My stay in Calgary is over, it's been great and I have made a lot of new friends, but it's time to move on. Now to Edmonton to visit a cousin I haven't seen in many years! But before those adventures begin let's finish off with the last three clubs I trained at in Calgary.
Kokodo Calgary
I had almost completely forgotten that there was a small Kokodo group in Calgary but luckily I remembered and set up a night to go meet and train with them. The class, a small group met at Tim's, the Sempai who runs the Kokodo Calgary study group, where he has a training area complete with mats. The members were all great and we all got along well and the class itself was fun, self defense applications of classic Kokodo techniques. The true Jiu-Jitsu spirit was afterwards, when a few of us went out for drinks and nachos. Tim had set me up with one of his students, John, to be my ride that night for class. After class Tim, John and myself jumped into John's car and head for a pub, where we talked about all things martial arts related, and then as we demolished a plate of nachos, got into sharing our love for cheesy action movies of the 80's and 90's. It was a good night of martial arts geekery. Fun times! Unfortunately it was too much fun and I forgot to take pics of both the study and the night out. I really need to get better at remembering to document my adventures.
Gracie Humaita Calgary or Inflight Fitness
The Gracie Humaita, or Inflight Fitness since the club is inside a fitness center, wasn't originally on the list of clubs to visit, but as it is a small world it ends up that a friend of my cousin, who i'm visiting next in Edmonton, trains at this club. So after a quick introduction online through my cousin Karen, Paula and I become friends arranging to meet and train together. Showing the world is even smaller than you think, John, who I had just met the night before in Kokodo, also trains at this club.
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| My new friends, Paula and John. Was great meeting you guys and thanks for the training! |
Inflight fitness has a very calming feel to it, it's hard to explain what it is about the place but it has a very peaceful feeling being there, even while rolling with ambitious students. The gym is in a shopping plaza and from the first step inside you see its spotless and I don't know if it was recently renovated but it has a very new look. Prof. Jeff James (or JJ), one half of the power couple that run Inflight, greeted me at the front desk and made me feel really welcomed, when I told him about my journey he seemed genuinely interested. Prof. JJ is a cool and laid back black belt with some very slick moves that emphasize the classic Gracie Jiu-Jitsu of leverage and technique over strength and speed. For the first half of the night, the foundations class, we went over some nice details for retaining the back position as well as setting up chokes from there and other positions. Everything was very simple but the key was all in the small details, I love those kinds of classes, light bulbs went off in my head. The second half of the night was open mat and I rolled with almost everyone. Some really fun matches were had, with some great back and forth action. I rolled with Prof. JJ and it was very humbling, making me feel like a brand new white belt all over again. I chatted with a few students after class and it was cool to see the camaraderie and sense of family they had. I could feel the love for the art on the mats that night, one day I will take up JJ's offer and return for a visit.
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| Prof. JJ, thank you for welcoming to your club, it was a good time! |
Lizard BJJ
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| Waiting outside Lizard BJJ. |
I first heard of Lizard BJJ from Alex Muñoz, a black belt in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu from Costa Rica who somehow moved to Invermere BC and runs the Lizard Jiu-Jitsu club there. I met Alex at the last summer Jiu-Jitsu camp and after telling him about my journey I was planning he told me of Lizard BJJ Calgary and Prof. Francisco 'Chico Lagarto' Azevedo. I had been in contact with Prof. Chico since the summer and he had always been very welcoming, and with connections to the Invermere club (An old friend and former teammate trains with them, which is how I met Alex at the summer camp) hitting his club up when I visited Calgary was a must. When I first showed up the kids class was running and it was full of parents, who I later realized half were students too. I greeted by everyone and they were all interested in my story, it was a good friendly environment. As I was warming up stretching and talking to a few students before class I noticed they kept coming in. The club is not a large club, it's in small strip mall and you might miss it driving by, but the classes are packed, easily over 20 students showed up to train. We were pretty tight fitting as we drilled during class, doing over some great details for guard retention and half guard sweeps. When it came to rolling after class it was the same, bumping into one another or the walls while almost getting that sweep, pass or submission, only to have the obstacles stop you, but still lots of fun was had. This, you might think is not fun or could be dangerous, but to me, and I'm sure many others, these is the sign of a club that in it's 2 years of existing is rapidly growing and needs a new place. That is a great sign for the Jiu-Jitsu community.
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| It's packed in Lizard BJJ! So much action on the mats! |
I returned for the Saturday morning open mat, which was a fun time rolling with all Chico's students and even getting a few rounds with him. One thing that happened, and seems to be a bit of re-occurring trend, is during open mats or rolling time I end up being quizzed by the white belts on anything they can get from me. It's like the Calgary white belts are all ravenous hungry Jiu-Jitsu zombies wanting to feed on the goodness of my Jiu-Jitsu brains. This is great to see so many people hungry to learn what they can but I don't see myself as a person of vast knowledge, so I only hope what little information I gave them helped in some way. Rolling with everyone was a good time, no one was out rein-act the IBJJF World's finals, so some great flo-rolling was had. Afterwards I sat down with Prof. Chico and we had an interview together that, although a bit shorter than my usual interviews, covered some great stuff. I chose to cover his experiences moving to Canada and starting a school here, one of the newest schools in Calgary at that, rather than his training and competing, although he had some great stories about using Jiu-Jitsu in some self defense scenarios. Check it out below:
It was an interesting interview and some of students from open mat stayed around to listen, with one in particular commenting on how cool it was to hear these background stories about his instructor, 'questions I'd never think to ask' as he put it. That's a pretty cool compliment to my interview, I think.
Staying at a Hostel
Since my bus to Edmonton was leaving so early in the morning and I was staying on the other side of town and Rachelle was unable to drive me in, I had the options of getting up at 4 in the morning, paying a lot of money for a taxi, or spending half as much as the taxi to stay downtown in a hostel. So it was pretty easy to figure out, I would be staying in a hostel downtown. It would be the first time in a hostel for this journey. I was kind of excited to for the experience but at the same time I also wanted to make sure I got a good night's sleep for the bus ride up to Edmonton since I would be going straight to an open mat when I got into town.
I got into the hostel without any problem and found my bed easy enough. I met a man, whose name escapes me, who was in the same room, it was room of 6 beds, and when he saw my backpack he instantly sat up "you backpacking? Where you going?" I told him my story and my plans for the journey. He thought it was a cool idea and told me about his own backpacking journey, apparently he had be traveling around the world for the past eight months. He had just headed to Canada after traveling all over Eastern Europe where he feel down a mountain and hurt himself in Bulgaria. He had some great stories and good traveling advise for me too. It was definitely worth the cost of staying at the hostel to talk to him, and traveling German and an older man who I forget where he was from. I took advantage of the cheap laundry and washed my clothes so that I wouldn't be showing up with a pack full of dirty laundry to my cousin's and while it washed I hung out in the common room while typing some of this post up. While sitting in the common room there was a British girl who was loudly telling a few people all the differences between where she grew up and Toronto, where she had lived the past few years. It was amusing.
I packed my bags to be ready for the bus that night and stored my backpack out in the front storage, so that I wouldn't wake my roommates when I left early in the morning. I was all set and ready to have a good night's rest, except the guy I spoke to earlier was still on a European time zone and liked to leave to smoke a lot, and with his feet still bandaged from his fall in Bulgaria he made a lot of noise shuffling around and bumping into things every time he left the room. I think he was up until 4 making it difficult to sleep much. Hopefully I would have the bus up to get some much needed sleep.
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| My bags are packed and it's off to the next stop: Edmonton! |
Well that's it for this issue, and that's all for Calgary, for me anyways, tons more schools to see in the area if I had the time. I hope you enjoyed!
Next stop Edmonton Alberta!
Until next time, see you on the mats!
OSSS!!
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