Archive for month: December, 2017

Greetings from San Diego USA! (9-21 Oct 2017)

I’m detouring from detailing my adventures traveling and training around the world to bring you a special article about my time on a training camp in San Diego with a bunch of crazy Australians. I last left off leaving Russia for Ukraine, and I will get to that shortly, but this camp I went on was a special time and I need to cover before it becomes too late, which is already is.

Open Guard and the Free Rollers

Let’s begin with explaining who set up the camp and how I got involved. Open Guard is a website with the focus on bringing together the BJJ scene in Australia, with a number of writers posting articles on the events taking place there. They feature different competitors and gyms and review BJJ gear from time to time and have some good articles about all sorts of BJJ related topics. Part of Open Guard is the Free Rollers community, the people and gyms who just like to roll with whoever, whenever, without any club drama. The idea is similar to the BJJ Globetrotters community, but centered on the Australian BJJ scene. Open Guard and Free Rollers have been around for a few years now and I’ve had the pleasure of watching them grow from reading the first few articles and seeing the pictures from the very first Free Rollers Outdoor Open Mat. Being a part of the first Free Rollers camp was an honour and a lot of fun, but how did I manage to get involved with them?

Luke Docherty

I first met Luke over 3 years ago when I first started posting to the BJJ Globetrotters Facebook group about my eventual plans to travel and train around the world for a year. Luke was one of the first guys to reply to me and invite me out to his place and we’ve been good friends ever since. You may recognize the name if you keep up with the Jiu-Jitsu Times articles as Luke is a usual contributor, including this awesome interview on my milestones we did. Luke and I have a lot in common, Serving in the Navy, being obsessed with BJJ and a healthy sense of inappropriate humour, we have often made jokes about being long lost brothers. He’s also part of the driving force behind Open Guard and was the one who put together the Free Rollers camp. Luke bounced some ideas off me about the camp and would keep me updated on it. I was always planning on making it to Australia to meet Luke and travel around and see the mystical Land Down Under that I’ve only ever learned about from shows like Crocodile Dundee and The Crocodile Hunter (Or Luke’s favourite: Precilla Queen of the Desert). Meeting the guys and hanging out together in San Diego just seemed like a great idea, both as an awesome setting for us to meet before heading back to Australia and an awesome way for me to visit San Diego on this journey. Although adding the Free Rollers camp to the Odyssey timeline meant adding a lot of traveling, and extra expenses, it was also an adventure I didn’t want to miss.

Free Rollers San Diego Camp

Now that I’ve filled you in on the back stories to everyone let’s get to the actual camp! Everyone but me was from the same club back in Perth Australia so I was the outsider at first. Having Jiu-Jitsu traveling and an odd sense of humour (and me enjoying their ability to call everyone ‘Kent’) we all quickly warmed up and become one close group training twice a day, exploring San Diego and generally getting up to no good. From the start I could see guys had a lot of steam to blow off and were really excited about the trip, there may have been a tiny bit more partying than I first expected, but that’s the difference between saving to go on a training vacation and backpacking around the world for a year. All my steam was gone, I am just going with the flow and trying to balance training with exploring so I don’t do too much at once and end up burnt out or injured. These guys could go hard, both on and off the mats, and just rest once they got back to Australia. I had my hands full these 10 days we hung out and trained and partied together. While the nights usually ended with the guys having a few cold ones and getting a little wild (there was a night of midnight ‘No-Gi’ wrestling in their underwear that took place in the front room. Where I sleep. While trying to sleep) we all put in quite a bit of training throughout this camp. As the saying goes, work hard, play hard, or in Australia they say “We’re not here to fuck spiders!” that actually became the camp motto, I’m still waiting for the shirt.

Luke, as the spearhead of Free Rollers, had everything set up for this trip. He found an affordable Airbnb near the gyms, set up all the day and evening’s activities, like going to a college football game or to the USS Midway, and got us a group deal to train the whole time at the University of Jiu-Jitsu with none other than Xande Ribeiro (Saulo was back seeing family in Brazil). I has happy to have a destination that literally all I had to worry about was just getting the ticket there, I didn’t have to worry about sending e-mails or contacting the gyms on Facebook, or finding a place to stay, I just showed up and followed along with the guys. The day we all showed up to San Diego I got in a bit later than they did. They all arrived in LA and drove down while I took the long way with many connections and after a delay managed to visit Kurt Osiander’s gym for my 100th club visit before arriving in San Diego. Once I got into town and we were all settled in we stopped by Uni-JJ to say hi and set up our week long training passes. That’s when we met Gustavo Dias, a Brazilian tank of a black belt and one of the instructors for the day classes at the gym, as well as one of the nicest guys I’ve met. Throughout our stay Gustavo gave us so many tips on places to eat at and sights to see. Basically he gave us the necessary tools for the perfect camp: Jiu-Jitsu, beach and food.

We went out for supper that night at a near by ‘Buffalo Wild Wings’, we would become regulars there during this trip as most our suppers were held there while breakfast was had at the all-day breakfast place just a block away. We were creatures of habit but when you know what you like, why bother spending time looking for new places everyday when we’re on a tight schedule. Quite often we would make plans for the next day’s classes and activities while eating baskets of chicken wings and watching the sports highlights on the TV’s. There was always an over zealous “I’m hitting all the class tomorrow!” usually by Luke, that never panned out, and a comment about checking out other clubs since there are so many high caliber gyms to choose from in San Diego. Although we mostly trained at University of Jiu-Jitsu we did venture out to other clubs during our stay and one day the boys managed to hit up the Atos BJJ HQ for a weekend open mat without me.

During the day in between classes, or when we took some rest and only attended the evening class, we would pile into the SUV and drive around, hitting up a beach or pier to walk along and enjoy the sights.

One day a few of us made it down the Mall of Americas (or ‘Las Americas‘) at the US/Mexico boarder where we spent a bit more money than we all planned, especially at the Under Armor outlet which had pretty much everything at 50% off. I also ended up getting a custom Panda’s Odyssey ball cap while everyone else bought new Vans with the ‘buy one, get 50% off a second pair’ sale (Note to self: Next time buy new Vans!)

Of course we also spent an afternoon touring the USS Midway, and old Aircraft carrier that is now a museum and has all sorts of cool military paraphernalia at their souvenir shop, as well as both the flight deck and hanger bay full of old fighter jets you can climb in and take pics of in and flight sims you can try and fly.

The football game was an adventure I think anyone visiting USA should go on. The sports culture around American football is unique, with the tailgate parties and BBQ’s throughout the parking lot. The game itself, with all the cheer leading squads all around the field and the marching create a whole show to watch rather than just a sporting match. It’s quite surreal watching everything going on.

University of Jiu-Jitsu

Our first class at University of Jiu-Jitsu was the morning class at 7am, I believe that was the only morning class I made it out to. I don’t remember which class he taught but that day we met Victor Barreto, another tank of a Brazilian, like Gustavo, with the added  feature of towering over everyone. If you’ve watched the ‘BJJ Library Challenge‘ Victor was the winner of that challenge so it was pretty cool to watch that series then actually see him teaching our class. The whole week went on like this, showing up to class and meeting someone we’ve seen before online, or would be seeing a lot more of, like Casey Hellenberg who just competed in the EBI 14 ‘The Absolutes’. For the morning class there were only maybe 3 other people showed up for it and I could see the guys were all pretty nervous about their first time training in Uni-JJ. I guess maybe since I have traveled all this past year and walked onto so many mats it wasn’t as big a deal for me, I was more excited then nervous. Or maybe since the morning class was smaller they were all worried about being in the spotlight under Gustavo and Victor as the new guys, which in that case I was also a bit worried. Our fears were smashed away once we were done the warm up and drilling techniques, all that mattered was training the details. That’s one thing that is consistent through all of the Ribeiro instructors, the attention to detail and the emphasis on control. As in intimidating as Gustavo and Victor were they were great at teaching those points and seeing any adjustments we needed to make throughout our class with them.

The Wednesday night ‘Library’ class is where they film the class to use for instructionals on the BJJ Library, it was taught by Xande Ribeiro who was just coming back from his impressive run at the ADCC Worlds. This class was packed, the evening classes are always busy, with the count somewhere in the 30’s or 40’s, but Wednesday was especially busy and with the camera man there it there was an electric energy in the gym. Xande showed us basic moves all night, nothing special to the unknowing viewer, just basic armbar set ups from the closed guard. The very same moves and details he used to tap out world class competitors at the ADCC’s. Not so basic after all. The details he gave us were stellar, with a big emphasis on control and contact throughout all movement, once you had that arm it was your the entire time. Making the basic technique we all learn in our first days of starting BJJ into a world class, black belt level, competition winning technique. It was amazing being in Xande’s class, it’s like his presence just adds more energy to everyone training. Even during the week in classes he wasn’t teaching, if Xande was in the gym everyone stepped it up a notch. Xande himself was a great guy to talk to, welcoming us into the gym at the start of class and telling everyone to look after us. He was intimidating be around at first though, with his stance of constantly rolled back shoulders and open arms, like he’s ready to shoot for a double leg take down at any second. It made you hesitate walking up and saying hello, but he was always friendly and chill with everyone. Training there all week was absolute blast. While there’s tons of gyms to choose from in San Diego you really must drop by for at least one class.

10th Planet San Diego

One night I got a few of the guys to come along with me to another gym to get a completely different style of rolling in and see grappling from an all new perspective. We piled into the SUV and drove across the city, which in itself is an adventure if you’ve never driven in San Diego before, and ended up at 10th Planet San Diego. Richie ‘Boogeyman’ Martinez runs the classes there and man does he spread the love at that gym, such a warm welcoming place! From mis-reading the schedule we got there just as class was ending and had an hour to wait before the next class started. We sat and watched people train, like Liz Carmouche (the very first female fighter to walk into the UFC cage and Ronda Rousey’s first opponent) hit the pads. As people starting showing up for the next class they would come introduce themselves to us one by one, everyone was really friendly and we felt very welcomed, making this introduction to 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu a lot easier for the guys. Once class started and we got into drilling techniques Richie walked us down a rabbit hole of Rubber Guard set ups and chained it into the ‘Gogo-Clinch’ a move from rubber guard that incorporates the leg over the shoulder and under chin of the Gogoplata with the C-clamped scissoring arms of a No-Gi baseball bat choke to make the most hellish choke I’ve seen and experienced. At first we were all watching and thinking ‘Smoke another one bro, there’s no way I’m getting the rubber guard let alone finishing this technique’ but by the end of the class, with Boogey’s awesome guidance we were all able to drill this technique with only minor difficulties.

The rolling at the end of class was by the far the best part, I had my experience rolling with 10th Planet guys already and knew of the black magic to expect, but the other guys were going in practically blind. After the first roll I remember walking up to them and seeing their eyes the widest they had been this whole trip, just about popping out of their heads “Man, that was amazing! I didn’t know what was going on, I got wrapped all up and twisted and tapped but he didn’t muscle me!” 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu is indeed a different way of moving and manipulating the body, and being at the home of one of the foremost innovators to 10th Planet you can rested assured we were shown some really different shit during those rolls. After class we were all sitting in the SUV in the parking lot trying to figure out how to get back to the house and where to grab food when Richie pulls next to us “Hey guys, you want somewhere good to eat?” he asked, and then proceeded to tell us where to find the coolest Mexican food place in San Diego. “I’d love to come with you guys but I got to cut weight for EBI next week” he adds like it’s just another day at the job. We made our way to the restaurant and we were not let down. They whole place is done up as a tacky flamingo bar inspired Lucha Libre shrine with signed photos of great Lucha wrestlers all over the walls and masks encased in the seats. They even had a ring at the back that was set up with a table for private parties. It was a perfect place to end off our awesome night. We’ll have to go back with everyone next time, and hopefully Boogey can join us this time!

Victory MMA

Another gym we ended up dropping by for a class was Victory MMA. It wasn’t in the plans at first as it seemed a lot of the head instructors were away, and the guys just wanted to train at Uni JJ, but then we dropped by a cryotherapy place that was just across the street from the gym. As it happens the guys running it, Keeling and Bryan, were both black belts from Victory. We would drop by Chill’N Out quite often, at least one person would be going for cryo each day, and during our time hanging out there they would always mention how they would love to have us over for a class. Finally, after feeling guilty of these guys treating us so well and us not dropping by, we decided to go train with them on the weekend. We were not disappointed. They were just as fun to train with as they were to hang out with while we froze our balls off in their cryo chamber. Bryan ran the class that day and started with working functional movements as as warm up. One person sitting in open guard as you worked your footwork around his legs, triangle footwork drills, zig-zags in and out, hopping over, all sorts of movement. Let me say that Bryan is a spider monkey and makes the movement look way too easy, I was out of breath just watching him demonstrate.

I was teamed with a giant of a white belt and neither of us were in the mood to try and simulate Bryan’s Jack Russel-like movement but we did get along drilling quite well. Keeling and Bryan made sure to split us Free Rollers up so that we were training with guys from the gym so we got meet the club. Even in rolling we weren’t allowed to roll with each other, which was good since we didn’t travel half way around the world just to roll with the same teammates and by this point I had rolled with them all anyways. It was a lot of fun, which Bryan always made a point of telling us is his main goal for each class, training and rolling with the crew there in a relaxed setting. Everyone was pretty laid back and welcoming of visitors and I’m sure the guys each had a few questions asked about their travels and visiting San Diego during class like I did. I’m glad we finally made it over to see the Victory guys before the end of out trip. 

By the end of the 10 days we were tired, bodies beaten and heads full of all sorts of new techniques, and ready to head (back) to Australia. I’ve got to say thank you to Luke for setting this camp up and of course thanks to all the clubs and people who welcomed us during this adventure. It was one of those experiences legends are made of, and I’m pretty sure by the end of the trip we were all legends for one thing or another, weather we want the world to know what that is is another story all together. When it was time to leave we split up on our ways back to Perth Australia. I had a flight out of San Diego and 30+ hours of connections and flights while the guys headed to LA for one last night, where they decided to finally track down Zack’s man-crush he had been Instagram stalking all week, ADCC champ Gordan Ryan. I’m sorry I missed that event and can’t elaborate on it but I heard it ended hilariously. Anyways, I highly recommend joining Luke and guys on the next Free Rollers Camp, which I hear is already being planned and has a lot of interest, both from Australia and the US so keep watch on Open Guard for updates. I know I’ll be watching and hoping to meet with them again, in the meantime my next article will pick up where I last left off on the Odyssey: Kiev Ukraine!

Until next time,

see you on the mats!

OSSS!!

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So, the time had come for the last stage of the trip, we had planned from the start that we were going to do a stop in Hawaii on the way back to relax…. and train?. Leaving the mainland, I was a little disappointed that we were on the last leg of the trip but also a little relieved as living and training as a family for almost 6 months out of suitcases was starting to get a bit tiring.

Sea Cave

Both Lilly and Kobe couldn’t stop asking questions about what we were going to do, can we go to the beach? can we go to a volcano? will we see a dolphin?? It was driving us nuts the whole way over on the plane. We had planned to spend a few days on Maui before heading over to Oahu, when we finally landed we took a quick tour of the car park as I had managed to get us all on the wrong bus for our car hire. Finally, on the right bus and our car picked up we headed south to Kihei where we were staying for this stop over. We dropped of our stuff and headed straight to the beach to watch the sunset, it was spectacular!

Sunset over Pipeline

Haleakala Crater

As we only had a short time on Maui our first two days we spend in full tourist mode. We headed around to the Haleakalā National Park and hiked into Waimoku falls. Just the drive around to the park was an adventure on the skinny winding roads and one lane bridges. We headed up to the top of Haleakala Crater and checked out the crazy view and clouds that built up around the summit. We also hit the beach everyday in the evening where we saw a lot of turtles swimming in the shallows.

Waimoku falls

Awesome beaches

Random waterfalls

We decided to head to Maui Jiu-Jitsu for training, we arrived a little early so headed down the road to check out the big waves at Ho‘okipa Beach Park then headed to the midday NoGi class. It was good to get back on the mats after having a couple of days off. I had some great rolls there with the guys and girls as did Dee. Straight after class we headed to the beach for a swim before the kids started at 3pm, this was the life!!! We headed back and both Lilly and Kobe jumped into the kid’s classes. They struggled a little in the warm up as it was one of the toughest they have had to completed yet and they had blown a heap of energy at the beach.

Kids training at Maui Jiu-Jitsu

Getting NoGi in on Maui

The next morning, we flew to Honolulu on Oahu, the weather forecast was looking rainy in a couple of days, so we jumped in our hire car and headed up the east coast along some of the most amazing beaches. We ended up handing out at Kailua Beach for much of the first two days. We also headed up to check out Pipeline where the Billabong pro had been delayed due to the dangerous conditions, this didn’t stop a large crowd forming to watch the massive waves.

big waves

Honolulu was definitely more touristy and packed than Maui, we for sure liked the vibe of Maui better. The next three days we planned on training everyday along with sight seeing first stop was a hike to the top of Diamond Head a extinct volcano crater near where we were staying. It was quite a good hike and the view was amazing, the place was packed though as it’s a tourist hot spot. We managed to power up and down with ease as by now we had done a shit load of hiking. A lot of people were struggling though as it can be a little deceiving just how steep it gets in some areas. After our hike we headed to Caveirinha Jiu Jitsu, we had read about this place on the globetrotter forum as a great place to train. They were right!! We had an amazing time with  Caveirinha and his team. Both Lilly and Kobe did two classes in a row and Dee and I did Advanced Gi and then straight into NoGi. The culture at that place was awesome and we highly recommend stopping in if you visit Hawaii.

Birds chasing some dude haha

Caveirinha Jiu Jitsu

The next day we headed to the Dole Plantation, and completed the maze in about 21min …. There may have been a little short cut taking but we had a super fun time. The “pineapple express” train tour was all great as it took us all around the plantation. We grabbed a pineapple soft serve ice cream which both Lilly and Kobe swear was the best Ice cream they have ever had. We then headed straight back into Honolulu to head to Gracie Technics Jiu-Jitsu. There Friday night session is basically just rounds which was great even though I was feeling a little flat. Probably because all I had for Lunch was that ice cream hahaha. Everyone there was super nice, and we had a cool time with them.

Couple of heads

Gracie Technics

For our last day we headed to Island Jiu-Jitsu who have recently become Atos Honolulu. We arrived for the kid’s class which was absolutely packed! Both Lilly and Kobe worked on their sit up sweep to triangle transition which is something that Lilly has been doing for a while on this trip, but Kobe struggled a little with the technique. They both had a blast in the rolling part of the class which they both can’t wait for every class.

Island Jiu-Jitsu / Atos Honolulu

Dee and I both did the midday class which consisted of several drills and then rounds. We both had some great rolls and felt really welcome there. This would be our last stop for training on the trip, The final total of academies across the USA we trained at was 32 we drove through 27 states during the trip. After training it was a weird feeling knowing that there wasn’t anymore training and that we would soon be back in Australia. We headed back to our Airbnb to start packing for the long trip back to Western Australia.

-Woody

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We headed back up to Los Angeles with the plans to stay around 4 days and get some more training in that we missed on our first visit. Before leaving San Diego we sent out a few messages and enquires to some places that we wanted to train at. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much of a response from them so jumped onto Reddit and asked the forums where the best training on a Sunday was. There was a general consensus that 10^th Planet Costa Mesa held some of the best open mats in the LA area, so we headed off the check it out.

Training with the Monster Squad Cool open mat

It was around a 40min drive in LA traffic, when we arrived we where greeted by Ron Turner who ran us quickly through all the usual formality’s. Dee was feeling a little sore from all the training in San Diego so opted just to watch. I jumped in and had some awesome rolls with people from different clubs all over LA. It was really good to see everyone training together regardless of their affiliation with No Gi worlds only a few weeks away. After a couple of hours of rolling we headed off to the nearest beach to hopefully have a swim but after arriving at Hermosa Beach we decided against it as it was so cold down on the coast. We ended up finding a nice little Brazilian BBQ place down by the beach and had one of the best meals yet on our trip.

Great food!

The next day we planned on heading to Cobrinha’s but found out through social media that he wasn’t there so opted to head to 5 Star Martial arts just down the road which is Shawn Williams Academy (Renzo Gracie Blackbelt). We made a quick phone call to them to see if we could train and they welcomed us as their guests. Kobe and Lilly took part in the Kids and Kids Elite classes and had a blast (as they always do). Dee wasn’t feeling to well so sat out and watched as I took part in the Open mat and then the class. We did a number of take down drills and sequences which was great. As we jumped into the sparring again John Danaher walked in with Tonon, the Ryan brothers and Keenan. They were there to get ready for EBI and F2W that were on that weekend, it was good to see Nicky again who I had trained with before he headed over to the ADCC. We finished the rest of the sparring session off and I was buggered. I think that I lost at least 5kg in sweat in there as there wasn’t much airflow. 5 Star martial arts were kind enough to let us all train free and I highly recommend stopping in there if you’re in LA, the level of grappling there was great!

You know it’s a great place when these guys rock up! Kids class at 5 Star LA Great class

The following day we headed to The Gracie Academy in Torrance, I mean what Jiu-Jitsu travel trip would be complete without visiting it. We headed over to the location and found that they were in the process of moving into a bigger and better place. Right as we walked in we were met by Rorion Gracie and ended up talking with him for a while about our adventure. We then got a tour of the museum which has a lot of old newspaper articles and photos from the early days in Jiu-Jitsu. It was really great to walk around and see all the family’s history. We then got a tour of the facility which is huge and has everything you would need in an Academy, Rorion suggested we head over and check out the new place.

Meeting Rorion

We headed over and almost drove past it as we couldn’t believe it was such a big place. The mat area is so large you could have over a hundred-people training there at once. We checked the schedule and unfortunately, they didn’t have any classes that afternoon that would suit us. As we would have loved to of jumped in and experienced at least one session there. We then planned to head back to 5 star but with LA traffic we wouldn’t make it on time for classes so we opted to head to Santa Monica to watch the sun set and walk around on the Pier. While we were walking around we had a message from Chris Haueter who we had reached out to earlier in the week. He invited us to come and train with him, we were super bummed as we had already booked the next stage of the trip and were leaving LA in the morning for San Francisco, so wouldn’t be able to make it ☹….

Giant mat space at the new Gracie Academy

Getting around LA is a pain and it seems to take forever to get anywhere so if something doesn’t quite go to plan it’s hard follow it up with something else. We had headed to LA this second time with plans on the places we wanted to train. We didn’t end up training at any one of those on the initial list, but we did have some great moments at the ones we did make it to.

-Woody

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Today I could finally announce the first ever attempt at a Castle Camp. Organizing this one hasn’t been easy; if someone made a business analysis of this project, I’m sure they would conclude that the amount of time, risk and work put into it would in no way make sense. But I had my reasons for doing this. 

First, the BJJ Globetrotters camp locations this year have been chosen from a secret business model that I can’t yet speak about (give me a week or so as it will reveal the rest of the camps). Second, I’ve always wanted to try and live in a castle and if any one person in the world can pull off a Jiu Jitsu camp in one, it must be me. So I see it as kind of my duty to do it.

I’ve spent more time planning this camp than any other of the 30 camps I’ve hosted so far. It all started almost a year ago when I hired one of my assistants to go research every possible castle she could find and figure out for each and every one of them:

• Location
• Contact information
• Type of castle
• Distance to nearest airports
• Number and configuration of beds
• Cost of rental with variable of guests and number of nights
• Cost of food delivery
• Cost of transport from airports
• Cost of cleaning
• Square meters of flat space for mats
• Cost of delivery of new mats to location
• Booking and cancellation terms

On top of this, for a castle to make the list, it had to fit certain criteria for number of rooms, flat space for mats, location etc.

After more than half a year of research, we ended up with a monster of a list with 114 castles that fit the bill. I personally think it is one of the most beautiful spreadsheets I’ve ever made :D

Once the list was compiled, I took over and started contacting them one at a time. I’ve spent months calling and emailing every one of them to dig even deeper into the details of the places to figure out which were suitable for a camp. The list was boiled down to 17 candidates of which I have been going very far in negotiations. 

Now, I’ll be honest. When I had the idea of a camp in a castle, I had imagined something very medieval. Where we could all dress up as knights and wear full body amor all day. Unfortunately, after going through what I think is every castle in existence on the planet, I must conclude that no such castle is suitable for a camp at the moment, either in terms of rooms, space, budget, quality, location etc.

But I did end up with one that I in particular liked. A more than 1000 year old castle on the most beautiful, secluded hill in Italy, just 15 minutes from an international airport. I spent three months talking and negotiating with the owner almost daily – going back and forth on all the details, budgets and possible setups that could work. We’ve been over the possibility of hosting 50+ people at the castle for a budget camp with tents and make-your-own-food to a super, luxury, VIP experience and everything in between. Also necessary has been to try and predict every single thing that can possible go wrong – big or small – and prepare for it already now. There is no room for failure once everything is launched.

I have been incredibly nervous about pushing the button on this one, but I’m confident we’ve ended up with the best castle and the best camp model. I’ve just today paid a whopping deposit to rent the entire place; my banker called to check on me. Next step is now to perform and live up to the expectations that the participants (and myself) have for this one. There’s no turning back now, at least. I have to live in a castle in May with my friends. Fuck yes.

www.BJJglobetrotters.com/castlecamp2018