I've been around Europe training in the past and present (next Sept14) to Germany, Spain, Holland and the Czech Republic and the experiences are second to none.
Travelling has always been one of my major passions and I normally go abroad 3 times a year so when I started training BJJ seriously 3 years ago and became addicted, it felt a natural progression to combine both of them together and see what happened!
It can be quite nerve racking walking into a new gym in the UK, never mind foreign gyms where a language barrier can be present to the point of using hand signals to get your point across. But I was always welcomed and I cant say a bad word about anywhere I have been.
That said the etiquette in Jiu Jitsu in general is very humble so I would always shake everyone's hand when I walked on the mats and make an attempt to talk to everyone which was always received well and I was never turned away, knocked back or looked down on when I was partnered/rolling with higher belts.
I have however been knocked back from sparring kickboxing with a few people because maybe their ego was too much to handle and the thought of an outsider giving them a hard spar was too much to take on in front of their coaches. Who knows!?!
What I did find funny about the Jiu Jitsu side of it was everyone was spying my gi to see where my patches were and what team I came from and I could just see the competition guy's licking their lips like they had a new toy to play with!
But hey hey, I know what that's like, no one wants to get tapped from the outsider coming into the gym to try out the team before they decide to commit or not or whether in my case they were just over for a couple of sessions and a pt with their Prof.
The rolling seemed to always be at near 100% with the lower belts to even some purple belts as it felt like they had more to prove by rolling and smashing a travelling blue belt whereas the better purple and higher brown/black belts would just let me play my game and try figure it out as quick as they could before sticking me in some pretzel shape in the simplest but most effective way possible just to show me where they can go with it.
The professors are always so inspiring and motivational its hard not to walk out of a session feeling on top of the world and in some ways indestructible from the techniques and visions they give you in not just your Jiu Jitsu but life in general. It seems the Brazilians especially have a way with words (even though in English) that seem to relate to you and your life in ways you would never think and their life experiences and stories always rub off on you in some way.
Take Lagarto for an example (Whom I have only met and trained with in the UK), he is full of stories and life experiences and this radiates off of his personality when you meet him. His speeches are always aimed at a specific point with ups and downs and have a way of filling you with enthusiasm to keep following your Jiu Jitsu dreams whatever they may be!
The training from the professors is also second to none and I have always came away from a class or PT session with something new to work on, or in some way I have had the blanks filled in which i needed to progress my Jiu Jitsu to another level.
I once had a PT session with Robin Gracie in Barcelona, and as we discussed there is not a set techniques that I need to learn (unless that is directly what I went for i.e de le riva from the man himself) and that we shoud in fact just roll in and along the way if he spots something I need to do or that I'm doing wrong he will fill me in directly to in some way fix my bjj.
Personally I found this very useful as we would roll through every position I could think of which was obviously minute to what he knew and when we came to a position where I maybe stalled/failed to escape or failed to finish a technique he would say "hey lets work on that a bit" and we would run over the basics from that position leading to advanced techniques depending on how well I took it in.
Id say to anyone that was travelling to take a gi and just go for it, you will always be welcome and you will always walk away from it feeling amazing. Its something that stays with you and the techniques are something you have to show for it so please help teach and pass them on to your friends back home.
That's the way of Jiu Jitsu sharing and helping your team reach new levels through cooperation and coordination!
All in all spreading Jiu Jitsu in some way and giving something back to the people that work day in day out to make Jiu Jitsu what it has become today is satisfying and the friends are people i will never forget and I would like to think that I have made that impression on them too!
Osss!
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