CR BJJ Hostel- Helping You Drink From the Source Spring of BJJ

photo by Fernando Pereira.

The world of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is ever growing and expanding globally every day. World class gyms are located in cities like London, L.A., New York, San Diego, Miami and many more. So why should the BJJ Traveler chose to come to Rio? Because this is the "Cradle of BJJ" and you have an opportunity to immerse yourself in the BJJ Lifestyle.

Imagine if you will a fresh water spring that bubbles up out of the ground. If you were to bottle the water as it came out of the ground you would have the purest and healthiest water available.      BJJ in Rio is just tHat- BJJ in its purest form. Now before I continue, I want to say I am by no means slamming gyms outside of Rio---as I said above there are world class gyms outside of Rio, but I'm talking about purity of the BJJ philosophy. If you were to trace most all of the top BJJ academy owners/professors world wide its is most likely their BJJ roots are tied to Rio.

Coming to Rio to train is about more than learning just techniques, but its about learning the philosophy, concepts, and history of BJJ. The other day at Rio Fighters after training I had the opportunity to relax mat side and get tips, ideas, and here stories of the "old school" Carlson Gracie Academy days from one of my instructors Rogerio Miranda. By hearing these stories you learn how some of the best BJJ and MMA instructors (and formally fighter) honed their skills and created their games. Here in Barra it's common to walk along the Pepe Beach (where some of the storied "old school" fights happened) and pass by the Nogueira brothers walking, Master Ze Mario Sperry carrying his surfboard, or some other BJJ figure out and about.

Being the GM for Connection Rio BJJ Hostel some of the most common statements I hear are "you won't believe who came onto the mat" or "there were x-amount of blackbelts on the mat today". These statements are not just made by guys who train at small gyms, these statements have been made from guys who train at some of the top gyms (ex Renzo's, Roger's, Xande's, etc.) in the world. Here in Rio it is not uncommon to have a Coral Belt step on the mat or a former multiple-time world champion to come in to pay his respects to an academies instructor and roll. On a given day (especially at an open mat) you can get 20+ Black Belts on the mat. That's right 20+. Lets just break that down--if the average time to get a black belt is 10 years, thats 200+ years of mat time, and that's if they are just newly promoted blackbelts, many of these black belts will be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and some 5th degree black belts. So on a given day you could have a 1/4 of a millennium on the mat---how's that for an experience.

I want to close out by talking a bit about Connection Rio. I know I have a  bias opinion because I am sponsored by and work for CR BJJ Hostel, but I CHOSE to work for CR for a reason---because I believe in the mission of the company. I came to CR as a guest in 2010 and because of CR, I had those experiences that I wrote about above. When I moved to Rio in 2012 and began working for Dennis Asche and CR, a great many  more doors were opened to me. Stepping into various academies throughout the city representing CR I already had an established credibility with the instructors, instead of being just another BJJ traveler passing through the door. I believe that Connection Rio is the best way for BJJ practitioners to come to the Cradle of BJJ, and drink directly from the spring of knowledge that is here--I don't say that as a CR athlete or employee, or even as a former guest, I say it as a martial artist.