Professor Thomas
BJJ JOURNEY
Thomas Vander Eecken is from Belgium but speaks fluently French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and speaks aswell Italian and some Dutch
He was interested since a young age in martial arts doing kickboxing and karaté during his childhooh in Brussels.
Later on after watching MMA with Pride/UFC and especially the first UFC for some years, Thomass began his jiu-jitsu journey in 2009 with grappling with the cousin of his best friend.
He then began to train Brazilian Jiu-jitsu consistently for 5x a week almost never stopping, it became an obsession.
While being based in Brussels, Thomas travelled all over Europe and Trained in a lot of European Academies developing his own style.
- His based club is the famous RENAISSANCE,where he trained the most, Renaissance is famous to be an hardcore training paced and is the best club in Belgium , a powerhouse associated with CICERO COSTHA PSLPB where many champions are created (Alan Ciku, Oualid Sbai, Abdel zehknini)
- Lived for four years in Barcelona and trained with the prestigious Aranha Association with former UFC fighter YAN CABRAL
- Lived 1 year in Lisbon and trained with Team ALEXANDER MACHADO (former Gracie Barra Benfica) the most winning team in Portugal
- Lived 2 years in Thailand in Team Quest under BRUNO CARVALHO and others instructors
Thomas does not believe in the out-dated mentality of having a “Master” or the “Guru/Master/Sensei” Vibes, BJJ is a self-empowerement tool, respect, discipline and tradition are still expected but Thomas is a Coach and a teacher (Professor is the only real title in BJJ) in a really friendly environement (except his competition class on friday)
Thomas developed Avant Garde as an hardworking/ hard sparring environement to push every practictionner’s limits but enforces them to interact between each other to get the better vibes possibly !
Thomas is an official black belt under the legendary COBRINHA
EXPERIENCE
- Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu under the famous COBRINHA
- Wrestling experience under Headcoach Dylan Fussel
- Muay Thai experience having lived 2 years in Thailand
- MMA experience
- Karate Background
Video Highlights of Professor Thomas
Thomas trained and did Seminars with the best in the world, here some of them:
- Cobrinha
- Cicero Costha
- Gui Mendes
- Andre Galvao
- Terere
- Josh Hinger
- Mckenzie Dern
- Dean Lister
- Yan Cabral
- Yuri Simoes
- Felipe Costa
- Victor Silveiro,
- Fabricio Martins
