Marcelo Garcia’s New Academy – Part 2

 Just got back from another great day of training in Marcelo Garcia’s new academy.  There were fewer people this time around.  I overheard some people saying that on opening night when I went, there were 70 people on the mats!  That’s pretty crazy.

Today I’d estimate about 40 students on the mats.  We started the class with a warmup session that includes running around the periphery of the mats with variations that include, skipping, jumping jacks, side to side, and running backwards.

One of my favorite parts of the warmup is when they incorporate an obstacle course that includes everyone at once, where you get to play the part of the obstacle and then of the person running through the obstacle. Today they had people sit spread-legged in a line, with people high-stepping through the legs until you get to the end of the line (running through something like this, but with legs instead of tires), and then sit down and spread your legs to add to the line for others to run down.  Then the people at the beginning of the course, the first few to sit down, would get up and run through the course.  Pretty fun.

Then they did a similar thing with one person bending at the hips and then the next person in turtle position.  So the person going through the obstacle would have to jump over the person bent over at the hips, land on the ground, then immediately do a smaller jump over the person that is turtled.  This would repeat until you get to the end of the line and then it would be your turn to either bend at the hips or to turtle.  The warmup then concluded with front rolls followed by hip escapes along the length of the mats.

The main topic of the class today was mount escapes when your opponent has a deep collar grip.  I won’t go too much into detail because I don’t want to take away from their MGinaction business, but suffice to say, it was very effective.

After the instructional portion we then moved onto free training.  He split everyone up into groups of 3 and had one person sit out while the other two spent 1 minute training from standing up, and then 2 minutes on the ground, rotating one in and one out at the end of the full 3 minutes.  We did this nonstop for at least 4 rounds… maybe more… I sort of lost track.  It was exhausting!  Near the end I was just tapping because I was too gassed.

It’s no wonder everyone who trains there regularly is so well conditioned.

 

Here is a picture of what the academy looks like in the day time.  The wet streaks are from the cleaning they do immediately after every class.  It’s great to see how much they value cleanliness.  More schools should do this.

Too bad I’m leaving today.  Can’t wait to come back.