Justin Hall
Founder, League Jiu-Jitsu
Third degree black belt
League Jiu-Jitsu HQ is run by Justin Hall, a third degree black belt.
He received his blue belt from Pedro Sauer. His purple, brown and black belts came from Eddie Camden at Tiger Academy in Roswell, Georgia, and his degrees under the Machados.
He served as Director of the Carlos Machado Jiu-Jitsu Association, where he oversaw all operations and finances for the association and wrote the majority of the curriculum and best practices used by its affiliate schools.
He has owned and run his own academy since 2007, a school of around two hundred students that has operated without his daily involvement for years.
Before Jiu-Jitsu he ran seven restaurant locations. He holds a master's degree in biological anthropology and dual master's degrees in financial planning and financial therapy.
Curriculum is the work
Writing curriculum for an association of affiliate schools teaches you something quickly: technique is the easy part. Getting a student to understand where they are, what their options are, and whether any of it is working is the hard part, and almost nothing in Jiu-Jitsu is built to do it.
He has built full curricula for academies across the United States and Mexico. His work includes forty-week adult fundamentals programmes, thirty-week gi and no-gi progressions, kids programmes and instructor development material.
This academy is what happens when you get to build one from scratch.
Why it is built this way
Jiu-Jitsu is traditionally taught as a collection of techniques. You gather them for a year, then spar and work out for yourself how they fit together. Most people never do.
Every other sport solved this a long time ago. You practise through the week, you play at the end of the week, and the game tells you what is working.
League Jiu-Jitsu is that, built deliberately. Seventeen games, a curriculum designed around them, and a record of every round you play.