Christian Graugart is originally from Copenhagen, Denmark but has lived in St. Barthelemy (French West Indies) since 2016. He is best known for running the BJJ Globetrotters camps that are hosted internationally throughout the year and feature seminars from various BJJ experts. On his entry into the art he says “I never really signed up for a BJJ club, since there wasn’t any, but I believe we started headlocking each other while wearing socks sometime in the summer of 2000. I had been doing Taekwondo for most of my childhood, then as a teenager, I found a small Jeet Kune Do club. On day one, we practiced clinch and takedowns and I was STUNNED. Grabbing each other just didn’t exist in my world, I had never even considered that was something you could do in training. I was immediately hooked and have never lost interest since.” Since then, he achieved a BJJ black belt aged 30.
Q&A
What is your worst injury to date?
“Herniated disc in my lower back from a deadlift PR attempt in 2006. I still have occasional pain in my butt and leg to this day, and I’ve had to rethink everything I do on and off the mats. Be careful with your back out there, don’t lift too heavy and don’t play too much inverted guard!”
Who is the most influential grappler on your own personal style?
“That is tough to say. I’m from an older generation of Jiu Jitsu and was very influenced by MMA and grappling styles of the early 2000s. Especially the time of Pride FC was hugely influential on our training. Many of the Japanese stars from back then were a big inspiration to me; Genki Sudo, Sakuraba, etc. but also Fedor, Nogueira brothers, Dan Henderson, Renzo Gracie. It was amazing to watch them back then. Jiu Jitsu wise, Chris Haueter and Marcelo Garcia influenced me a lot. I’ve always aimed for a wide range of grappling skills with focus on clinch, wrestling, strikes, walls/obstacles. I guess that comes from “growing up” in a time where IBJJF style competition wasn’t really established and we just competed and trained in anything we could get our hands on.”
Who is the funniest/crazy/most interesting person who you have done a globetrotters seminar with?
“That’s hard to say, I think all the instructors are interesting in their own way, [I] can’t really pick one out.”
What made you want to write the book BJJ Globetrotter? Did you decide to travel first and then write the book? Or did you always have the book in the back of your mind?
“When I started planning that trip around the world, someone suggested I should write a book about it or at least some articles, but I dismissed the idea since I had no experience with writing and to do a book sounded crazy. But then as I was on the road, I felt like I might have a story to tell, so I started taking notes and when I got back home I realized that I definitely had material to make a book out of it. Spent the next year on my couch writing and the rest is history.”
You are a successful businessman and I will assume you made a decent amount of money from BJJ despite not being a top competitor. Do you think some of the guys need to market themselves better and find a niche? I have seen quite a lot of good grapplers go relatively unnoticed because they do not market things properly.
“I don’t know, I don’t think I’m in a position to give anyone business advice. Being a good grappler has no connection with being good at business, so I guess it’s more a matter of the person than anything else. You don’t have to make money off of something, just because you’re good at it. Personally, I’m just happy I managed to get to a point where doing what I love—traveling and training—can pay the bills.”
Have you always been involved in business and intended [your life] to be this way when you first started traveling and doing BJJ in other countries, or is it more of an evolution of your character? I ask because I have seen a lot of guys with long hair /surfer lifestyle who come into the gym from another country and then leave to somewhere else next week, they do a similar thing to what you did, but they didn’t write a book or make globetrotters camps.
“I think it’s more of who I am. I have always enjoyed creating things, making things happen. Some of them happened to turn into businesses, many of them didn’t. I just like to create my own reality, I don’t have time to sit back and hope that great experiences and friendships just drop in my lap out of the blue. So I always try to push to create things and projects. Around the world trip, book, BJJ Globetrotters, academies, it’s all kind of natural for me to do and it is never done with the intention of trying to make money off of things. Hair length shouldn’t play any role haha.”
Could you say why you were kicked out of IBJJF? Was this a “politically” motivated decision? I can understand maybe you are technically not an academy, but I thought there are probably bigger problems in the world than to kick out Globetrotters [from IBJJF]?
“I am honestly not really sure. Our guys who signed competition forms for members of our affiliation hadn’t always directly trained with them, but that’s really the case with all affiliations. We checked and double-checked all ranks that we signed for, which is more than most affiliations ever will. Maybe it has something to do with Beltchecker.com, a project of mine that is kind of challenging the traditional way of belt certification that IBJJF has made a huge business out of. Regardless, they’re not communicating a lot, so who knows what their reasoning is. They’re a for-profit, private company and can do whatever they want. I’m just sad on behalf of our many competitors that they now have to go through all the hassle of finding someone in the hierarchy to sign for them. But anyway, it’s not really a huge deal, there are tons of other competitions out there.”
Lastly, I think for younger people your story is quite an inspiration. You have more or less done exactly what a lot of people want to do with their lives and made a financial success of your passion. What separates you from other people if you think about this? Was starting BJJ globetrotters a big struggle at the start or was it easy due to the popularity of the blog/book?
“It’s hard to say, I have always been someone who has created a lot of things. Most of them have failed and some just randomly didn’t fail and became careers for me. It has never been a struggle, I always just go with the flow. BJJ Globetrotters was never planned to be a business, I didn’t sit down 8 years ago and make a business plan or had this vision about doing camps and such. It just kind of naturally evolved and I stand aside and feed it a bit of work here and there. If a side effect of a project is that it can pay some bills, then that’s great. But mostly, I do it because it provides me with friendships, experiences and opportunities.”
You can find more about Globetrotters here and get Graugart’s Globetrotting book here
