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| Big Thanks to Giovanni Espinosa and the Team for welcoming me to GB BOGOTA! |
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| Deep half guard class |
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| Girls training BJJ ! |
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| Training |
After a long night bus of about 16 hours I arrived in Bogota. When I woke up in the morning, once again from every angle, there wasn't much else but gorgeous mountain views; enough to take your breath away.
When I arrived in Bogota at the bus terminal I grabbed a cab to the directions I had on a loose piece of paper. Usually all I had was my next address and an emergency phone number to call if I got into any kind of trouble. The only catch was I didn't have a cell of my own not to mention a watch or a laptop. I mostly just kept a positive attitude and went with the flow of things and it was without fail. I arrived to Gio's place and I just asked at reception if he had mentioned anything about my arrival. He passed me a cd case and inside there was a key. Once again what luck I have to meet such incredibly hospitable people along the way. He had a bed set up in a room just for me it was amazing. First thing I did was grocery shop and make some hot soup. The temperature was a little chillier than I was used to so I did anything I could to stay warm. I had gotten pretty sick in Medellin right before getting to Bogota so I needed to take it easy.
I was pleasantly surprised with the creative class ideas they had going on. A few students were recently promoted to blue so they were asked to each prepare a class, the entire thing starting with a warm up and on to 1 or a few techniques. One student showed a sweep from the bottom of deep half guard and once again it was great to see because it had been a while since going over a position like that. I think I was most excited to train at this gym because they had 2 girls. Two white belts, with flow and technique (keep training hard girls, and fight for your life always when training with the guys!)
One morning I went to a cross fit class with Gio over at the academy. We did circuit training but with pretty basic exercises. The difficult thing about that for me is that it burrrrrns the muscles, you think it's easy at first and then once you've repeated the move over and over in your 5th set or something, I turned to my childish side, whining like a kid. Let's not even get me started with burpies. I think if there is one thing I hate doing the most its burpies and yet somehow I have a feeling one day I will grow to love them. In general I felt great on the mats, the altitude didn't affect me in the least which was strange because I was 2640 m above sea level. I did however have an extremely hard time breathing while walking up any kind of stairs. Thank god I was fine on the mats, in Medellin I can't say I had an easy time.
I would say the best thing for dealing with training in high altitudes would be to go for an hour run or so before training. I did a work out in one of Kim's classes in Medellin and right after we did a 1.5 hour BJJ class; I had the most amount of energy that night out of all the days I trained.
On one of the bus rides I left my BJJ notebook in the seat pocket. I beat myself up for about a minute before accepting and moving on from the loss, I have a pretty good idea in general of the techniques I need to be focusing on and if I've forgotten anything along the way, well thank god I have the rest of my life at this sport :) I'm in no rush.
I want to say thank you to the GB Bogota Team for the great classes and training. It was a pleasure. Gio you were a great host and I can't thank you enough, hope to see you and everyone down the road! Keep in touch.
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