Cody Wood

Early Life

​

Cody Wood is a lifetime athlete having competed in every sport from typical "ball" sports such as football, basketball, soccer; to running the 400 and pole vaulting in track; to actively skateboarding during free time.  Cody grew up with a Half-Pipe in his backyard and was always skating or doing something active when able. 

 

Becoming passionate about fitness throughout college, Cody worked a number of fitness related day jobs in multiple gyms. After finishing college around the age of 22 years old Cody stopped by at a local boxing gym to try a class and instantly become obsessed with combat sports. Around the same time Cody received his Personal Training Certification through NASM Cody quickly became a Personal Trainer at a larger fitness gym. Cody then split his time between personal training clients and training a variety of combat sports consisting of boxing, muay thai, and jiu jitsu. Eventually Cody began teaching conditioning classes at the boxing gym as well.

 

After a several years of training a little of everything Cody began obsessing more and more over one particular martial art, jiu jitsu. As Cody started to dive farther and farther down the rabbit hole of vast knowledge jiu jitsu consists of, he began to put down everything else to make more time for the art.

​

History Of Instructors and Affiliations

​

Cody's first experience with jiu jitsu started out slow. Originally interested in striking he started looking at grappling more and more as mma became more of an interest. His first instructor taught a single grappling gi jiu jitsu class every Saturday out of his boxing gym. Cody along with two other consistent students were his instructor's only students for approximately six months. Having become pretty efficient in striking Cody went into his first class arrogant and cocky but was quickly humbled. In striking, if someone is reasonably quick and athletic they can usually land some shots on other amateur opponents without needing much technique. He found this is not the case for jiu jitsu. When rolling (sparring) against an opponent who's had significantly more mat time it is just about impossible to get anything going in your favor. This definitely brought on a new humbling perspective.

 

Initially jiu jitsu was not the priority. There were even Saturdays where Cody would be at the boxing gym while the jiu jitsu class was running and he would decide to lift weights instead of attend the class. It wasn't until Cody had built a friendly rivalry with one of the other students that he made it a priority to not miss anymore classes. Being of a competitive mindset he refused to let his rival get better than him on the mats.

​

After awhile Cody and his teammates began cross-training between their original instructor and another local brown belt under Relson Gracie in order to attend more classes. Not long before receiving his blue belt Cody's original instructor decided to take time away from the mats and teaching for family reasons. Cody and his teammates began training full time under their new Relson Gracie brown belt instructor afterwards.

​

Cody, training solely in the gi, trained under the Relson Gracie Banner until getting his third stripe on his blue belt. One day, everyone showed up to class to train on a regular week day and their instructor never showed. Everyone made attempts for weeks to call and contact the instructor but he had decided to take a hiatus from the world with no explanation. This forced Cody and his blue belt teammates to begin running classes. At this time one of the more experienced blue belts on the team, who happened to have a black belt as their dad, began introducing everyone to the no-gi and leglock portions of jiu jitsu.

​

Almost having transitioned fully to no-gi at this point Cody and his longest training partner and "rival" previously mentioned, Nick Mazz, began traveling to explore an idea for a documentary series called Jiu Jitsu Gypsies (Different from the ladies jiu jitsu community also named Jiu Jitsu Gypsies).  During their first episode in North Carolina, Cody and Nick trained intensively with a black belt named Jeff Cope, where Cody received his 4th stripe on his Blue Belt before taking off the gi forever. Cody and Nick completed two documentary episodes out of North Carolina and Florida before they separated ways in search of their next path in their jiu jitsu journey.

​

Nick moved out to Florida to briefly train with Corey Brown at Black Tie Jiu Jitsu before relocating to North Carolina to train under John Salter at Salty Dog Jiu Jitsu. Cody, seeing there was a new 10th Planet gym opening an hour away from him in San Antonio, TX, decided to continue his no-gi specialization full time there under Head Instructor Ant Lopez.

​

Cody began driving an hour to an hour and a half almost every week day to train in the evenings at 10th Planet San Antonio. Eventually realizing this was truly all he wanted to pursue Cody put down all other interests. He leased out his house in Kerrville and then living off the lease money moved in with two other 10th Planet Coaches and another student, which became known as the 10p Cartel house.

​

Cody trained full time which consisted of 2-a-days and 3-a-days for years after that, on top of helping with class instruction. A typical day in Cody's schedule could look like this:

​

7:00AM - Early Morning (Zombie) Jiu Jitsu. (Teaching the Friday AM Leglock Class)

9:00AM - Go home and eat

11:30AM - Lunch Time Jiu Jitsu Class

1:00PM - Go home and eat

3:00PM - Go to the gym and lift

5:00PM - Assist with Beginner Kids

5:45PM - Assist with Advanced Kids

6:30PM - Attend the Beginner Adult Class

7:30PM - Attend the Advanced Adult Class

*Rinse and Repeat*

​

Cody went to 10th Planet SA as a four stripe blue belt and trained full time and competed for three more years before receiving his purple belt. Cody thought of his time there as being consistent with going to college for a profession. A little while after receiving his purple belt Cody returned back to Kerrville so he could be close with his Fiancee again. Cody started up a day job as a Physical Therapy Tech at a local PT Clinic that allowed him to use their space to roll out mats for a morning and evening jiu jitsu class, before and after regular business hours. After building up enough students and through the help of a student who happened to be skilled Contractor, Cody then built his own jiu jitsu school from the ground up on his property that allowed commerical zoning.

 

Present

​

Cody is still actively competing and has since been running The Woodlands Jiu Jitsu full time as a 10th Planet Brown Belt and a 10PSA affiliate school. Cody has grown and is continuing to grow the most successful grappling team in the Hill Country.

​

​

​

​

​