Mark Vives Gon’ Give it To Ya
Vives Gon’ Give it To Ya
Walking into a Sunday competition training at New Breed Training Center, one can expect to experience some blaring DMX, lots of burpees, and plenty of tough Chicago-style training. I have trained with Mark Vives (pronounced VEE-VEZ) many times at his gym New Breed Training Center in Chicago. I have always felt incredibly welcome. Mark is outspoken about his belief that students should be able to train wherever they want, and his intense Sunday afternoon competition classes are notoriously open to anyone who wants to come put in work.
Anyone who has had the opportunity to share the mats with Mark can attest to his firm but fair approach to coaching and live training. He knows when to turn it up and push people to the edge of their comfort zones, and he always takes time to review the rounds, pointing out observations he made, through hands-on coaching. Mark believes firmly in leading his Team from the front, evidenced by the way he attacks his competitions and is always looking for tough matches. This Asian Open and American National champion is also a favorite on the Fight To Win Pro circuit, having competed now on six F2W Pro cards. He always puts on a show, powering up before his matches Super Saiyan style, then unleashing a relentless barrage of submission attacks on his opponents.
Mark’s wit and fire shine through as he shares with us how he grew a team from scratch, advice for making it through a training ‘slump’, his most scarring training moments, and much more.
Name: Mark Vives
Age: 41 (But that Asian gene makes him 24.)
Team: Tac Team
BJJ Tees: Where are you from originally?Mark: I was born in the Philippines, but migrated over to the the US when I was three. I was a nomad with my family for a few months, traveling back and forth around the country, and ended up putting down roots in the Chicagoland area. I Iived in the north burbs until I was 18, moved back to the Philippines for college, and ended up moving back to the US in April of 1999. A few months later, I moved to Delaware in July 1999. I moved back to Chicago in September 2003 and have been here ever since. I have a very "colorful" past that Lifetime should contact me about to make into a movie. I'd like to think it'd be some sort of cross between A Bronx Tale, A Christmas Story, Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift, 300, Good Will Hunting, and Taken.
How long have you been doing BJJ? How did you get involved?I first started training way, way, WAY back, sometime in 1997, in my garage back in the Philippines. My brothers were the ones to get me started in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I am the second eldest of three brothers. Each of us are Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts. My older brother, Michael, received his black belt from Rodrigo Medieros (Carlson/BJJ Revolution) in 2003. My younger brother, Myles, received his from John Ouano in 2005. (I believe those dates are correct).They both started training in the mid/late 90's in Chicago under Carlson Gracie Jr., and were basically using me as a training dummy and beating me silly before I really started training.
How did New Breed Training Center get started?
New Breed Training Center (originally New Breed Academy - Chicago) started in November 2004. It was originally started by my younger brother, Myles. He and I, along with one of my good friends, and someone a lot of the old school Chicago BJJ people may know, Kuan Huang, were training at Carlson Gracie prior to starting New Breed. At the time, my brother was a brown belt under John Ouano and chose to open up a New Breed Academy in Evanston, IL. Kuan and I followed suit. When New Breed first opened, I had literally just received my purple belt, and Kuan was still a white belt. In February 2005, Myles was offered a job opportunity that he couldn't pass up, which required him to move. Before he left, he turned the gym over to me and gave me the option of either closing it down, or trying to run the show. After some deliberation and seeking out some blessings, I decided to keep New Breed going. Kuan and I started running the show, and the rest is history. I was very lucky and literally in the right situations at the right time. I was a brand new Purple belt with zero teaching experience and was VERY lucky with the way things turned out. I honestly don't think I could ever duplicate the way things went again in the current climate of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.In what ways have you seen the gym grow? To what do you attribute this growth?So much has changed since 2004. I was just so lucky. When we first started, it wasn't about making any money or running a school as a business. It was just “let's beat each other silly so we can get better, tougher, and beat other people”. Our first gym was extremely small: non-padded walls, no AC… it was just a war room. Only the strongest survived. Our retention rate was horrible. The funny thing is that no one ever got hurt. While we didn't really have a large team, the bonds we developed in that pit are irreplaceable and have forged a lot of life-long friendships and family bonds. We're older now and a little wiser (or maybe less stubborn). We're able to bring Jiu-Jitsu to a much broader audience, while still showing how we prefer to train, what we like to do, etc. The roots of our team and our team's philosophy are pretty simple: We're a group of friends that came together to train (hard) and get better together.I'm very fortunate to see that a lot of the brothers that started in that room with me have gone on and have been able to open up their own academies and begin leading their respective teams. I can see that philosophy has been shared with them and I hope that it continues to trickle down. It's super important to me that we develop, not just as good Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, but also as good people. I think it's this simple attitude and mindset that has helped our Team grow and accomplish what it has. No BS, no politics, just hard, tough, well-thought out training. When creating a gym and a team, what values are important? How do you create the right atmosphere? I think that the primary focus of creating a successful gym or team is establishing the correct atmosphere. It's tough to create the right atmosphere. Regardless of what your goals are, if you don't show passion for what you're doing and the ability to adapt to the needs of others, while keeping your Team and your integrity, you're going to fail. It's about managing personalities and being able to juggle all the egos. I think that the best values are Perseverance, Commitment, Fairness, and Openness. Perseverance and Commitment usually go hand in hand. It's true: mastery doesn't happen overnight, but improvement does. You need to be committed to improvement, committed to doing what it takes, and understand you will need to persevere through some pretty bleak rough spots in order to really improve. In terms of running a team or academy, I think you need to be willing to just clench your teeth and keep moving forward, especially when adversity sets in. You're going to make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. Just take your lumps, learn from them, and keep going. I think being committed to the Team is huge. If you want to run a school and lead a team, you need to make sure you're committed to the people that are going to show up every day and eventually become the backbone of your team. Fairness and Openness for me go hand and hand as well, especially when running a Team. You can't play favorites. You need to be fair, which isn't always easy, even when we go out of our way to try to be fair. Someone always feels slighted and managing the fallout takes a lot of practice. I will also say that being open to feedback and opinions is very important. If there's one thing I've learned through the years, both in Jiu-Jitsu and in life, it's that you do not, and will not, know everything. Everyone thinks school owners/coaches are omnipotent. We're not. It's like training and learning Jiu-Jitsu. There's always a different way of doing a position, which may or may not be better for you, but learn it anyways. It'll come in handy, and you can pass that knowledge down to someone who will benefit from it. I hope that makes sense.I will share this because I firmly believe in it. The goal of every person in the gym/Team should be to make everyone better than you. Because if you can do that, you will inevitably get better as a result.
You compete a lot, in addition to teaching and running a gym. Is it a challenge to balance these responsibilities?Absolutely. It's a constant challenge. I love to compete, and I love teaching. I love watching the development of the Team and watching the school grow. While the back end/business side can suffer and become more of a "job", I will never look at running the gym or team as a job. I honestly cringe when I see or hear people refer to teaching Jiu-Jitsu or running a gym as going to work or a job. I am grateful that I have some really great people that work with me and also assist me in covering classes and managing the back end, but at the end of the day, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a passion for me. It's something I'm very passionate about and I hope that this shines through and our team sees it. This is clearly a naive way to approach running a team/chool, but I always try to lead from the front and believe in the "If you build it, they will come" approach. I think students are more willing to take after leaders that lead from the front. You've competed at six Fight to Win Pros now. What do you like about these shows? What sets them apart from other tournaments?
I absolutely love what Seth, Missy, and the rest of #Teamnosleep have done with the event. It's a show that features the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's entertaining and, if you think about it, 30 fights in three or four hours, that's a lot of action. They are clearly putting Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu front and center and making the experience a lot of fun. I had one of my students come to me and compare the F2W experience with a competing organization's attempt at a professional Jiu-Jitsu event, and he flat out said that there isn't a comparison. It honestly makes me want to tell these other organizations to stop putting on professional shows. If you can't put on a show like F2W, you're actually doing a disservice to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The common person is going to go to an event with inferior quality, be turned off, and will probably never take the opportunity to attend a F2W event where the experience is completely different. I've had the opportunity to corner on the UFC level multiple times and have to say: the F2W experience is as close as you can get to a UFC-style level of professionalism and presentation, and is clearly going to get better the more they put on shows. I don't think some of the competitors on their shows realize this, but this is pretty much what it feels like to be on a UFC card. Enjoy it. Go for it. Have fun, and kick as much ass as you can!But remember competitors, being on a F2W card does NOT make you a pro fighter. Don't go all Hollywood.
Congratulations on your recent gold at the Asian Open! What do you love about travelling to compete somewhere like the Asian Open?I love traveling, but I really love traveling to the Asian Open mainly because of the plane ride, believe it or not. Nothing like being unplugged from the world for over 12 hours and just focusing. When everyone is sleeping, you're up and going about your business. No one bothers you. I didn't have the opportunity to really enjoy Tokyo, but I hope to see more next year. I've been experiencing more and more of it with each trip. Who are you inspired by?Honestly, there are two main sources of inspiration for me. First and foremost is my Team. I really do everything for them. Their hard work, dedication, and commitment to the Team humbles and inspires me. They remind me that what we do is awesome and it's an honor to share the mat with them every day. The harder they work and the more they achieve, the more it inspires me to achieve more. It might be the uber-competitive personality I have, but when they win, they really energize me to keep winning, improving, and bettering myself. When they lose, it motivates me even more to improve myself so I can improve them. I would say the second is my brothers, or more so, their accomplishments. They were able to really make a splash in the competitive scene before BJJ blew up. During their runs, they both won Pans, American Nationals multiple times, etc. They are both extremely talented and, while I've now been competing longer than they have, they came up with big wins when it mattered. I'm still searching for that elusive Pans title (I have come close a couple of times), and now that World Masters is in play, I probably won't stop until I win or die trying.
Have you ever hit any stretches of your journey where you felt burnt out or like you weren't progressing? If so, how did you get through them?I think it's natural to experience this. BJJ is a long journey. The worst thing to do is to become frustrated. That will lead to just a lot of doubt and questioning yourself, your team, and the art. I think the best thing to remember is that you AREN'T supposed to know everything, and you can always learn from others. Ask questions, interact with your team, bounce off ideas, and challenge what you and your teammates think you may know. That's honestly how we dealt with a lot of plateaus when we first started the team. We didn't have a black belt with us more than 90% of the time so we had to basically teach ourselves and use each other to learn. What advice would you give someone who has hit a losing streak, or is just feeling stagnant?Instead of looking at the overall outcome of your training and competitions, micromanage everything. Make your rolls a game within a game and look at them as a set of mini-games during training. For example: try to make sure no one can pass your guard (that's one game). If they pass, make sure they can't improve their position, and you can recover (that's another). If they improve their position, make sure they can't submit you. If you're getting the better of someone, try to hold a position for "x" amount of time before you go for a submission. If you can win enough "mini-games", you will improve, and will then just need to tie things together. I didn't win anything as a blue belt, but kept working and trying to improve little things. It all paid off fairly well in the end. On last piece of advice: learn to compete and deal with the anxiety as a white and blue belt, maybe even as a purple belt. While winning at those levels is an accomplishment, it's really all practice until you get into the purple/brown/black belt competitive ranks. What are some challenges you have faced along your journey?Life happens, as they say. I had to take about four years off early in my journey for personal reasons, and had to take care of my first child. I had actually quit BJJ all together in 1999. If it wasn't for some drastic life changes and finding BJJ United in Philadelphia, we wouldn't be talking right now. Injuries happen as well. I was involved in a really bad car accident in August of 2008 and that took me out of commission for the rest of the year. My back was so bad that I was kicked out of my own gym by my students so I could just take some time off and heal. I also tore up my knee a few years back. That was a long road back, but I literally attacked rehab like a competition and aggressively rehabbed the hell out of it. What are some of your hobbies?Food, food, and more food. I love eating when I'm not training for something. Other than that, video games and watching movies. Anything really to just take a few hours a day to decompress.What's your favorite food?I'm a closet foodie and love to eat everything. I don't really have a clear cut favorite. You name it, I'll eat it. Pizza (both deep dish and the thin stuff), hot dogs, Popeye's Fried Chicken, kalbi (Korean BBQ), Filipino food, I could go on and on. I will never say no to a good steak.Do you have any embarrassing stories from training?I could write for a bit with this one. There are plenty. There aren't that many embarrassing ones, but I can definitely give you a bunch of funny stories. Here's one that comes to mind that's kind of embarrassing I guess:Years back on a road trip with some of my students, we were discussing who were the top three scariest grapplers that we would never want to roll or compete with. They were throwing out names of the usual suspects: Galvao, Palhares, Lister, etc. When it came around to me, it was real simple:1. Rousimar Palhares- (because I like walking).2. Rustam Chsiev - (because I like not being paralyzed). 3. "Captain Mud Butt" (not his real name).I'm going to change some of the details surrounding Captain Mud Butt, in order to protect him... and me, lol. But here they are:A while back, I went to an open mat at another gym. When I went into the changing room, I saw this individual. We were all talking and shooting the proverbial sh!t before hitting the mats, and he excused himself to go to the restroom (inside the locker room) and, well, go number two. A bunch of us then hit the mats and went about rolling, as you would at any open mat. A few minutes later, the individual in question asked me to roll, to which of course I absolutely said, "yes." The round started, and I immediately pulled guard and proceed to play a little half guard, then dive into deep half. Picture a toy robot with lights and moving parts that you abruptly pull the batteries out of and it dies on you. That's literally what happened. I pulled deep half and pretty much died down there with my face near his crack. The stench just sucked the energy from me. The worst thing was that the round had just started, and I proceeded to get killed because I literally didn't want to roll anymore. Granted, Captain Mud Butt is REALLY good and doesn't need to give me pink eye to kick my butt, but I'm going to say I never want to find out ever again how I stack with him. And the answer is “no”, I did not get pink eye. But yes, I jumped in the shower, and it did look like the scene from The Crying Game.And to anyone who knows the true identity of Captain Mud Butt and squeals, just remember: snitches get stitches.
Is there anything else you want us to know about you?I may walk around with a scowl on my face at tournaments, but I'm actually really approachable. Just don't talk to me when the red headphones are on, lol. Any shout-outs you want to give?Lots of recognition to give. I want to give a shout out to all my sponsors and some of the guys I work with closely who really enable me to keep going and keep helping me improve. BJJ Tees - Thank you for the interview and all of your support throughout the years.Healthkick - Best place for supplements in the Chicagoland Area... PERIOD. Combat Corner - Thank you for making me one of your featured BJJ athletes. Love your EVO Gi's.Zeidman and Associates - Thank you for your guidance and your help through the years.Hydrus Performance ProductsAnalyzeMyBJJ Jack Cambria (IG: FiftyBarbell) and Olin Kreutz - Thank you for making me "Strong like Bull."Our Strength Coach at NBTC, Sam Spiegelman- If you haven't seen him yet, you NEED to. He is the guy that constantly "repairs the armor" and keeps me competing. In the past 10 months, I've competed in 12 tournaments or super fights. None of it would be possible if it wasn't for him and his Muscle Activation Therapy (MAT).A very heartfelt and special thanks to our team here in the Midwest... New Breed Training Center, Chicago School of Grappling, Illinois Grappling Club, True Prodigy Athletics, APEX School of Grappling, Tipping Point Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Breaking Point Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Dubuque Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Evolve Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Thank you for all of your hard work. Thank you for pushing me and each other. I thrive on your energy, your passion, and your commitment. I have and always will compete for you guys. Thank you to the Souza Family and your trust in me to represent your family and the Bonsai Jiu-Jitsu name. To Jiu-Jitsu schools in the Chicagoland Area in the Midwest- I appreciate all of the work that each school does to try to improve Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the region.And lastly, to the rest of my family and friends. Thanks so much for your support.
Hit Mark up if you're in Chicago and need a place to train! (And feel free to use creative license when pronouncing his last name.)
You can follow Mark on Instagram @mvivesbjj .