Geo Martinez is one of the most innovative and creative BJJ competitors in the world, but he also had a meteoric rise to black belt in just 3 years. Very few people have ever managed to reach that level in anywhere near such a short space of time, and that remains one of the quickest journeys from white to black. It was a truly impressive feat, made even more remarkable by the fact that Martinez also found success competing at that level immediately. He won both the inaugural Eddie Bravo Invitational and the under 66kg division at ADCC Trials in his first year as a black belt in 2014.
We recently spoke to Martinez and at one point he reflected on that early part of his Jiu-Jitsu journey, and he has some clear insight in to what physical skills can help anyone progress faster in the sport:
“It’s a physical, mental sport. It’s an art, right? Like being creative is really powerful but having a physical body that can move certain ways is important. Like flexible, and strong, and great balance, and just good abilities to control your body. I feel like I understood that early on.”
For Geo Martinez in particular, he already had those skills in huge quantities thanks to his years as a breakdancer and he believes that helped him accelerate the path to BJJ black belt:
“I’ve been training my body my whole life through dancing, you know? Through B-Boying with my crew, The Freakshow. That was like my true passion and that’s what I thought I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. I knew when I got into Jiu-Jitsu that like even though I missed out on training when I was younger, I didn’t wrestle or did any combat sports, I knew that maybe B-Boying could benefit me in a way that could make me get good at Jiu-Jitsu faster than others.”
Obviously Jiu-Jitsu isn’t just about physical fitness and although breakdancing is one of several sports that have some crossover with grappling, Martinez sees other parallels between his two favorite activities:
“Also I feel like just having that battle mindset, you know? As a B-Boy you want to be the best crew, and you want to be an innovator, and you want to be original, and you want to train the most. You want to put in the most work, like underground. No-one sees it but you’re grinding every day; that’s what Jiu-Jitsu people do too. We grind and you put in work in the lab, and you’re constantly training. So I just kinda took the same mindset I had already from B-Boying into Jiu-Jitsu.”
Martinez doesn’t credit all of his success to himself though, and in fact he thinks a lot of it is down to the man who gave him his black belt; the founder of 10th Planet himself:
“Having someone like Eddie Bravo as a mentor, I respected him a lot. I never had a mentor ever in dancing. I always had my crew, my peers, but we never really had mentors. We always kinda did things our own ways and we learned things the hard way a lot of times, and the road was tough. It wasn’t easy. It’s a lot easier when you have a coach or like a mentor that can guide you. To have someone like Eddie giving me all the nuggets, because Eddie’s one of the best minds in the MMA world, you know? So just having him in my corner, and him believing in me, and seeing my abilities and owning them instead of being like ‘oh he’s good but that’s not Jiu-Jitsu.’”
The full interview Geo Martinez where he explains how he got his BJJ black belt in 3 years is available to watch on the official JitsMagazine YouTube channel, click here to subscribe for more or check out the interview below:
