William Vandry » Blog Archive » William Vandry’s Black belt student’s history

Bushido is a code of conduct that emerged in Japan from the Samurai, or Japanese warriors, who spread their ideals throughout society. They drew inspiration from Confucianism, which is a relatively, Bushido code contains eight key principles or virtues that warriors were expected to uphold.

Source: https://www.invaluable.com/blog/history-of-the-bushido-code/#:~:text=Bushido%20is%20a%20code%20of,importance%20on%20loyalty%20and%20duty.

An idol of mine when I first came into Jiu-jitsu was Master Rickson Gracie. Rickson sould speak about the Bushido code of the Samurai in his fights or interviews. I always thought this was honorable, and I always held that virtue as a Martial artist.

In teaching over the years, I have always tried to teach good techniques, philosophy, even nutrition and health since we cannot be good pracitioners if we are not healthy.

I started when I ws a young man, and being a Martial artist in other arts, I always supported and honored my instructors, the Machado brothers. I always supported their seminars, private lessons, classes, and always gave back to lower ranking fellow students when I used to take classes at Carlos Machado’s class he first started in 1995 at the Chuck Norris filming building of his Walker Texas Ranger TV show.

In life, I always learned about work ethic. When I was a teenager going to college, I worked doing mop and tar roofing and bouncing at a club at night. I have earned everything in my life. I have never taken or used people for my gain. In Jiu-jitsu we have lost a lot of the code of Bushido. I have had students that wanted rank from me thinking they would be making millions opening a school or breaking off. I had one student who could not earn a black belt under me that I lent him money to put down on a house he couldnt even qualify for, but it was a foreclosed home. He still lived at home, and didn’t even have a steady job. He asked for a chance, as he could not get any help or borrow from anyone including family. I lent him the money, I even gave him my old furniture as I was buying a house at the same time. In return I have never seen his house, and to make matters worse, he tried to go under my instructors and thought getting an association equals money.

I had another who could not earn a black belt. In a disgraceful action, he tried to pull students out of my school, many of them I saw the facebook messages they showed me of his bullying messages stating: “You have a choice.”

These days it seems if you want a belt just pull out your wallet. What happened to this Martial art?

These days I get people from other schools asking can they come in just to get mat time. I usually send them to go somewhere else. We used to want and desire to learn, and develop our techniques. Now, there are people who want to win only, or have arrogant nature in life.

I was telling a fellow black belt once that you cant worry about past students. They are like that their whole life, not because of you. But the point of this article is not to dwell on the unethical. It is to show like in the Star wars films, there are still the last Jedi of Jiu-jitsu.

You can read more on that topic my history in BJJ and back in 2018 article:

I like to remember my history and everyone should chronicle theirs in the Martial arts.

Lets get to a proud time in my life, as an instructor and to see my students now develop into peers themselves. Here is a little history, congratulations to all of you and my current highest ranking black belts timeline!

Old school history photos of Jesus Armas:

Jesus received first degree 2014

Jeff Anderson old school history

I hope this has touched, motivated, and made proud all of these Jiujitsu practitioners!