Adrian walked into his first jiu-jitsu class, didn't love what he saw, and walked right back out. The next day, he signed up—and never left.

In this episode, Alex sits down with Adrian, owner of Gracie University Amsterdam, who moved from Cape Town to the Netherlands and built the city's only Gracie University location from scratch, starting with three one-hour classes a week and growing to 14 classes running daily.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why his first impression of Jiu-Jitsu nearly drove him away, and what a stack of flyers and a YouTube wormhole changed his mind
• How a move to Amsterdam for an unrelated job became the opportunity to build the city's first Gracie University location
• His deliberate choice to build the gym around working professionals and self-defense, not competition — and why that's the right call for his community
• How "you learn to fight so you never have to fight" shapes everything about how he teaches
• Why he chose Gymdesk from day one, and what changed when Gracie University HQ standardized on the platform across all locations
• His take on jiu-jitsu as a kind of moving meditation, and why that resonates so strongly with adult students juggling jobs and family

If you've ever debated whether to build your gym around competitors or around your actual community, this one will get you thinking.

Gracie University Amsterdam has been operating in the Netherlands for several years and is one of Gracie University's certified training centers worldwide. Adrian trained under James Smart in Cape Town before relocating to Amsterdam.