May 17, 2017

Meet Rob Ables of Marcelo Garcia Jiu Jitsu of Dallas

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rob Ables.

Rob, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
When I started training Jiu-Jitsu in the late 90’s, I had already been a black belt in another martial arts for a few years. I wanted to train Jiu-jitsu so badly that I joined a school, quickly bought a new Jiu-Jitsu specific uniform with a new white belt, and started hitting classes every day. I was teaching gymnastics at the time, but after a year of training I was asked by the school owner and head instructor to come to work at the academy to help continue to build and grow a youth program. After many years growing programs for others I opened my own academy in 2009 under my instructor and friend, Marcelo Garcia.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
My experience in the martial arts industry taught me things can go from good, to great, and back to awful pretty quickly sometimes. Like most other businesses in this type of service driven industry, summer and winter months can be tough times with fluctuating numbers of students. Opening the academy is the most difficult undertaking of my adult life. At one point I worked three jobs in order to keep the gym running. It took several years for the gym to have enough students to be considered financially stable. I opened the business without any financial support or other instructors to help lighten the physical burden of training twice a day, six days a week. A couple of times I had surgery for an injury, only to instruct a class a day or so later.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Marcelo Garcia of Dallas is a martial arts academy that teaches Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, where the attention focuses on fighting and grappling positions when you and your opponent are on the ground. We concentrate our lessons on controlling the position of the fight or competitive match so that a submission hold can be applied to the opponent in order to stop the threat presented in the match. At the academy you will find amazing instructors teaching a modern and progressive style of Jiu-Jitsu heavily influenced by Marcelo Garcia, who is arguably one of the greatest grapplers who has ever lived. I’m very happy to have a job that I truly love, and to be part a place that enriches me personally, and also affords so many others the opportunity to better themselves. I feel our Jiu-Jitsu academy is more of an extended family and the vibe in the school is welcoming and friendly, technique is explained and showed in a fun and interactive way, and we are able to still provide a very challenging and competitive environment for learning and refining your Jiu-Jitsu skills.

What were you like growing up?
I was very active kid who loved to play outside till dusk. It didn’t matter what I was doing as long as it provided some small rush of excitement. I loved to ride bikes at a young age and was hooked on being a stuntman and the daredevil lifestyle, by the time I was in my late teens two loves emerged: freestyle bike riding and martial arts.

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