Jiu-Jitsu: The Life Hack to making Friends while Traveling

The crew that showed up to the tournament

I was talking to a good friend the other day and they made me realize one of the great perks of training while you travel. This friend and I both enjoy traveling, and get do it for work as well as for fun. They were lamenting about how hard it is to make new friends every time that they moved. After a recent relocation from the East Coast to the Midwest, they were having a hard time meeting people with shared interests to do things with. 

This observation really threw me off because it is such a vastly different experience than my own with relocating to California. It really made me realize how lucky I am to get to train in Jiu-Jitsu and get to be able to meet so many different people that are a part of such a great community. 

My new job position required me to temporarily relocate from North Carolina to California. Something that I was completely stoked about. I have been wanting to train out here for over 3 years, and now I was getting paid to make the trip. It was almost to good to even be believable. The move was a big adjustment though. It put me on a new team with new coworkers and dropped me in an area that I didn't know a single soul. My first week in Oceanside I spent trying to train at every school that I could. I had been transplanted into the mecca of Jiu-Jitsu and I want to make the most of the opportunity. During that first week I dropped into CSG 360 Jiu Jitsu after a friend of a friend recommended the school to me. All of the schools that I visited were extremely welcoming and had a lot of positive qualities to them, but I felt like I was at home as soon as I walked into CSG 360.

After training Saturday morning and getting some really good rolls in, the team invited me to join them at a local tournament that afternoon to cheer on one of their teammates. The tournament was a great experience. I found myself nervously jumping up and down cheering on the team's competitor, even though I hadn't even met them yet. After the tournament, the team invited me to join them for dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings where we swapped Jiu-Jitsu and life stories and just had a great time hanging out as a team. 

The team at dinner

The whole day was a great experience and it really highlighted how awesome it is to train. It allowed me to immediately connect with a bunch of people over our shared love for the sport and it gave me a whole new group of friends to do things with in this new city.

In the short time since then I've enjoyed a bunch of really good training with the team. The following day a couple of us met up and rolled for 2 hours straight, one of the best way I can think of to spend a Sunday afternoon. We have put in many good training sessions since then as well and I am sure that there will be many more to come. Some of which will probably make there way on to here.

Overall though, it's a really good feeling to know that I can travel pretty much anywhere in the world, drop into a school and be welcomed into a new team. 

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He trains out of Cornerstone BJJ in Fayetteville, NC. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combatives tournaments.