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Building a Jiu Jitsu Tour Bus

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Hey Fellow Globetrotters!

I’m Tammi, a brown belt currently training and coaching in the UK but itching to travel again after a lucky almost half a century of travel and experiences around the world.

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The Impact of a Book

I started training at Carlson Gracie London back in 2012 when I was 36, but had to stop temporarily while I had surgery for a condition called Hip Dysplasia. While recovering I was travelling in South East Asia and read Christian’s book. I was so inspired and I realised I didn’t have to go home to get back to training, I could train anywhere with mats and other willing bodies.

So I moved to Myanmar where there were absolutely no Jiu Jitsu gyms and no mats either!

There were however, a handful of guys who also wanted to train and we had use of a hard studio floor in a local fitness gym at weekends. It was tough on that hard floor but we were all dedicated and trained there for months before I managed to ship some judo mats over.

You can read a  Jiu Jitsu Times article here about how I turned my apartment there into a gym and how Christian helped us get coaches from all over the world to visit and coach in return for hospitality.

If it hadn’t been for Christian’s community of people who loved adventure as much as Jiu Jitsu, I don’t think I would have lasted there as long as I did.

After a few years there and many excellent visiting coaches, I decided to move to Bangkok Thailand and join Morgan Perkins and his team at Bangkok Fight Lab. BFL was an established gym with a full daily class schedule and 20-30 regular students on the mats. Even a few girls!

Returning Home

I had many happy years in Bangkok. Morgan and his then partners allowed me to build a cafe inside their new gym and it was finally starting to take off when the pandemic started.

Unfortunately the last lockdown forced me to eventually close that business and move back to the UK in late 2021 to live with my Dad in the countryside. My sister and her husband live next door and she was pregnant with their first baby when I returned, so the timing was as good as it could be.

However, dealing with that first winter after 8 years abroad in the constant heat of Asia, was a massive shock to my system and I had to make sure I could somehow spend future winters in warmer countries.

I wanted to convert a vehicle into a home and travel to gyms across Europe, inspired by other BJJ Globetrotters.

I found a local job and soon had enough money to buy an old Mercedes Vario ex-school bus. I drove it back to my Dad’s and with help from a friend we stripped it and got to work dealing with the rusty chassis and replacing engine parts.

 

I knew to make my dream of travel across Europe work that I would need to earn money while travelling and travel vloggers were starting to earn a decent living from their content so I signed up to a course and spent several months learning how to make videos for YouTube.

I’m still learning and always will be but I really enjoy the creative process and I’m determined to keep improving my videos and growing my channel. I feel like a white belt again, entering a new realm, learning new skills, looking for mentors and inspiration, trying hard to innovate, progress and grow.

You can see how the bus is coming along and also enjoy some purely Jiu Jitsu content there too. At some point it’s where you’ll also find…

The Grapple Travel Show

I have an idea for a YouTube show to help promote friendly gyms and the idea of training while travelling or on holiday. I hope to start releasing episodes on my channel soon, even before the bus is finished (which could be another year or more). The pilot episode will be on the gym I currently train and teach at, VT Jiu Jitsu in Wiltshire UK.

Some of you might already know Sabine from Grappletoons and the BJJ Open Mat card game she made with Christian’s assistant Vara. I’ve known Vara for years as we both lived and trained in Bangkok and I met Sabine when she visited Bangkok Fight Lab.

I asked Sabine to make me a logo for the show recently and I’m really happy with the result. If you haven’t already made yourself an avatar at Grappletoons then get yourself over there, or make one for your favourite training partner or coach 😃

Relying solely on YouTube for income would be dumb, so I’m trying to do various other projects too, in the hopes one of them takes off, or perhaps they all just help contribute a little.

I write a free weekly newsletter on Substack all about my attempts to be a solopreneur.

This is the first of my blogs here but I’ll write more as the bus and The Grapple Travel Show progress. If you’re reading this then you probably love Jiu Jitsu and travel too, so hopefully you’ll be interested in the show.

I’m very open to any ideas other people might have for the show and I hope in time I can get other people to present their own show using the format too, so we can go global and encourage more gyms to give visitors a good experience, help them promote their gym, give travellers a good idea of what to expect from the gyms they’ll visit and show people new to the sport that they have ready made friends all over the world, just waiting for them to drop by for some rolls and share with them the best things to do and see in the local area.

I hope to connect with you on your preferred platform for now (see links below) but hopefully soon I’ll be asking for recommendations for gyms with space or a nearby spot for the bus for a few weeks and if I visit your gym I hope to connect with you IRL on your mats 😃

Thanks for reading,

Tammi

YouTube
Substack
IG / FB
TikTok

Mingalabar! Teaching BJJ in (remote) Myanmar – Part 1.

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Sadly, our BJJ journey through Myanmar is over but we finally have the time to write about it in our downtime in Vietnam. 18 days in Myanmar saw us well and truly exhausted by the end – we crammed a lot in during that time! Sight-seeing many beautiful places, navigating dusty streets, attempting to communicate with the locals, making several wonderful friends, and teaching BJJ was the best way to experience Myanmar in such a short time. Our trip was only made possible by Tammi Willis, founder of BJJ Myanmar. A friend of Rion’s from their rolling together in Bangkok, he contacted Tammi to let her know we were going to Myanmar and she began planning the ultimate trip for us, asking Rion if he would like to teach at remote garage/start-up gyms around country. Of course, he accepted, and our journey became something worth writing about. Thank you, Tammi, for creating this opportunity for us. We couldn’t have asked for a better trip.

Our first destination was Mandalay, a region with 12 million-ish people situated in central Myanmar, and with a relatively hot climate compared to the other places we visited. Whoever told me that Mandalay has nothing to offer tourists and is supposedly boring, you need to wash your mouth out with soap or something. It was one of the best parts of our trip!

Exploring the ancient city of Inwa in Mandalay.

Exploring the ancient city of Inwa in Mandalay.

Sai, AKA Tootti/Henry, is the owner of BJJ Mandalay (name of the gym to be confirmed). Sai is a white belt who has had four BJJ coaches come through his place and he’s trained a little in Yangon with BJJ Myanmar. He’s currently converting two floors in his home into what he hopes will be Mandalay’s first MMA gym. When we arrived, he had just purchased new mats and an air cooler, and was overflowing with motivation to create something beneficial for the community. A youth leader in the making, Sai hopes to keep people away from drugs and improve the quality of their lives and dreams of doing this through fitness and martial arts. We can attest for Sai’s quality of character. He has a big heart, was extremely generous, a great sense of humour, and felt like a long lost friend. Sai was the guy to know for everything; he’s the ultimate translator, the finder of mangoes out of mango season, the man who knows everyone from Myanmar’s most popular actress to the guy with the best durian… The list of Sai’s knowledge and connections is seemingly endless. Without him we would have struggled to maintain a vegan diet in Myanmar and our experience in the country would have been far inferior to the phenomenal time we did have. We owe a huge thanks to Sai and we are hoping to see our self-described “Asian Elephant” friend again soon. He’s very keen to host more BJJ Globetrotters so please get in contact with him if you are heading to Myanmar (his name is “Tootti Henry” on Facebook).

Sai and Rion.

Our first BJJ class kicked off shortly after our flight landed and we were initially blown away by the numbers of people who showed up – and they were mostly women! My heart was singing as recruiting women into BJJ and keeping them there is something I’m emotionally invested in. As everyone was either a newbie or had little BJJ experience, Rion began by teaching basic distance management (ie. If you’re flat on your back and your opponent is standing, how to avoid strikes to the head by controlling the distance with your feet) and elementary self defence. The usual giggling from all the new girls was loud, even when I put a lot of pressure on them during side control – just to show them how strong they can be, I swear! Unfortunately many of them were sore the next day and didn’t attend the class, but I attribute that to a smaller frame, lack of BJJ body conditioning, and perhaps being unfamiliar to the pace of martial arts training, rather than my mediocre white belt side control pressure. That night we went out for a meal with some of the guys from the gym who were initially quiet but over our time in Mandalay, opened up to us. We were all paralysed with laughter in many occasions – several jokes are funny no matter what language you speak.

Rion, Eileen, Mon, Kyaw Gyi, Myo, Sai, and Ma Thet after our first class.

During our downtime between classes, Sai had (of course) organised activities for us to do, such as: exploring the palace; walking the famous teak bridge, visiting the ancient city of Inwa, seeing the beauty of an old teak monastery, and many more activities. Our favourite by far was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I couldn’t talk about Mandalay without writing about it. We drove up Mandalay Hill at night with a few of our friends from the gym and due to the time of year there were monks praying over loud speakers in the pagoda near the summit. To describe this in words and do it justice is impossible, but we had the twinkling lights of Mandalay city all around us, a warm late-night breeze, the serenity caused the prayers, the quiet laughter between all of us, walking in the glittering golden pagoda lit up at night, and the best part – it was all completely empty of tourists and vendors. Rion and I both think that that was a highlight of our entire trip and that we were incredibly lucky to have that opportunity. If there was a particular moment during our holiday that was a spiritual reawakening, that was most definitely it.

Our classes over the next few days are a bit of a blur. Sai had organised split classes due to the numbers of people interested. He certainly can fill his mat space! Rion taught more basics but possibly more exciting techniques for newbies: how to regain posture in, and pass, the closed guard; maintaining side control, and; chokes – the standard RNC and a variant of the same, a triangle from closed guard, and the arm triangle from mount. During this time we were also honoured by the presence of a national judo champion, Selwee. It’s important to note that she was very small, around the 40-45kg mark. After me absolutely dying for a few minutes in her side control, we realised that many of the techniques we were going to teach her, she already had a great amount of knowledge. There was a significant language barrier here, but I found communicating with her non-verbally very easy. Selwee was interested in leg entanglements and submissions, even though she said she could not apply them in competition in judo (I confess I don’t know many rules of judo!). Rion taught her an inside sankaku entry from top mount and top side control, an inside and outside heel hook, and a calf crush counter to the heel hook defence. In return, she taught me a couple of takedowns, which was greatly appreciated. After class, we stayed behind with a few of the lads to answer questions about training and techniques, and then went out together to get the “best [insert food here] in Myanmar” for dinner.

Mandalay was a great welcome to Myanmar and there are several people there who we look forward to seeing again soon. To Sai, Eileen, Selwee, Myo, Kyaw Gyi, Ma Thet, and the other wonderful people we met there – thank you all so much for the experience and good times. We miss you all already and will be back, hopefully soon! Our next gym was in Myitkyina with Da Rock, another youth leader and Kyokushin karate black belt. Keep an eye out for our next post!