About Our Gym

Welcome to Pride Lands MMA Academy

Established in 2009 by Jason Ratchford, Pride Lands began as a dedicated Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) academy. BJJ is a martial art that focuses on grappling and ground fighting, emphasizing the skill of controlling an opponent through various submission techniques. Rooted in the tradition of Judo, practitioners often wear a gi, which facilitates unique submissions that utilize clothing grips and ranked belts. While we continue to offer Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes, Pride Lands has evolved to incorporate American Jiu-Jitsu (AJJ), reflecting the recent rise of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

What is American Jiu-Jitsu?

American Jiu-Jitsu shares the same foundational techniques and objectives as BJJ but adapts to modern trends by focusing on submissions without the gi, allowing students to train in typical athleisure wear. At Pride Lands, we recognize the value of both Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and American Jiu-Jitsu as combat-tested self-defense systems designed to empower individuals, regardless of size, to defend against larger opponents.

Our program promotes lifelong lessons in personal discipline, self-confidence, and significant improvements in both physical and mental health.

Comprehensive Martial Arts Training

Over the years, Pride Lands has expanded its offerings to include striking disciplines such as boxing and kickboxing, which shares similarities with Muay Thai. This diverse curriculum caters to a wide range of goals—from those aspiring to fight professionally to individuals simply seeking to improve their fitness levels. As a result, our academy has embraced the branding of “Pride Lands MMA,” while maintaining our core focus on Jiu-Jitsu.

An Inclusive Environment

At Pride Lands, we strive to foster an inclusive environment for participants of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels. Whether you’re looking to get in shape, compete in formal competitions, cultivate discipline, or relieve stress after a long day, our academy offers men, women, and children the opportunity to learn valuable skills while building lasting relationships with instructors and fellow students.

An art is born

Jiu-Jitsu constitutes the natural defense the weak person disposes of against the strong person. It is a sort of leveling process through which brute force, confronted and dominated by the wise application of rational mechanics, is led to admitting that the human being, usually taken as a body endowed with a soul, should actually be deemed a soul that happens to reside in a body. This, however, no matter what our philosophical or religious orientation is, must never mean disregard or lack of attention towards the body we use in this world. We don’t understand, really, how, in order to reach wisdom, love, or in order to adore and serve God, respecting His laws, it can be necessary or possible to harm one of His most beautiful and perfect creatures.

If it is true that the disharmony in our thoughts and feelings can generate physical harm, it is no less true that the care we take with our body reflects not only on that body but also on the mental health we all need to achieve a harmonious, happy life.

Of course, one doesn’t need special abilities to master certain resources of Jiu-Jitsu, which allow us to defend efficiently. Let us not forget, notwithstanding, that, no matter what we look forward to, we will always have better chances of reaching it if we use our greatest spiritual and physical possibilities. Jiu-Jitsu, which cannot escape that peremptory rule, is nothing but its application in self-defense. Being, further, a sport, and indeed one of the most complete, how could it possibly turn its back on physical preparation?

Without health, in its whole meaning, there can be no complete happiness. Very often, however, instead of studying the laws we must respect in order to avoid diseases, we are more concerned about what is the proper medicine or process for repairing the consequences of our ignorance or conscious infractions.

It is illogical for man, who is the most perfect being to inhabit Earth, to have a shorter life than that of other animals. We are among those who fiercely believe we should live more than any irrational being. Therefore, if we compare the current average duration of the human life to that of the parrot’s, we don’t understand why, when one of us decides to live a hundred years, it is something so extraordinary. Imagine if, like any elephant or turtle, one of us happened to live until the age of two hundred!

However, as we see it, all that would be very normal if, throughout generations, with strange perseverance, we hadn’t been driving away from the natural laws.

Among other explanations, for instance, is nutrition. What do we really know about how, when, how much and what to eat in harmony with natural laws?

But let us stop here before, my dear reader, your tolerance goes away completely and you, with justifiable irony, ask: “And, by the way, what about Jiu-Jitsu?”

You are partially right. Due to the fact that it is, however, a difficult – if not impossible – task, in its amplitude, we won’t neglect our duty of warning you that wishing to know, exclusively by means of reading, the secrets of this traditional art of defense and attack is as efficient as studying singing by mail.

To you, friend and reader, my sincere thanks, and we’ll see each other again. If I didn’t succeed in pleasing you, at least I hope I didn’t totally disappoint you.

– Carlos Gracie
Founder of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu