Before he had a gym of his own, Marcos Flecha slept on the mats at Carlson Gracie's academy in Rio—for over a year.

In this episode, Alex sits down with Marcos, owner of Carlson Gracie Amsterdam, who trained directly under Carlson Gracie and was one of the last black belts Gracie personally promoted before his passing. Marcos spent nine years as a blue belt under Carlson's notoriously strict promotion system, lived without a home of his own at the academy, and eventually built a life and a gym thousands of miles from where he started.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• What it actually took to train under Carlson Gracie — including nine years at blue belt because the weight class above him was full
• Sleeping on the academy mats, cleaning them every morning, and what that year taught him before he ever opened his own door
• How a chance trip to Germany turned into 25 years of building Jiu-Jitsu in Amsterdam from scratch — starting with a single mat laid out in a public park
• The role Carlson Gracie played in opening up Jiu-Jitsu to the world, and what it means to be one of his last black belts
• His path from a park mat, to a borrowed Capoeira space, to a university sports center, to finally opening his own academy
• Why he made the switch to Gymdesk after struggling with per-check-in pricing on his old software

If you've ever wondered what real lineage and patience looks like in this sport, don't sleep on this one.

Carlson Gracie Amsterdam has been training students in the Netherlands for over two decades. Marcos Flecha received his black belt directly from Carlson Gracie in 1997.