Be Particular About Where You Train

In an interview with Matt Arroyo, WWE superstar and Hollywood actor Dave Bautista shared his perspective on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – offering practical advice for beginners in the sport.

Bautista stressed that the most important step for beginners is choosing the right academy:

The most important advice is be very particular about where you train because there are certain places where you go in and you’re just gonna get beat up and you’re just gonna get turned off from it.

Go to a respectable school.

You want to go in to learn, you don’t want to go in to get beat up.

Bautista also emphasized the need to approach the sport with humility and a beginner’s mindset – especially for physically imposing individuals who might be tempted to rely on strength over skill:

Be willing to be a student, don’t go in with your ego.I don’t like to train with a lot of big guys because soon as their ego starts getting in the way, they start trying to muscle everything.

They’re not gonna learn anything like that.

Bautista shared a story from his early training days:

I went in and I got my ass handed to me by everybody in that school – and I was completely okay with it, because I walked out of there that day and I got an education.

What keeps him coming back to the mats isn’t just the physical challenge, but the intellectual side of Jiu-Jitsu:

I get obsessed with puzzles, and Jiu-Jitsu is a puzzle that I will never be able to figure out.

It’s like a never-ending puzzle, and that’s why I just love it.