I Turned My Living Room, Into A Dojo (Updated Photos)

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about converting my living room into a place where some of my friends and I could roll. Now don’t worry, I’m not giving up my living room. In Abu Dhabi, most of the houses are built in a certain style, where the houses have two living rooms – a large one to show off to your guests, and then one that you actually use. I turned the large one into a mat space, so now guests can come over and roll!

It took me a few weeks to even find places that sell any type of grappling mats here. After scouring the depths of Google, I finally found two stores, one in Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai. One said they could ship the mats from Brazil, which probably would have been ridiculously expensive, and the other was charging outrageous prices. A friend told me about a place where they sold cheaper puzzle mats and I went with those.

The fun actually started after we bought the mats. We went to the store, and I picked out 28 mats, 8 red and 20 grey. I’d originally wanted black instead of grey, but

27 1mx1m mats in the back of a very small car

they didn’t have enough. Turns out, they didn’t have enough grey either (I’m still missing one grey tile. I have to go back to the store for it). The guy loaded them up onto a large cart and followed us outside to our car…. our very small car. Since we’ve only been here a few months, we still have a rental car, and as you can see, it’s itty bitty. I don’t even think the back area is one meter wide. We had to fold the mats a little to slide them in. The guy from the store and I walked out, looked at the car, looked back at the mats, and then looked at each other. Then he goes ‘don’t worry, it’ll fit.’ I said ‘let’s do it!’ With my mom in the driver’s seat, and my little brother in the passenger’s seat, I folded the backseats down forward as much as they would go, and the store man and I proceeded to stuff 27 1mx1m mats into the back of the car. Turns out, they actually did fit, although they reached the top of the car. I had to squish into the passenger’s seat with my brother, and my mom couldn’t use her rear-view mirror, but it all worked out in the end.

Once we got home, I had to pry all the mats out and carry them upstairs, and then the next day I got to work. I had to clean both rooms, sweep and mop that sort of thing. I had to move the dining table in the smaller room, then drag in the sofa and television from the bigger room, and figure out how to arrange them. Then I started laying out all the mats, and putting them together. All together, I think it came out nicely. Now I can do drills at home, as well as other calisthenic workouts we do in jiu-jitsu, and get in some extra training on the weekends when I invite some of the guys over. What do you think?

Oss! See you on the mat.

The Before & After

The Transformation

 

The mat’s reaching up to the ceiling, packed over the backseats.

What You Learn From Rolling With Black Belts

So last night was my first open mat. I got there early, and 20 minutes later some people started to show up. We waited around on the mats, stretching and doing light individual warm ups until some other people showed up. Someone set the clock to 7 minute rounds, with maybe a minute and a half of rest. Then we got to work. I was kind of unsure of what to do as this was my first time, but then a black belt around my size noticed my distress. He just called me over all casual like, said oss, and we started. I decided to follow his pace. I wasn’t going to be that guy – the guy who rolls as if his life depended on it, when his partner is taking it easy. Sure enough, we had a slow, very technical roll just to get the blood pumping. I played open guard, and I really liked that sometimes, he let me just sit there figuring out what I wanted to do next. My next roll was with a white belt who wanted some help, so I did a couple of rounds with him. After that, I rolled with another black belt who was a bit heavier than me, and this roll was a little more fast paced, and he applied a lot of pressure but he wasn’t trying to kill me. I played open guard, but I wasn’t going for sweeps, just practicing grips, posting, hooking, and switching between all the different types of guards. I even went inverted a few times, something I don’t do often – mostly because it’s a hard thing to try out when your partner goes hard. He played with me there for a little while, then tried to pass and get to sidemount, which he did. My next roll was with an older black belt, which I really enjoyed. We had a great pace, transitioned through a lot of movements, and he pointed out that I could go to omoplota which I never would have seen if he hadn’t shown me. He even put me in a submission or two and let me work out of them.

After that, I rolled with one of the brown belts that had stopped by earlier in the week. We had a good roll. I tried to play open guard, but he wasn’t going for that. He put on a lot of pressure, and took side control. I appreciated it, because bottom sidecontrol is probably where I struggle the most. He set up a choke a few times, and I defended for a while, but after he had it set up real good, I just tapped. No point in just sitting there and wasting our time. We went again, and this time I tried to play top game, but I had trouble passing his guard. I got swept, but towards the end I started to gain a little control from the bottom.

My favorite roll was with a black belt who was really helpful. He gave me some pointers when I was passing the guard, and showed me a nice choke from sidemount, when you roll your opponent onto his side, with his back facing you. After I applied the choke and we reset, the bell rang, signaling only thirty seconds left in the round. He looked at me and said, “you have 30 seconds to redo what we just did.” That was just awesome. So we started from the knees, and I had to get back to the same position, and do the choke he just taught me. I really enjoyed that.

There was another white belt, and some more black belts that I rolled with, but honestly, I don’t remember them that well. I was there training for two hours, rolling for most of it, but let me tell you, seven minute rounds were never more fun. Black belts have a way of rolling that’s just so light and carefree. They have no problem going slow, something I try to get the white belts and even some blue belts to do when I do the normal training classes. Quite frankly, they roll too hard. Not just using strength, which is normal for almost any white belt, but rolling too fast, and being explosive. When you train like that, you don’t actually learn anything. You’re going too fast to observe and absorb anything! You don’t have time to set anything up, you can’t see how your partner counters, or what you can do from each position. You’re just reacting constantly, and that’s great, but it’s not the greatest way to learn. If a black belt can roll slow, then you can roll even slower. I think this is a problem with the white belts here especially, because the environment in Abu Dhabi is so heavily focused on competition. The country holds one of the biggest competitions – the Abu Dhabi World Jiu-Jitsu Championships – every year, as well as smaller ones throughout the year. Because of this, they roll every round as if it’s a competition. They have to get the tap out. If there’s anything you can learn from the black belts, it’s this: ‘it’s not always about tapping somebody out’. I only tapped out maybe two or three times in two hours of training, and that was with people who could have arguably tapped me out at any given moment.

The lesson learned? Tapping someone out is great, but it doesn’t always lead to the most growth in jiu-jitsu. As my professor used to say, “If you tap someone out, then what? You’ve got to stop, get back to the knees, and reset. You have to start all over again. You’re stopping the learning process.”

 

Oss! See you on the mat.