Best Places to Train in the LA area?

[Stacked]

Xande's has a shower. All of the gym's mentioned are good. Find what is the best fit for you. We do no gi at Xande's, but do gi more often. When Xande is prepping for a fight we do more no gi. We also have a wrestling class on Wednesday evenings. There are a number of guys who love to do no gi and would be happy to train no gi once gi training has finished. Xande is a big proponent of the gi though, and would encourage you to do both.

 

[TriangleMan]

Honorable mention for the MMA enthusiast to go with grappling: PKG.

 

[deadlizard]

if you want to know the best place i can tell you that:

Instructor Jean Jacques Machado only Red and black belt in the area and he has many blackbelt world champs. price is high but it is worth the price.

Huh... Rigan is in LA too.

 

[Jiujitsurican]

Well in Korea Town you have 5 Star/ Team Renzo Gracie LA, Cobrinha's is right up the street maybe a mile. And Xande's is about a mile from Cobrinha's. HBJJ is also good from what I hear.

 

[bjh13]

Well in Korea Town you have 5 Star/ Team Renzo Gracie LA, Cobrinha's is right up the street maybe a mile. And Xande's is about a mile from Cobrinha's. HBJJ is also good from what I hear.

Xande's is over near Pinks. On a map it may not seem that far from Korea Town, but it can be difficult during a workday to get back and forth, it could take half an hour easy. That's a long three miles. HBJJ is even farther, over in West Hollywood.

For he original poster, honestly you should worry about where your job is before you worry about what school. There are literally over a dozen great schools in the greater LA area, find a good job and place to live and then see what schools are close. Traffic here is crazy, and this place is really expensive to live, let alone the $160+ a month you are going to pay in gym fees. Training requires a decent amount of money, even no-gi, so make sure your job and your living situation are taken care of before you start worrying about going to the best competition school in the world. If you are just starting out jiu-jitsu, it doesn't make much sense to me that you would reorder your life 100% just yet.

 

[alexinc]

It really depends on where you live or work. There are so many amazing schools, and in terms of the best for competition: you can't really go wrong with any of them. It's all on you to be and how much dedicated you are willing to be for training for competitions.

I will throw another academy as a suggestion, if you are on the west side or near Culver City, I highly recommend Rey Diogo's. It has an intimate vibe (classes are 15-20 ppl), many high level belts, and he is a Carlson Gracie Sr black belt (all belts from Carlson). He teaches [almost] every class. If you want Carlson style bjj from the source, can't beat that! Many Pan-Ams and Mundials champions roam the tanks at Rey Diogo's.

 

[Zankou]

It really depends on where you live or work. There are so many amazing schools, and in terms of the best for competition: you can't really go wrong with any of them. It's all on you to be and how much dedicated you are willing to be for training for competitions.

I will throw another academy as a suggestion, if you are on the west side or near Culver City, I highly recommend Rey Diogo's. It has an intimate vibe (classes are 15-20 ppl), many high level belts, and he is a Carlson Gracie Sr black belt (all belts from Carlson). He teaches [almost] every class. If you want Carlson style bjj from the source, can't beat that! Many Pan-Ams and Mundials champions roam the tanks at Rey Diogo's.

Rey is awesome.

Being a guppy n3wb at a large school that is far away from your work is an awful idea. Location is beyond vital at any LA school.

 

[Wutang]

Some unmentioned academies off the top of my head:

Romulo Barral in Northridge
Gracie Torrance
Alberto Crane is Burbank/Glendale and Pasadena
Roger Machado
Robot BJJ Tim Peterson (I think Laercio Fernandes also teaches there?)
John Machado
GB Culver City (Gerson)
Nino Schembri in Manhattan Beach
Paragon W. Hollywood
New Breed (though this might be considered Orange County)

 

[shunyata]

Rey is awesome.

Being a guppy n3wb at a large school that is far away from your work is an awful idea. Location is beyond vital at any LA school.

Location is vital for EVERYTHING in LA. I once overheard a couple of young attractive females when I was in grad school in Santa Monica talking about how they would no longer even consider dating a man who lived in the valley, downtown, or longbeach. "I've had enough of this shit, I am not getting on the 405 (freeway) for any man ever again, I need a 310 (310 is the area code for west la / santa monica / malibu / venice) boyfriend! A 310 boyfriend damnit!"

 

[100%Jiu-Jitsu]

Location is beyond vital at any LA school.

Very true. But so is class schedule. The later the class you are trying to make, the better the chance you can avoid rush hour. (And the longer you have to stay at work, if that's important)

At Cobrinha's, the advanced class runs from 8:00 to 9:30+, so traffic is much less of an issue than it is at many other academies.

 

[Zankou]

Location is vital for EVERYTHING in LA. I once overheard a couple of young attractive females when I was in grad school in Santa Monica talking about how they would no longer even consider dating a man who lived in the valley, downtown, or longbeach. "I've had enough of this shit, I am not getting on the 405 (freeway) for any man ever again, I need a 310 (310 is the area code for west la / santa monica / malibu / venice) boyfriend! A 310 boyfriend damnit!"

Yep. Like driving Eastward across LA after 4:00 is an idiot's task. It would never even occur to me to try it, it's so awful.

You get people who don't live here, and they don't comprehend the concept of not being able to drive/work/live/train whenever you want, wherever you want, as much as you want.

 

[Zankou]

Very true. But so is class schedule. The later the class you are trying to make, the better the chance you can avoid rush hour. (And the longer you have to stay at work, if that's important)

At Cobrinha's, the advanced class runs from 8:00 to 9:30+, so traffic is much less of an issue than it is at many other academies.

True, very late classes and very early classes avoid a lot of the scheduling and traffic issues. But then you have problems with not getting many people willing to train late into the night/super early in the morning. Cobrinhas is probably busy enough it doesn't matter, which is great.

 

[100%Jiu-Jitsu]

Yep. Like driving Eastward across LA after 4:00 is an idiot's task. It would never even occur to me to try it, it's so awful.

I'm an idiot. I use the time to listen to language courses on tape. My Russian is getting REALLY good after all the time I spend in traffic.

 

[100%Jiu-Jitsu]

True, very late classes and very early classes avoid a lot of the scheduling and traffic issues. But then you have problems with not getting many people willing to train late into the night/super early in the morning. Cobrinhas is probably busy enough it doesn't matter, which is great.

I can't speak for the morning classes, but the 8:00 p.m. advanced class is the main class people attend. Depending on the night, you'll get between 15 and 40 blues and up.

Edit: Cobrinha has so much mat space that upper belts are free to come in and drill/roll during the 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. fundamentals classes, or at any other time during the day. Some nights there are 20+ competitors doing that. It's like an extended open mat.

 

[peidro223]

Well Im essentially moving to LA to train. So the goal is to find a school, then a place near the school, then a job near both. Tall task I know, but thats why I have taken so much time to save up a lot of cushion money.

 

[Latecomer]

Well Im essentially moving to LA to train. So the goal is to find a school, then a place near the school, then a job near both. Tall task I know, but thats why I have taken so much time to save up a lot of cushion money.

If you're going to that kind trouble, then I'd recommend a 1-week scouting trip to visit a shortlist of 5-6 schools. You already have the names of some of the most reputed schools in LA, but, if you're uprooting yourself just for the sake of training BJJ, you'd be insane to make any decision sight unseen. Once you've made your choice, you can go about finding a place to live.

 

[peidro223]

If you're going to that kind trouble, then I'd recommend a 1-week scouting trip to visit a shortlist of 5-6 schools. You already have the names of some of the most reputed schools in LA, but, if you're uprooting yourself just for the sake of training BJJ, you'd be insane to make any decision sight unseen. Once you've made your choice, you can go about finding a place to live.

That was the plan with this thread actually

 

[bjh13]

Some unmentioned academies off the top of my head:

Alberto Crane is Burbank/Glendale and Pasadena

Just a quick heads up, Alberto Crane hasn't been Gracie Barra Pasadena in almost two years now. Orlando Sanchez and his brother own and run the school, a big improvement in my opinion.

 

[outonbail]

Very true. But so is class schedule. The later the class you are trying to make, the better the chance you can avoid rush hour. (And the longer you have to stay at work, if that's important)

At Cobrinha's, the advanced class runs from 8:00 to 9:30+, so traffic is much less of an issue than it is at many other academies.

this

imo cobrinha's gym is the most awesome place to train bjj ever, that i travel 5000miles to train there, can't wait till 2nd of march to go back

i learned more there in 3 weeks then 5 months in brazil

 

[ItsArun]

Regardless of where you go, come visit me at Robot BJJ...I have a class there at 7am, Monday through Friday. We have showers too. Come stop by!