Private Lessons with Chad "The Beast" Hardy

Tony, Chad and me after some great training!

A couple weeks ago I took an overdue trip to visit and train with my Jiu-Jitsu step brother Tony Clemente at his new home school of Derby City MMA

One of the coolest parts of the trip was getting not one, but four private lessons in with Chad "The Beast" Hardy! I used to do private lessons in KyuKi-Do all the time, but in my years of training JiuJitsu, either time or finances had never lined up for opportunity until then.

As it was our first time meeting, that first session was mostly a getting to know each other one. Chad talked with me in depth about my background, the style of grappling and game I like to play, as well as positional and submission preferences. We also went over a number of techniques that included the "Monoplata," a subtle, but devastating submission off of a triangle that you don't want to find yourself caught in.

Post training with some of Derby City's Black Belts!

It was a great training session, and I walked away incredibly impressed with Chad's technical knowledge and teaching ability. One of the things that I immediately about learning from Chad is that he is also a lanky guy like me. That meant we got to spend a lot of time focusing on utilizing long limbs to either entangle or create distance as a situation called for.

 After I had found out that it was pretty much a sky's limit on what I could ask and work on, that of course meant that I spent the entirety of that night coming up with a million and one different questions to ask the next day, which is exactly what happened!

One of the biggest things that we worked on the next three days was tweaking my game to better work around my knee injury. I currently have a pretty jacked up knee which requires a lot of modification on techniques. Chad had gone through the same thing a while back and was able to give me a TON of insight on how to work around it, covering everything from take-downs to adapting the mount position.

Attacking a triangle during a roll later in class

The second thing that we spent the most time on was triangles. The triangle is one of the most iconic submissions in JiuJitsu and its something that, well, I kinda suck at. Chad has some phenomenal triangle attacks and setups, and he refused to accept my excuses for why I'm not good at them myself. We did a deep dive on the submission together. Starting out from a conceptual approach that really changed the way I thought about the submission, we then went into entries, cleaned up the attack itself, countering defenses and alternative options besides just doing the choke itself. This particular area that we covered has made the most noticeable difference in my game from our training sessions. Over the past couple weeks I've gone from avoiding the submission, to catching one at least once every class since!

In addition to all of that, we went over pretty much everything on my game. Chad and I would roll, or he would observe me roll and then we'd discuss areas that he saw that could be tweaked or  modified to make them more efficient and cleaner. Back-takes, knee-shields from half-guard, toe-holds, heel-hooks, guard passing, transitioning from side control to the back position. Pretty much as quickly as my brain could take in new information, Chad was giving me guidance on improvement.

Overall I walked away from that week ecstatic! I had so many new things to work on and areas to improve upon. I really felt as though my JiuJitsu game made some big leaps in progress. I'm still on week 2, but I have already seen a lot of results on the things that we had worked on. I can't say enough good things about Chad and the private lessons that he offers. If you ever get a chance to work with him I would highly recommend that you take advantage of the opportunity. Show up with a ton of questions and a hunger to learn and you won't be dissapointed!

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He trains out of Cornerstone BJJ in Fayetteville, NC. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combative tournaments.