Rio Trip

Monday, 12 October 2009

Well, I've been back a week now and I've finally set about trying to write up a wee review of the trip. The problem is how do you write up something as cool as that?? It was my first time in Rio so my eyes were wide open always looking at the new and different things. Always in the back of my mind I was thinking this is where BJJ was developed. The city is filled with historical BJJ places everywhere. On the surface you see alot of beach and football as I guess that is the main sport in Brasil. However, when you start looking for BJJ you soon see that it's also everywhere!!

We were lucky enough to meet this cool guy in a designer clothes shop called Phillipe. He turned out to be a 2nd degree black belt training out of the famous Carlson Gracie gym. So he arranged one night, for us to be guests at the gym and train there and meet the guys. We were made very very welcome there and once they knew we were students of Rey Diogo we got shown all these old photographs by the lady that ran the reception. She remembered Rey and Toco when they were just starting out as white belts!! After the tour around the city by Phillipe showing us all the different BJJ places we hit the mats and trained (their term for rolling) with all the students. It was very hard and they were trying to smash us but we did ourselves proud. That was just one of the episodes on this trip.

Training at Toco's was amazing though! We were made so welcome there and because Ben had been there before and he was returning with friends I think even more so. Training at Toco's is hard hard work and every session you train(roll) hard. But the rewards are immeasurable to your game. Plus you always feel fantastic when you're finished and walking back to the hotel along the beach front, to get cleaned up. (And have second breakfast if you're Ben). We trained twice a day most days and once on Saturday. 7am was the first session and the second session was at 4pm. You needed that time to recover!! Quite often me and Ben were the lowest grade on the mats and there would be like three or four black belts and they were all willing to tap you out then show you what they did and sometimes ways to defend the attack.

I'll put up some videos of us rolling and some training pictures when I get more time but this was an awesome trip that let us see grassroots Brasillian Jiu Jitsu. We are trying to integrate some of the new experiences into the BJJ club at AMAG because we feel they will give everyone a feel for what it's like out there and there are huge benefits to the way in which they train. Between our massive influence of Rey's teachings and now this the AMAG BJJ club is set to make a real difference to Scottish BJJ and I hope we can all benefit from our experience and continue to train hard, safe and intelligently ;-)