Joe Taylor
BJJ BROWN Belt
Instructor
Coach Joe’s Qualifications:
Joe Taylor is an IBJJF Houston Open Champion and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Brown Belt under World Champion Professor Chance Norman through the Gracie Humaita lineage. Coach Joe holds multiple certifications and licenses, including a Royler Gracie Self-Defense Instructor certification and Certified Law Enforcement Tactics Instructor (personally awarded by Royler Gracie himself), along with licenses as a Personal Protection Officer, Commissioned/Armed Security Officer, Non-Commissioned Security Officer, and Private Investigator/Fugitive Recovery agent.
In addition to his credentials in security and personal protection, he brings extensive experience to the sport sector as a SafeSport-certified coach, and an IBJJF-certified referee. He has been interested in martial arts since he was a child and began his coaching career assisting with coaching kids and Jiu-Jitsu for the Gracie Humaita Conroe kids program where he quickly advanced into a leadership role and was honored with a head coaching position in this respected lineage.
With a coaching style that places a heavy emphasis on technique, character development, and simply doing the right thing, he puts all of his efforts into teaching his students how to train the techniques correctly and safely, while instilling the toughness, compassion, and respect Jiu-Jitsu has taught him. Joe has competed at various levels and has gold medals of his own, but more importantly, he has successfully coached many students of all ages toward gold, silver, and bronze medals, which he finds to be far more rewarding.
Get To Know Joe
I will become a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt. My current goal, however, is to help create and be a part of a gym with a culture that my family and the gym members can be proud of. A place filled with a technical ability true to our lineage and applied by warriors, but also a place where a person can escape if they need to, grow if they need to, or simply just drop in and say “Hi” if they feel the need for that as well.
The limitations of the body, time, and recovery. I would train 25/8 if I could, but alas, Father Time is undefeated. I love Jiu-Jitsu enough to run myself into the ground doing it; thus making diet, recovery, and strategic and targeted training all keys to my longevity.
To be honest, at this point, without the medicine of Jiu-Jitsu, I’m not really sure where I would be or what I would be doing. All I know is that now that I’ve found it, and my family has found it, whatever our future holds is going to be better than it ever would have been without it.
My Daughter, Emmalee. Once I exposed her to Jiu-Jitsu and saw the natural love and talent she had for it, I knew I had to become the best I could possibly be; not only for myself, but so I could ensure that I was truly able to help her be the best that she could possibly be. I often tell Emmalee about how the mat is a place where truths are told. I teach her about her investment in Jiu-Jitsu. I teach her that if she devotes herself to Jiu-Jitsu via her time, effort, and attention, Jiu-Jitsu will make her smarter, stronger, safer, healthier, tougher, wiser, more humble, more confident, and just the right amount of dangerous mixed with restraint and compassion. My daughter is what inspires me, so I do everything I can to inspire her.
For me, it has changed an entire family lineage. I have played sports my entire life and trained other martial arts here and there. I have been fighting for most of my life, in one way or another, and have never found anything quite like Jiu-Jitsu. My daughter, grandchildren, their children, and so on and so forth, will all be different because of Jiu-Jitsu. My daughter will never know the life I did. I pray her time is spent training rather than getting into trouble which can happen to kids who don’t have something they love that drives them in the way Jiu-Jitsu can. I pray she looks back fondly on her father as being the first Taylor black belt. I pray she trains full of pride and soaked in joy, and I pray it gives her the pieces of herself I never really had until I found Jiu-Jitsu.
Most of my life is in the gym. However, when I am outside of the gym, I like to think of myself as a bit of an entrepreneur as I’ve enjoyed owning and growing multiple successful businesses. I also love studying philosophy or theology. Further, I grew up outdoors, so I love fishing, stalk hunting, and anything that involves the solitude of sitting alone in the woods; and of course, studying jiu-jitsu and combat sports in general!
