Meet Stan White lll
From Debilitating Muscular Autoimmune Disease to A Black Belt
My Journey
I am Stan White owner of Midsouth LCCT. Like most people, I was drawn to martial arts for the typical reasons; a friend wanted me to go to class with them.
This was true in my case as well. It was back in 1992 and a friend did not want to try a class out by himself. He pestered me for weeks to try a class with him until I finally caved in and tried karate out for the first time. I always was the skinny nerdy kid in school who never played sports, and was certainly not athletically inclined, but in a strange turn of events, I loved it. My friend dropped out after the first few weeks, and I remained enthralled and went on to receive my black belt in Shotokan karate in 1996. I continued to practice karate and dabbled in judo until 1999 when I was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune muscle disorder called Polymyositis.
The long and short of it was that my immune system malfunctioned and believed that my muscles were foreign infections and began to relentlessly attack them to eliminate the threat from my body. I dropped from a very fit 190lbs to 135lbs when they admitted me to the hospital. I could not raise my arms over my head. I became so weak I could not stand up, lift a glass of water off the table, or get up out of bed, or even get up off the toilet without assistance. My legs were so weak that if I bent my knees, I would immediately fall, as my muscles were not strong enough to hold my body weight standing, even at a mere 135 lbs. I was not sure I was going to live, much less ever do martial arts again.
After about 10 months of massive doses of prednisone, methotrexate, and gamma globulin infusions, they were able to get it under control enough that my immune system could not attack as quickly. There is no cure, so it will always be a balancing act of medicine vs. function for the rest of my life.
However, after years of steroids, chemotherapy, and blood infusions, my doctor was able to treat it to a point that I began improving. Slowly, but surely, I went from bed ridden to being able to stand without falling. As time went by, I was able to lift a glass of water without using a straw, and finally walk, and move about freely without the assistance of a walker. Although my muscles would never return to 100%, weekly doses of chemotherapy were keeping the condition in check to a degree that I could return to some measure of normal activity.
10-Year upward battle
In 2009, after 10 grueling years of slow improvement, and constant weekly chemo treatments, I asked my doctor if I could try to return to martial arts. His response was to do what I could, but that I would never be strong enough to break boards or spar with any degree of success. However, the movement and stretching would be good for my muscles, and I should do what I felt I was able to do, but to understand that I would always have some limitations. One such limitation that still plagues me to this day is the inability to run. I can walk at a good clip, but the legs will just not move me any faster than a slow jog.
Why Jiu Jitsu?
I contacted my karate instructor about trying out class again in a limited capacity, and he suggested that I investigate training Jiu Jitsu instead of Karate due to my physical limitations. He indicated that Jiu Jitsu used more leverage and technique than strength, which gave the smaller weaker opponent a chance against the larger more athletic ones. I was very skeptical at first, but it sounded like something that I could at least give a shot, so I signed up.
My New World
It was a quite different world. My karate experience, much to my disappointment gave me absolutely no advantage. I was thrown, crushed, smothered, choked, and every moveable joint in my body was contorted to positions which they were not meant to move. It was incredible!
Then finally it happens. A brand-new person signed up. They had no previous martial arts or wrestling experience, they were bigger and stronger than me, but when we rolled… I beat them. Not by a large margin, but I did win. I was learning, but it was hard to tell because my training partners were learning at the same rate.
Moving on
For the next 3 years, I felt like I was getting better. Honestly, I really wasn’t getting that much better, but because there were only 2 or 3 upper belts left at our school, it felt better because I could do well against the vast majority of newer people starting up, and the upper ones, well, I knew I couldn’t beat them anyway. When I rolled with them, I just started becoming more comfortable with being crushed and not being able to get out. On the one hand, it sucked, on the other hand, it did not stress me out anymore being on the bottom. I started learning to defend against attacks and lasting longer even though I could not escape. I had two close friends that I got together with on Wednesday nights to train with, Jason and Ernesto. Together we practiced moves, figured out all the, “What if’s” and just generally worked well together. Life was good and we were having a great time. Ernesto moved away to Nebraska because of work and Jason ended up quitting Jiu Jitsu all together, which left me with really only one or two people in the gym that I had started with who was still training…
A year and 3 months from when I started, I received my blue belt from UFC legend, Royce Gracie. I did not really understand what all was required of me, but I was pumped! Monday morning I was going to come back in with my shiny new belt and I was going to beat up all the white belts and some of the blue belts and they were going to know I was legit. I took 10,000 pictures with it like it was a newborn baby just put into my arms. I felt that I am now “a man”! Well, that was not the case. That pretty piece of blue material did not make me any better than I was the day before. It just put a bigger target on my back. I still got crushed and contorted for the next 3 years, but I was having fun, and enjoying the fact that I could even walk out on the mat.
A friend of mine that trained with me, moved to Chicago for work; however, his family lived here in Memphis. About 6 months after moving, he returned to Memphis to visit and came to the gym. He and I used to be reasonably even when we sparred. I would get him some, he would catch me some, but when he came back this time, he mopped the floor with me. I asked him what in the world he had done to improve his Jiu Jitsu so much in a mere 6 months. Turns out he had met a Rickson Gracie black belt name Luiz Claudio. He told me that I really needed to come up to Chicago and meet him. So that Thanksgiving shortly after receiving my purple belt, I did. Luiz Claudio Augusto, 3x World Champion, was a Brazilian man no bigger than my wife. Maybe 145lbs soaking wet in a GI, and perhaps 5’4″ tall. He was very friendly, and unintimidating. I thought to myself, “He’s a black belt, he’ll be rather good, but he’s little, I’ll have a decent chance, WRONG! He tapped me about 30 times in 6 minutes without even breaking a sweat. Even his lower ranked students wore me out. I knew right then and there that this was the Jiu Jitsu I needed to learn. We worked out the details of becoming affiliated so I could be his student, and my new journey began.
Luiz kindly came down from Chicago and trained with me in the garage for the weekend… now that is a commitment to your student right there! A 4th degree Rickson Gracie black belt and 3x world champion, in my garage, training me… how cool is that?
By the time July of 2015 came to be, we had about 10 people training in my little 256 sq ft garage in 95-degree heat in the summer and 20 degrees cold in the winter. At the time we found it to be somewhat miserable; however, now I look back at it very fondly. Those were great times! Life was simple, fun, and we were learning like a new white belt again! And we basically were. I had taken off my purple belt and started over from the beginning again. By December of 2014, I had retested for my blue under Luiz’s program and was well on my way to getting back to purple again. Life was good!
Midsouth LCCT Goes Official!
My friend that started training with us in the garage was itching to get a real training facility. We started talking things over and arrived on the idea of opening something about 30 minutes north of Memphis in the town of Atoka, TN so it wouldn’t be close enough to compete with the old school. He would teach two days a week, and I would teach two days a week, and we would cover for each other when the other one was out for one reason or another. We would split the expense and profit 50/50. We discussed with our wives and at least in the beginning, they indicated they were on board with the idea. We started looking around for a place to rent, and boy was it expensive! Plus we’d have to get mats and countless other things. Neither of us really wanted to have to take out a loan to do any of this, as we were very small with no prospect of growing to the size we’d need to be anytime in the near future. This was rather disheartening, to say the least. On top of that, neither of us had a clue how to start a new business, or even where to begin to ask someone what to do. It was a daunting thought. At the time, the only bill we had was the affiliation fee which we split between us and then made up with the few people we had training in the garage. Now we were going to need to add rent, utilities, supplies, mats, insurance, etc… with no students to offset the cost to speak of.
Why Would Anyone Want to Train under Us?
Let me start by saying, “Staring up your own Jiu Jitsu business before the black belt is extremely challenging…”. There are many things that you must navigate and address. Especially when you voluntarily started over at white belt and are wearing a blue belt at the time you start things. In hindsight, it would probably have been easier to wait until we caught back up to purple where we were before trying to launch officially, but we would have also missed numerous opportunities which helped make life easier as well, so it is kind of what you make of it.
Honestly, I feel like the bottom line was this: The instructor(s) must have enough knowledge to be able to provide quality instruction to their students. They must have an innate ability to convey that information in such a way that people can understand complicated techniques and concepts easily. The instructor should be able to apply those techniques within a live rolling session and demonstrate that they work properly (notice I didn’t mention that you need to win every match). The instructor needs to have a passion for teaching, and a love for the sport, that radiates and inspires his students to grow. If you have those four things, and stick to the principals of teaching good jiu jitsu, and not try to be greedy, things will work. The biggest advantage that I think we have, honestly, is that I love Jiu Jitsu and want to pass on what I know. I have this business so that I can do this and further my own Jiu Jitsu knowledge as well, not to make a living for my family… as such, I am not tempted to sacrifice quality for large numbers of students in order to feed my family.
To add to the above, we also have an amazing head instructor who comes down 3 to 4 times a year to do seminars, and also has free instructor seminars for all the coaches in his affiliation once a year. Most famous instructors only make it down once a year if you are very lucky. In addition, he has a great curriculum-based program so it was clear what you needed to learn each step of the way and there is a clear testing procedure for each belt to take the subjective ranking out of the picture which is a source of hard feelings at some gyms. Stacked on top of that we decided not to enact long-term contracts at our gym. No wheeling and dealing to try to get you to sign a year-long or 3-year long contract that would cost you half of your life savings if you decided to stop.
We decided we wanted people training that wanted to be there, not that we’re trapped into a contract. We just bill month to month. This was painful as far as budgeting and business management, but we felt it was a better way to get people to try the art if they had little to lose. All we asked is that a month’s notice is given if a student decides to quit so that we would have 31 days to adjust when people left suddenly. Our final decision was to enact an open policy with all gyms and our students. If you wanted to go to a seminar, open mat, or try another gym, we would be okay with that. We would not get bent out of shape and have hard feelings, call you a traitor, or any of the other problematic behaviors we’d seen in other gyms that stifle the growth of Jiu Jitsu. Again, we wanted people with us that wanted to be there, not that were forced to be there either via contract or fear of being kicked out of the gym.
Today, I continue to train 4 to 5 times a week. Martial Arts, particularly Jiu Jitsu, has had an incredible impact on my life for the better. I have learned to push forward when things are at their worse. I have learned that one can be successful without being the most genetically blessed person in the room, and the camaraderie and community is second to none. I would not trade or give up my martial arts journey for all the money in the world.
