Tim van der Stek
Tim van der Stek’s Nashville training exchange led into BJJ, while a friendship with Ed Clay grew into European gi distribution.
Biography
Sources for this profile
BJJ Eastern Europe, Tim van der Stek interview, December 8, 2012(opens in a new tab)
Tim van der Stek was born in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
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He began Thai boxing at fifteen under Olaf Bekkers.
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At nineteen, after high school, he moved to Nashville to study.
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At Ed Clay’s gym, a paid job teaching Thai boxing also gave him free access to BJJ training with Luiz Palhares.
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He had initially wanted striking training, but his connection with Clay persuaded him to stay and explore BJJ.
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He competed in BJJ as a white and blue belt and also tried MMA during his time in the United States.
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After college he moved first to Belgium and then to Istanbul, where he continued kickboxing with Birol Topuz.
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Meeting Vidal Erkohen led him from Ninpo Dojo to its sister club, Bujin Fightclub.
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At Bujin he regularly trained BJJ with İbrahim İnal, Vidal Erkohen and Baran Ünal.
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While a blue belt in Turkey, he used Saulo Ribeiro’s Jiu Jitsu Revolution I videos as material to drill with friends.
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He returned home after three years in Turkey and joined Bad Boys Jiu Jitsu in Belgium.
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By December 2012 he was a BJJ black belt and trained under Augusto Ferrari at Bad Boys.
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He described the black belt as an emotional achievement that opened another stage of learning.
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He valued cross-academy training, including visits to Gracie Barra Netherlands, and reviewing competition mistakes with former opponents back in class.
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He described a teaching approach built around straightforward fundamentals rather than flexibility or speed, treating basics as a foundation for later techniques.
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His friendship with Gameness founder Ed Clay developed into a business opportunity when he found the brand’s gis difficult to buy in Europe.
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Importing gis began with his own orders, expanded to friends and teammates, and grew until he committed full-time to European distribution.
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He created Grapplergear as an online Gameness outlet and later described expanding its range into fighters’ strength-and-conditioning equipment.
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When asked about quitting, he encouraged practitioners to identify what had changed and address the specific problem instead of losing sight of what they enjoyed.
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BJJ Eastern Europe, Gameness XT Gi Review, October 10, 2012(opens in a new tab)
An October 2012 Gameness gi reviewer identified van der Stek as the GrapplerGear contact who helped him select the right size.
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Lineage
No teaching connections are shown on this page.
Open lineage