STORY
Los Angeles
Before finding Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Aaron explored a range of martial arts, including judo, boxing, kickboxing, kung fu, kendo, and Filipino martial arts. In 2000, he began training under Rey Diogo. He soon found himself competing regularly, and what had begun as an interest in martial arts became a serious commitment to training.
Rey’s small academy was a close-knit community. Training often continued after class, with students gathering for dinner and spending time together away from the mat. Aaron saw in Rey both a deep love for jiu jitsu and a lasting devotion to his own teacher, Carlson Gracie Sr., who was a frequent presence during those early years. Aaron was fortunate to know Carlson and learn from him during that time.
The experience showed him how much a practice could grow beyond the activity itself. Competition demanded commitment and discipline; the bonds among teammates gave that commitment a place to belong. Jiu jitsu was becoming not just something to learn, but something to build a life around.
New York
In 2005, Aaron moved to New York, initially intending to pursue graduate study in philosophy. Instead, he devoted himself to training at Renzo Gracie Academy, where he learned from John Danaher and trained alongside an extraordinary group of practitioners.
The Blue Basement, as the training room became known, brought together people pursuing jiu jitsu at the highest levels. Aaron trained with world champions, UFC champions, and Olympic judoka, and earned his black belt from Danaher in 2008. Danaher would go on to become widely recognized as one of the sport’s leading coaches, developing competitors who helped shape modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Those years exposed Aaron to a different scale and intensity of practice. Training alongside people with such demanding goals made the sacrifices behind high-level performance impossible to overlook. It also offered a remarkable environment for technical exploration. Aaron developed a reputation among his teammates for creativity, finding unusual connections and possibilities within the art.
The experience deepened both his technical understanding and his appreciation for the many ways people can pursue jiu jitsu, from dedicated study to the demands of elite competition.
Workshop Jiu Jitsu
While training in New York, Aaron also taught at a small jiu jitsu school in Lower Manhattan. Teaching gave him a place to work out his own ideas, distinct from the demanding environment of the Blue Basement.
As the years passed, Aaron and his longtime friend and training partner Jin Yung gave the school a new identity: Workshop Jiu Jitsu. The name reflected an idea they shared about how an art is learned and developed.
They found inspiration in the philosopher Will Durant's observation that science begins as philosophy and ends as art. Technical study begins with questions: what works, why it works, and what a particular practitioner is trying to achieve. Through practice, those questions are tested against experience. Techniques are refined, adapted, and eventually made one's own.
The process does not simply lead from wrong to right, or from bad to good. Different questions and different aims can produce different solutions. As understanding deepens, technical ability can become something more personal: an individual style, expressed with judgment, timing, and creativity.
Workshop gave a name to that relationship between study and expression. The goal was not to prescribe a single way to practice, but to give students the understanding and tools to develop their own.
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Renzo Gracie Portland
Renzo Gracie Academy Portland opened in 2013. Aaron brought to Portland years of training and teaching in New York, along with an approach to jiu jitsu shaped by the people he had learned from and the questions he had worked through as a teacher.
The academy carries the Renzo Gracie name and the lineage behind it. But a tradition is more than a name passed from one generation to the next. It lives in the way people train, in what instructors choose to teach, and in what students do with what they learn.
From the beginning, the aim has been to take the art seriously without prescribing a single reason to practice it. Competition is one path; so are the pursuit of technical understanding, the challenge of training with others, and the satisfaction of continuing to learn. The goal is to teach jiu jitsu in a way that leaves room for each person to find what they want from it. Over time, practice can become something more than technical ability: a form of aesthetic expression, a way of understanding oneself, and a means of engaging with the world. This is an old vision of the martial arts, in which training is not only preparation for a particular contest or task, but a lifelong discipline with its own rewards.
Workshop describes the approach behind that work: learn from what has been passed down, test it through practice, and develop an understanding that is genuinely your own. It is not a departure from tradition, but one way of carrying it forward.
The academy continues to be shaped by the people who train here. Each brings different experience and ambitions to the mat, and each contributes to the practice we share. The best way to understand what that means is to spend some time here.
Every academy inherits something. Teachers inherit ideas from their teachers. Students inherit them in turn, adding something of their own before passing them along again. Over time, those ideas travel farther than any individual ever could.
This story begins long before there was an academy in Portland. It is a story of teachers, friendships, places, and a gradual change in what martial arts came to mean.
The academy you see today is the result of that journey.
Workshop – Portland / RGA PDX was founded in 2013. Since opening, we have attracted some of the most talented local athletes and instructors as well as being the home of the Portland Fire grappling team. We pride ourselves on maintaining the finest instruction available and in fostering a school culture where everyone can develop towards their own personal goals, whether that is high level competition, recreation, self-defense, or general fitness.