My new job means I have to travel a lot. In order to keep up, I'm hoping to do drop ins when I am visiting other cities. First stop: Copenhagen, early May. Some fishing aorund on google shows 2 schools - Choke and Brasa. Anyone train at either of these clubs? Is either receptive to visitors? Heavyweight white belt visitors who only speak english? I only recently started taking BJJ seriously and then I landed this amazing job. I don't want to give up one for the other. Does anyone else have experience doing this sort of thing? Do you have any tips regarding etiquette, etcetera?
check out graugardo's gym: http://www.csa.dk/english.asp here's his blog: http://shogunhq.blogspot.com/ good stuff.
I would love to train with Christian. That would be my choice if I was going there. Seems like a really cool guy, fun enviroment, and from watching him roll - he's a beast!
Thanks for this. It says right on the website that they speak english and welcome visitors. What more could I ask for?
No problem, bro. I have been wanting to make it out there, myself. Actually, I am pretty jealous right about now. Let us know how it goes! philthy - I totally agree.
Made contact with CSA yesterday. They seem really friendly and - oh, lucky me - Rey Diogo is giving a seminar while I'm there! Hopefully I can make it that night. My work schedule is demanding and very fluid. Considering I come from a province with no black belts, this job could help expose me to a lot of BJJ BBs. I'm trying to figure out a way to get the company to pay for me to go to Brazil, but that would be at least a year away. Thanks for the help sherdoggers, I'll keep you updated.
If you're really going to be traveling a lot and training at different gyms, start a thread about your experience and keep adding to it. Could be interesting.
So, the Copenhagen thing never happened. I went, and I had to work every day from 8:30am to 8:30 pm. I actually scheduled the last day so I could make it to the Diogo seminar, but technical difficulties meant we worked even later than usual that day. I was so disappointed, I couldn't bring myself to update this thread. The good news is, I'm going back to Copenhagen at the end of August and I'm hoping to get another shot at training with Christian at his gym. Also, I'm going to Valencia, Spain in 10 days. So, anyone wanna recommend a place to train in Valencia? Have gi, will travel...
I totally forgot about this thread until now. By way of loooong overdue update: I went back to Copenahgen in October. I only got to train one day with the guys from CSA. They were friendly and welcoming. We went on Saturday which is their open mat day. I gotta admit, I expected some pretty laid-back training, Saturdays at my club are pretty relaxed and sparsely attended. Not these guys! The place was packed and people were training hard. They ran a structured randori session, first with limited-objective sparring, then full-on rolling. Carsten the instructor assigned people to work with each other. No waiting, no resting, one round after another. One of the things that stood out to me the most was the facility. It is in a community centre, but it has incredible facilities for each sport. In Canada, you'd be lucky to find a community centre with mats, and then you'd be sharing with Judo and wrestling. Here, judo, wrestling and BJJ had their own rooms (along with table tennis, archery and every other sport you can imagine.) The CSA room has excellent mats on a sprung floor. Downright luxurious! I tried to take it easy the night before, but to be honest, I was a little bagged from following my coworkers on their carousing. I also cut my brow a little on an accidental headbutt and got a nasty turf toe on my big toe, so I begged out of the last couple rounds. Everyone was too polite to call me a pussy. Nice guys, solid BJJ (from what a white belt can tell,) and a nice facility. What more could you ask for on the road? Thanks to everyone at CSA. Here's a pic, I brought my gi on no-gi day. People choked me. The surfboard thing is some sort of club tradition. FYI, I never got to train on my trip to Valencia. My only free day was Sunday. My next trip (not work related) is to Maui...
