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Brazilian Jiu-jitsu in Palma De Mallorca! (Part 2)

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Interesting fact about buying a Shoyoroll in Palma compared to the United States. It is crazy expensive, and I mean crazy expensive! A Shoyoroll kimono in America costs about 170ish US dollars after taxes and shipping. At the moment the current conversion rate for the Euro in Spain is around 1.4 to the U.S Dollar. This would translate the 170 dollars in to 238 Euros. Not to bad right?  Well unfortunately there are different shipping regulations and taxes here. After shipping costs and taxes the final cost of a Shoyoroll kimono shipped to Palma comes to be . . . *drum roll* . . . about 2000 Euros!!! I know, its crazy! Anyways . . .

 

Today I finished another training session at ABAMMA in Palma and the overall experience has been fantastic. The guys there are very friendly and have a close knit atmosphere.

First day on the mats in Spain

When I arrived the first day I was greeted by Javi which was who I had talked to over the internet the most. He gave me a big hug when I walked in and showed me around the gym.  Everyone was very respectful and friendly, each one making it a point to come up and shake my hand once I was on the mat.

Did the language barrier cause a problem when teaching techniques?

After the class began we did some normal warm up drills and then jumped into some technique. As I started to teach I was a bit nervous at first. I was thinking about the language barrier and I thought of the lack of communication I would have while showing the moves. Really though, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be. While I had worried that my inability to vocalize an accompaniment for the visual instruction would cause the students to miss out on valuable details. This turned out to be no problem because everyone was attentive, possessing proficient ability and the guys took hold of the movements very easily. I made sure move around the mat to manually make the necessary corrections once they were drilling the techniques. All in all, I believe it rather smoothly overall.

 Time to roll!

After the technique portion of class we began the rolling. Like I suspected, since there is a high ratio of competitors, everyone rolled very hard. Not hard in a “spaz” sort of way, but rather by putting forth a lot of effort into the rolls. I started the rolling session with Javi and then went with anyone that wanted go. During the first day of training I didn’t do any submissions. I did this because it was my goal to train and make friends while here, not to prove I’m the best and crush every person I rolled with. Instead, I would keep a fast pace and focus on a few specific movements during each roll and would release any submission I had secured. I guess you could think of it as a sort of “catch and release” style of rolling. I would give whoever I was rolling with an opening and then move from there, trying to execute my techniques. I do this with my students at home as well. This style of rolling offers a few benefits in that it allows me to get a lot “active drilling” on moves I am perfecting, it gives a great cardio workout because we keep moving continuously, and I get to help further the less experienced student by offering them opening and giving them opportunities to execute techniques . Once we reached the end of class steam was coming off my body and my gi was significantly heavier from soaking up the perspiration during the training.

A great first experience at a BJJ gym in another country. I will post more about the training here and wrap things up a bit. I also plan to post a little video up as well.

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Brazilian Jiu-jitsu in Palma De Mallorca! (Part 1)

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So, I am sitting inside the airport at Barcelona waiting for my last flight which will take me to Palma. This is my first time outside of the country and while I obviously knew that life existed outside of my “bubble”. I have never been to a place, where, I didn’t speak the language, wasn’t familiar with the customs and felt . . . not out of place, but rather, completely foreign. The experience is really interesting. I am finding it enjoyable to see what life outside of the “American Way” is like. Little subtleties make it interesting and new, while as a whole everything is essentially the same thing as back home.  For example . . . we drink coffee in the U.S and they drink coffee here as well. However, they call it café and its espresso. When we meet someone new in the states we introduce ourselves and make friendly gestures. They do the same here, but add in kisses to the sides of the face.

The main reason for my trip is to see my girlfriend, whom is teaching English in Palma. However, this blog is about BJJ and my experiences with it so I will focus on that, instead of my girlfriend or caffeine addiction abroad.

Training on my travels

I believe at some point I told my girlfriend that whenever I take trips or vacations I always like to get some training in, if possible. Being the super cool chick that she is, she contacted a local BJJ gym for me and helped me set everything up so that I could train while I am in Palma.  I spoke with Javi and Issac from ABAMMA over Facebook and they both seem really nice and enthusiastic about training, which is good. Another plus is that their gym is a competition gym and is currently preparing for the European Open which will be taking place next month. I say this is a plus because competition gyms are where I feel the most comfortable because I can train hard without offending someone and I can get a great workout. Another bonus is that they are allowing me to train for free! While I believe that letting a traveling black belt train for free is beneficial for the gym and should be common practice, sometimes it isn’t. Since they have been so gracious to open their gym doors and take the time to speak to me I offered to teach a class or two while I am in Palma, and they accepted. I will go over some of the tried-and-true tournament techniques and drilling that work so well for my guys back home. Hopefully the techniques will serve them well next month.

The language barrier

The teaching aspect will be fun and while they do speak some English I am sure there will be a bit of a language barrier. When I am teaching I will definitely have to focus on excellent visual demonstration of the technique to help make up for it. However, this is my first time teaching a group of people whose primary language is not English so who knows. Maybe the language barrier won’t pose much of a challenge as I presume.  One thing that is certain is that once rolling starts . . . the language barrier is gone. After we engage in a roll we will essentially be using the same language. Not our verbal language, but rather our body language, the expression of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. At this point, it doesn’t matter what we call the techniques or how we pronounce letters and words. All that matters is that we are fighting for guard passes, sweeps, dominant positions and an eventual submission. This isn’t something that is in need of understanding one another’s speech.

Anyways, my flight is about to board so I have to cut this off. I will post this on the blog later on once I get settled in Palma. I’ll post about the experience I have at ABAMMA.