Diversity Training
Meaty & Fook
-Meaty
I took a page from Fookie’s playbook and decided to train at another gym while on vacation.
I went to San Luis Obispo this past weekend, my old college stomping grounds, to get away for a little bit, get some sun, and eat lots of tri-tip. I did a search on-line and found that Paragon had a school in SLO. They were the only purely BJJ gym in town. The other gyms were more MMA based and didn’t really have a dedicated BJJ curriculum. My wife called them as we were driving down to check their schedule and to ask how much the drop in fee would be. They told us to just show up.
I showed up Saturday morning a few minutes before class. They had me sign the standard liability waiver and I was good to go. It was a fairly small class that consisted of a purple belt, two blue belts, two white belts, and me. It is always interesting to see what you do similarly and differently in regards to warm ups and drills. I looked and felt pretty awkward doing a side control to mount to north-south to side control to mount drill. Jon Greene (purple belt) taught us a couple of sweet techniques (attacks from side control) that I will be adding to my arsenal. Watch out!
Note: Chris Lovato (black belt) is their head instructor and teaches all the classes on the weekdays.
The Saturday class was an hour and a half and we probably rolled the entire last hour. I gassed out a little after my first five minute roll with Ty (blue belt) because I really didn’t know what to expect and my adrenaline was going. I was able to relax after that and had a really good roll with everyone the rest of the time. No one went Abu Dhabi on anyone and no one got injured. All the guys were bigger than me (as usual) but they were all very technical and no one tried to muscle me. These were a great group of guys… friendly, laid back, and very welcoming (reminded me of OW). They also have a lot of mat space. I would definitely go back if given the chance and I would definitely recommend that you go visit if you are ever in the area (http://paragonbjjslo.com/home1.html).
Big thanks to Jon, Ty, Malory, Mike, and Ian!
Boa!
Check out Fookie’s past article on diversity training below:
——-
Diversity – Training at other gyms
-f00k
So last night at our Sunday open mat class, I was lucky to have 3 of our friends from Heroes Martial Arts (Gumby’s spot) drop in (yup yal missed out!). Had a good rolling session with Mike (purple belt), George (blue belt), and Vince (white belt). As always, training with new people is fun and a good learning experience.
I encourage all of you to branch out and diversify your skills by training at other gyms every once and a while. I forget if it was Dave Camarillo or Jeff Glover who said, “One instructor can’t teach you everything.” We are very lucky to have Mike as an instructor who is also close friends with Gumby and Alex Khanbabian (AKA Sunnyvale), where we are able to drop in every once and a while (please talk to Mike if you plan on going). In the last week or so, I’ve trained at Heroes, AKA Sunnyvale, Guerrilla JJ Pleasanton, and of course ONE WORLD!!!
There are a lot of pros and cons of training at different gyms; the cons being mostly getting hurt. I’ve have gotten injured at almost all the other gym’s I’ve trained at besides One World, so be careful. This is typically because you got guys who you’ve never trained with before and it turns into Abu Dhabi Nights! People trying harder for submissions + people not wanting to tap = injury heaven. There are some people that train like the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, who can catch you and then let you go. Then you got to poachers who catch you to kill you LOL!
There are a lot of benefits to training at other gyms. You get to see more styles, maybe train with higher belts, and network with some new jiu-jitsu folks! I’ve met so many people from training at different gyms that I forget a lot of their names.
All in all, like Mike says, the place where you will grow the fastest is in your home gym where people know your game and you have to change it up to perfect it. Training at other gyms is kinda like using Spell Check for your game, it will catch the other errors.
Train with Everyone! – Dave Camarillo
