36 hours. That’s how long we’d been awake for since we woke up Wednesday morning nzt to catch our flight to LA in the afternoon. We had arrived wed morning LA time, and had to kill time till we could check in at 4. Before we could get any sleep, it was time for us to go to our first drop in.
Our stop was Academy Jiu Jitsu in Downey. Clinton had trained with the head instructor Gustavo a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a Peruvian purple belt that had stayed at our gym for a year, so was keen to catch up.
The drive itself was a war. LA drivers are psychopaths who don’t give a fuck about indicating or the colour of the lights. Adding to the lack of sleep, not gonna lie I was terrified being on the roads. Thankfully Steve is an amazing driver, adequate sleep or not.
The gym was very aesthetic, with clean white mats set against wooden walls and black wall mats. We started off with a technique and drilled it, a timer going off every two minutes to signal swapping over. We started with a leg drag from DLR, and I picked up some nice details about creating the reaction to expose the drag. From there we worked a leg weave to mount. Again, some new details on the transition to dope mount.
After that, it was time to roll. I managed to get in some rolls with both the black belts (Gustavo and Hector) and they floated right through my attempts to play any kind of guard and swept me like nothing. Incredible and they weren’t even trying.
There were no purple belts there surprisingly, so I had some good rolls with their white and blue belts. They gave me some unexpected attacks to deal with, like americanas from bottom side, which was fun. Considering the lack of sleep I was happy to do as well as I did. Afterwards the team were super friendly and gave us some good tips on where to get good pho (Garden Grove is the area apparently).
Afterwards we hit up some delicious roadside Mexican food. Had 7 tacos (the best one is marinated pork- “pastor”) with some amazing pineapple juice. Then we managed to finally get home and pass out.
The food and training made it worth those 36 hours!
Yoshi's BJJ Journal 