Lots of people would like to train in BJJ in Brazil, and there are plenty of different gyms to go to, but it can be a little overwhelming to try and arrange a trip yourself, even with available time and money. Finding somewhere to stay, locating a good quality gym, paying training fees, language barriers and transport problems all conspire to make it a pipedream for many people. For that reason, some of the gyms have set up camps specifically for foreigners so that all the hassle of organising a trip is already done for you. There are pros and cons to staying at these camps. They nearly always work out a lot more expensive than organising things for yourself, and they aren't everyone's cup of tea. If you only want to train a little bit and party a lot, or mostly sightsee, then this probably isn't the way to do things. One such camp is the one for the Gracie Barra academy in Rio, and its called Gracie Camp. I stayed at the camp for three weeks this year, so I thought I'd do a review of the camp for those of you who are thinking about a trip abroad for training. I’ve written it from a UK perspective for ease of comparison, so those of you who are based elsewhere will have to bear with me, I’m afraid. How it works Basically, you book some time at the camp, book a flight and pack your bag. They pick you up from the airport, provide accommodation, feed you, drive you to and from training, organise private classes for you, organise trips out for you and find you places to eat. All you have to do is get out of bed in a morning. The Camp The camp is a family-run set up, situated in a quiet area of Barra, which is itself a quiet suburb of Rio de Janeiro. This may sound boring, but since other areas of Rio are known for a high robbery rates, it can only be a good thing. After all you probably want to spend your time training and chilling on the beach rather than worrying about where your wallet is every five minutes. Paulo and Cleo really go out of their way to make you feel welcome and help you settle in at the camp. They’re ably assisted by Gabi and Luis who both speak excellent English and are always there to help with your day to day problems, like changing money, buying a gi, ordering pizza or even getting your chest waxed. The accommodation itself is in simple, beach-house type buildings, with a couple of good sized lawns, a swimming pool and a covered matted area. In the house there are dormitory rooms for up to four people, double rooms for couples and they all have air conditioning. There’s also a kitchen for preparing evening meals and a communal living room with a pc for internet access, and a tv with a subscription to a 24-hour MMA channel, Premier Combate. You may never believe you could overdose on watching Pride and UFC, but you’ll soon learn otherwise as you watch Wanderlei knocking the same opponent down for the fiftieth time. As for getting around, you’re a five minute walk from the best surfing beach in Rio, ten minutes walk from the largest shopping mall in South America and a forty minute walk from the academy at the other end of Barra, but you get driven there, so that’s not really a problem. You probably won’t want to hire a car here unless you’re very brave or foolish as many drivers think that they are Ayrton Senna’s long-lost son. The roads are best negociated by a local and taxis are very cheap and generally reliable. If you’re at the camp, they can arrange private hire cars that are cheaper and better than yellow cabs. Training The academy itself is not the flashiest of places to train. It has the look and smell of somewhere that you go to work hard rather than to pose. It’s located on the top floor of a health and fitness centre, so you get to walk past lots of lycra clad people doing gentle stretches in air-conditioned studios before you get to the top of the fourth flight of stairs and you’re hit by a wave of heat and sweat. However, the training is probably the best BJJ you’ll get anywhere. You do a fairly extensive warm-up at the beginning of the class, then practise some techniques, then you roll, and that’s when the fun starts. Even as a white belt, you get to roll with brown and black belts almost straight away and they’re really rolling for your benefit, so you can learn a huge amount in a very short time. When you’re not training, the chance to see some jiu jitsu and MMA stars on the mat is also an experience, especially in the mornings, when the combat team trains next door. It’s quite something to look up and find that you’re rolling next to Babalu or Pe de Pano! The only downside is that you can get too much of a good thing very quickly. There are two sessions per day at the academy, then you get three small-group sessions per week on top of that. And you can get extra private lessons from academy black and brown belts. And there’s a covered, matted area at the camp where you can ‘just run through that move we did yesterday’ before lunch. Many people find that they do a week’s worth of training in two days, so if you don’t pace yourself it’s easy to overtrain and get ill. Food You get breakfast and lunch included. Both meals are good and follow the Gracie Diet. No chips or chocolate, but still pretty tasty and guaranteed to get you healthy in no time. You can easily counter the effects of this by going to one of the many Churrascarias, a sort of eat-all-you-can restaurant, where you’ll be bombarded with more meat than you would normally eat in three months back home for less than the price of a portion of fish and chips. If you want to stray even more to the dark side, you can even sample a caipirinha, a ridiculously strong local cocktail made of sugar came rum, sugar and lime juice that tastes like heaven. This is definitely to be avoided, however if you plan on doing some training within the next couple of days as they leave you with the sort of hangover that makes you stare introspectively at the sea wondering whether you were a seagull in a previous life. The food highlight of the week, though, has to be Paulo’s barbecue on Sunday at the camp, where he plies you with ridiculous amounts of steak, pork and chicken before you fall asleep beside the pool and get sunburnt. When to go Most people recommend that you visit during the period from March to November, which is Autumn-Winter over here, but is still hotter than a British summer. You still get the occasional rainy spell though, so bring a sweatshirt. December and January are ridiculously hot and not many people train then as it gets up to over 40 degrees centigrade. If you’re from the UK, you’ll probably not feel like even getting out of bed with those sort of temperatures, let alone rolling round some sweaty mats. And no, they don’t have air conditioning. The academy gets really busy during the build up to the World Championships at the end of July. There are two sides to this. On the one hand, the mat is a lot busier and you might wait a couple of turns to roll, but on the other hand, you get to meet people from all over the world and there are tons of famous jiu jitsu people hanging round on a daily basis. Cost Rio isn't the bargain basement destination that it was ten years ago, but everything is still a lot cheaper here than the UK. This is particularly true for food, drink, transport and clothes, so you can have a pretty good time here for not a huge amount of money. As a rough guide, a slap-up three course meal with drinks in a nice restaurant will cost around fifteen pounds per person, while all-you-can-eat pizza is a fiver. It’s also a cheap place to pick up some of your favourite fight gear, as Barra hosts Rags, Gracie Barra, NO GI, Krugans and Vitamins and Minerals shops, where most of the stock is a lot cheaper than you can get hold of in the UK and there is also much wider range of clothing and equipment. The only things that cost more here are supplements (vitamins, whey powder, etc) and electronic goods. Conclusion Gracie Camp isn’t the cheapest way to train at Gracie Barra, but if you’re planning on coming for less than a month and don’t have any contacts here already, then its probably your best option. The hassle of arranging accommodation, finding your way round, negotiating taxis, paying training fees and getting clothes washed probably isn’t worth it. Especially if you don’t speak Portuguese, as not many people speak English here compared with other tourist destinations. Even if you plan on staying longer, it serves as a good starting point while you find your feet. Gracie Camp website: http://www.graciecamp.com/index.shtml Gracie Barra Website: http://www.graciebarra.com.br/novidades.htm
Thanks fr the info. That was really interesting. You said that you stayed for 3 weeks? How much was that? How much do you feel that you have improved due to the sessions?
I stayed at the camp for three weeks, but I have stayed here training since then, living in an apartment. We used it as a starting point while we found our feet here, and it was very useful for that as they have been really helpful. We paid $1200 each for three weeks. You can negociate the prices to some extent, especially at off-peak times. I came here as a beginner with a small amount of grappling experience, so it is possible for anyone to benefit, but I would say that fit people with a year or more experience have benefitted the most. The benefits for a beginner are that you have lots of more experienced people to work with, and so can learn quicker than back home. They generally force you to concentrate on technical rolling and rarely pair you with another beginner. Ironically, this can make it more frustrating than just having a series of all-out wars with other people of your own skill level. I improved a lot in the first three weeks, but it is also very tiring doing that much training, and I have since settled down to training for only one session most days. Of the people who have come to train, some have found that they improved a huge amount, mainly due to the small group sessions and the quality of rolling. Other people have struggled with the heat and the intensity of the training and found it all a bit bewildering. Or got distracted by some of Rio's many attractions.
