Ottawa Ontario Canada: Team Ronin BJJ and Evolution BJJ Gatineau/HQ
Greetings from Ottawa Ontario Canada!
Another uneventful bus trip, the shortest one I've had on this trip so far, had me in Ottawa. I've visited Ottawa a few times before so navigating around was pretty easy. I made my way across town to where my friends Alan and Sarah now live and where I would be staying for my visit in our Nation's Capitol.
On Parliament Hill, our country's Parliament building behind me.
Staying with Friends From BC
I know Alan and Sarah from, as the title says, Victoria BC. Alan and I trained together and Sarah was always around the club and even trained a little herself. They moved away to Dublin when Alan got the acceptance of a lifetime to go do a course over there in literature. After a year Alan and Sarah made it back to the West Coast of Canada, only to leave again for Ottawa. In all it's been about a year and a half since we've hung out. It was good to see them and get the time to chat and fill each other in on what's been going on, and to hear about Alan's experiences with snow (There's no snow in Victoria BC and Alan had lived there forever). In the evenings that I wasn't training we would hang out and watch a movie or talk the night away about general stuff. Being that we were both new to Ottawa and working on University courses I imagine I was a must needed break to fill the social void that slaving away on a computer and not being able to venture out and meet people creates. I even got Alan out to class one night, he had been inactive with martial arts for awhile now due to school, and he ended quite sore the next few days, but I'm sure he'd agree it was worth it. It was good to see them, thank you Alan Sarah for letting me stay at you place and take care of me, until next time!
Alan out at class with me. I forgot to get a picture with the three of us together.
While staying with Alan and Sarah I also had time to work on the paperwork needed for applying for my Russian Visa and get it all handed in. There is a lot of paperwork for some Visa's I've found so I figured I might as well focus on them when I was in Ottawa where the Visa services office is located. I even set up a time to go in and talk to them in person about my trip and look over the paperwork. I think it went well, but we will find out soon enough. Also, between all the paperwork, training and hanging out with friends, I managed to take the time to walk around down town and take some pictures of the Parliament building and all around Parliament Hill, the National War Memorial, and all the other cool sites around there. Here's some pics from that:
Parliament Hill, the West Block (under restoration), the Parliament building, the East Block.
During my stay in Ottawa I made it out to the Evolution BJJ HQ in Gatineau. If you don't know, Ottawa is built right on the border between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, with the Ottawa River separating the two. There are a bunch of towns surrounding it, on both sides of the border. Gatineau is just on the other side of the river in Quebec. The club itself, Evolution BJJ Gatinaeau is the HQ of the many Evolution BJJ clubs in Canada and USA as well as a Tristar Gym affiliate. The head instructor and founder of the club is Prof. Dan Guilemette, who I will have an interview with next week. I met Prof. Dan back in Petawawa during the holidays, and told him of my intentions to visit his club when in Ottawa, he told me I was welcomed anytime.
The first day I made it the club it was a weekend open mat and when I showed up it looked like everything was closed. I was early and waited outside. A few others showed up and were also waiting around after looking inside, wondering why all the nights were off. You see the club is in the strip mall and is easy to find with all the big signs but the club is in the basement at the end of a hall way other stores along the way. When myself and the other students first looked in all the lights were off to the hallway so we figured everything was shut, even though the door was open. Someone from another place came out and one of the other students asked if the gym was open. His answer was yes it was, the Judo class was in there training, the reason the lights were off is because the electrical company was working on a transformer so all the power to the place was off. So we went inside, down a dark hall where we found the gym, and the Judo class, training in the dark.
Power outage won't stop us!
Some Judo in the dark.
And some BJJ in the dark too.
The gym is in a big space, it's actually perfect for it, despite it being underground. As you walk down this hallway of other store you see at the end a glass wall with the gym's name and logo painted on it and you can see the two main mat areas, on the right side, the first main mat and area, blue and red tatami mats on a floating floor for takedowns and the Judo class, the entrance is to this area, with the change rooms and bathroom on the far wall. On the left side of the glass wall you see the second main mat, in black and yellow, with caged wall for MMA practice and heavy bags alone the opposite wall, this is the Kickboxing and MMA room. There are other rooms for other classes as well, it is a big area, and very well put together.
The main mat, for BJJ and Judo.
Mat 2, for the Kickboxing and MMA classes.
I walked into the gym to find other students stretching or rolling on the mats, with the Judo guys training in the center. Prof. Dan was sitting on a bench "No power outage is going to stop us from training!" he said I waved to him. The mats were barely light with the lights from peoples cell phones, just enough to get a silhouette of people and objects. I made my way to the change room, get ready and ended up having a great roll with a bunch of people that day. really, you don't need to see to do Jiu-Jitsu, you need to feel, rolling in the dark was fine. The lights finally came on after an hour or more of training and really not many stayed much longer, like the light scared everyone away.
class, with the lights on.
I came back again for class during the week, with no power outage this time, and trained with some great people. Prof. Dan was working on sweeps from the close guard position, with every move coming from having an overhook and lapel hold. There were some great thing shown, little details I've been missing while trying similar moves. Every time I've trained with him I've found something new that really applies to my game, Prof. Dan is great for this, he really shows you the holes in your game and helps fill those in. In my short time with him I've picked up some cool things I've written down and have been using since.
Group shot of the class one day.
Team Ronin BJJ
Another place I had to go to with Team Ronin BJJ. I started talking to Ryan Kellar, black belt and head instructor of the club, on BJJ Globetrotters a long while back when planning out the Canadian Odyssey portion of this journey. I was looking forward to meeting another Globetrotter, there aren't many in Canada, and train with his club. The club itself is in a college athletic building, it's easy enough to get to but checking in with Ryan for directions to find the actual room the classes are held is probably a wise choice, especially if you're like me and not familiar with the campus. Classes are held in a matted room that has heavy bags against the far wall and also hold the Kickboxing classes, and other martial arts classes, for the school.
No Gi class with Team Ronin.
I made it out to both gi and no gi classes while visiting and even brought Alan out for one of the nights. The classes were well run, with a good warm up, a lot of time for drilling and then rolling on the end. For no gi classes one of Ryan's students, Vadim, who is a tall-all-limbs guy and a leg lock wizard. I like how he taught his classes, with showing a submission, drilling it, then showing the counter, drilling it, then showing the next submission in the chain and so on. That way we were drilling both the submissions and the counters, rather than what I've usually saw of drilling submissions one night and counters later on another night.
Rolling time.
Gi class.
Alan enjoying himself.
Ryan taught the gi class and was big on movement being the key, using momentum and chaining the moves together. We started with warm up involving a lot of the same moves that were the core of the techniques we drilled, like side rolls and berimbolos. Being the of the body shape I am I was a tough night for me working on this things, maybe one day I'll get them though. Rolling with Ryan his style is very much the way he teaches, he's very athletic but he doesn't rely on it, always moving around you, or moving you around, and then letting you work on your defense, only to be put into another sweep, or counter. It was almost like an aggressive flow match, until he decided to catch you in something, and very impressive.
Ryan Kellar and Submission Arts United
Ryan Kellar, thanks for the classes!
After class I sat down with Ryan and we talked about his martial arts back ground, the history of the club and getting into the College, and another company he is apart of, Submission Arts United. The SAU is a Jiu-Jitsu competition organization based out of Montreal that runs competitions in Ottawa as well. Having never spoken to someone who is part of the competition organization I was curious what what goes into setting up a big platform such as that without it being tied to any one club, as local events usually are. We had to finish the interview a bit early as we were limited to the time we had in the college and almost got locked in but we still had a good conversation and covered a lot.
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And after a week of training and hanging out with Alan and Sarah it was time to head to Montreal Quebec, meet some internet friends and have my first class in a 10th Planet BJJ club!
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