Woodchuck and the Lazy Lizard go to Derby City MMA!

Tony Clemente, also known as "The Lazy Lizard" (A Lanky Fight Gear and We Defy sponsored athlete) is really the person that got me started on JiuJitsu traveling, and eventually the birth of this blog. I really wish that I would have started recording our travels then because we have now visited 8 different academies across 5 different states over the past 2 years. There is always a ton of good training, many new friends made, and a lot of good food involved.


While past trips may one day get retold on here, my most recent JiuJitsu trip was visiting Tony at his new home school, Derby City MMA in Lousville KY, for a week of tough training.


The school is home to the well known Chewy and Chad "The Beast" Hardy. It also houses a bunch of competitive purple and brown belts that I was eagerly looking forward to rolling against and training with. As a 205lb guy I always love finding other heavyweights to test myself against and there was plenty to pick from here!

The Highlights:
-Private lessons with Chad Hardy. In 5 years of training, I've never gotten to have a "true" private lesson with a black belt. Well this past week I was able to have not one, but four private lessons with Chad. It was phenomenal to get individualized instruction from a fellow lanky practitioner. We analyzed my game and Chad either provided specific tweaks to tighten up certain techniques, as well as introducing me to new ones. Fear the Monoplata! I'm looking forward to introducing that particular submission to unsuspecting training partners. Needless to say I walked away from those sessions with a bunch of notes and a lot of things to improve upon.

-No Gi training. Derby City loves their no gi! I have admitted before that I have a tendency of passing over no gi classes for the ones that let me don my favorite gi's. It was great to spend more time this week focusing on no gi and I was definitely shown that I have a lot to improve upon there.

-Training and rolling with Chewy. JiuJitsu is one of the few sports that lets you train with your heroes. I'm a huge fan of Chewy and love watching his technical videos. I not only got to be in one of his classes, but got a six minute roll in as well! I can tell y'all that I have a long ways to go before I'm competing at level.

-The food! Oh my lawd the food! Kentucky is home to some world class BBQ joints. With neither one of us having upcoming tournaments to make weight for and a big appetite from training, we consumed as much of it as we could! It's going to be a week of chicken and salads after eating so many gravy covered plates of food 😆

The untold downside of training is the amount of laundry that you will have to deal with. The picture on the left is what you get with two guys training 2-3 classes a day.

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 Combative tournaments.