push the training too hard.
Q: You helped launch the Wall Street location as well.
That was interesting because we could just see the cycle beginning again. Just like here: we opened with lots of beginners, and eventually those beginners became blue belts. On the Upper West Side, we have over 20 brown belts, some with us from day one. Or they started as white belts and now they’re in their late-stage purple belt, getting ready for brown belts.
So we’ve seen that again on Wall Street. We opened in August 2023. The first six months were tough—lots of beginners, lots of semi-private sessions, helping Professor Luca with the classes. We would teach pretty much every class. But Mathaus also did a fantastic job in the morning classes down there. Now, after two years, the cycle is getting there. Now the beginners who started with us back in 2022 are all blue belts. So the culture is helping again. The classes reach a point where it becomes easier to attract more members. Because when the classes are too small, sometimes as a more advanced student, you’ll appreciate a semi-private class. But as someone who never trained before, if you walk into a gym and there are only a few students on the mats, that doesn’t help you sign up. You want to have a little anonymity when you first start.
Q: Do you miss Brazil?
Yeah, but I don’t miss the country itself as much because I like it here. I like the idea that if you work hard in America, you can conquer everything. Brazil is just a little harder when it comes to doing business and so on. I miss my family and my friends, but I’m happy here. No regrets.
If it weren’t for my jiu-jitsu family, I don’t think I would still be here. Because it can be very lonely, especially in New York City. I was lucky because I had this new family here that has been helping me for those years.
Q: What do you like most about New York?
I like the seasons. Summer is really hot, and winter is really cold. Spring and fall are lovely. But what I like most about New York is that you can literally find anything you’re looking for here. Anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a type of food, or something you’re looking to buy, or a type of class. Do you want to learn how to play piano? You’re going to get one of the greatest piano instructors in the world. If you want to go to the theater, it’s going to be amazing. If you want to go to a show, we have amazing Broadway shows. So I feel it’s the type of city that it doesn’t matter what you like—you’re going to have it here. If you like theater, you have theater. If you like concerts, like classical concerts, you’re going to have it here. Or if you just like to stay at home and order food, you’ll have amazing options as well.
Also, the neighborhoods themselves are really nice. Maybe you live uptown, but if you take the train to Little Italy, it’s completely different. And then from Little Italy, a few steps away, you’re in Chinatown. They’re literally next to each other, but a few steps change everything. You feel embraced. You don’t feel weird here because everybody’s from every corner of the world. We have people from all countries living here.
Q: You teach, work, and train, so everybody recognizes you here—tell me something they would be surprised to know about you.
I’m a big tennis fan. So that should also be on my list of what I like most about living in New York: I can go to the U.S. Open every year. I literally went to every U.S. Open since I moved here, except for the Covid one, when they didn’t have an audience. But I always go. I always make sure to go. I used to play. I used to do classes in Brazil. I played for a few years—classes, private classes, and played with friends. And it’s one thing I want to return to doing. So I’m planning to do at least a month or two of classes, at least during the summer.
I’m also a big-time foodie. I love trying new spots. I like trying new restaurants.
Q: What’s your favorite restaurant?
I like a great Italian spot on the East Side called San Matteo. They’re also the official pizzeria for the US Open. They have really good pizza, really good food. The prices are great. Good wine. I also recently found a nice spot in Little Italy called Casa D’Angelo. They have great service, good food, and amazing house wine. Polpette across the road has a killer Manhattan. And there’s also a Mediterranean place called Leyla that’s great.
Q: Has jiu-jitsu benefited you in any other ways?
It helped me so much because it gave me strength. It works so many muscles in the body. Nowadays, I also do light lifting at the gym—just to maintain my shoulders, knees, and lower back. But it is really good for my mind as well. It’s good because when you’re training, you cannot think about anything else. No cell phone, nothing else. And also, you are who you are on the mats. There’s no way to hide. The mats never lie. There are no masks. If you are a bully outside, you’re going to be a bully on the mats. If you’re like an explosive guy, you’re going to be explosive on the mats. And I also really like that it doesn’t matter what your religion or net worth is. Nobody cares what your job is. We just try to have fun and beat each other in a gentle way.
Everybody here is willing to learn. Everybody respects each other. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, or your job, or your titles. They don’t mean anything. It’s just a bunch of people trying to get better every day.
This is part of a weekly series on the people who make up jiu-jitsu culture.
