Competition Class with Professor Gallegos at Apex Jiu Jitsu

One of the articles I've been working on lately is about what separates a good from a Jiu-Jitsu program. While writing about it, one particular class kept resurfacing. A competition class with Professor Gallegos at Apex Jiu JiuJitsu. I wrote a little about it HERE but wanted to revisit and share the memory with ya'll. When I was in California I made a 50 mile, 90 minute drive in San Diego traffic for a chance to visit Apex Jiu Jitsu and experience a Gallegos Association competition class.

While making the drive I'll be honest, I was questioning if travelling that far was worth a 60 minute class. Once class started though, this question was immediately replaced with the though of "holy crap, I don't know if I'm gonna survive this hour session." Before beginning, professor reminded everyone that we were here for a competition class. We were here to push each other to the next level and even if you weren't a competitor, it was your responsibility to push those that were as hard as you could. It kicked off with what I would call a military style smoke session designed for Jiu-Jitsu. It was drill, drill, drill PUSH-UPS! Drill, drill, drill PARTNER SIT-UPS!! New partner aaand take downs GO! There were no breaks and no pauses while explaining the what the drill should look like. I was too preoccupied to even glance around the room to see how everyone else was training, but I can say that every single person I paired up with upheld their responsibility of pushing me as hard as they could while I frantically tried to match their pace.

This was immediately followed by positional sparring. Competitors were identified and then spaced out on the mats while everyone else lined up on the wall. A position was put out, (such as pass, sweep or submit from guard) and every minute or so you were being paired with a fresh person from the wall that was coming at you with everything that they had.

What followed this was probably the most memorable of the night. We all grabbed a partner, and were told to drill our favorite chain of attacks from guard for 5 minutes, before switching and letting our partner go. I prefer to sweep rather than submit from guard, so I decided to chain a armbar --> shift to the side and attack an americana --> finish with a triangle. I laugh looking back on it because I thought that this would be were I would catch a break before we went into the rolling. Boy was I wrong. By minute 3 I could barely move. I painfully struggled to shift for the armbar, and my hip flexors fought back every time I tried to go fro the triangle. I was so impressed that what I considered to be such a simple series of movements had become so very difficult to execute, let alone execute well.

The last portion of the class was rolling. Similar to the positional sparring, competitors grabbed some mat space, while everyone else lined the wall. I actually can't remember much of this part, but I do vividly remember that every roll felt it was a tournament roll. It didn't matter how tired you were at this point, everyone was coming at you with everything they had and you did your best to match it.

The night ended with a bunch of smiles and hugs with the mandatory group pictures of course. I dragged myself out to my car and took a long pause while chugging water in order to work up the energy to drive home.

I was thoroughly impressed with every training session that with the Gallegos Association I was able to be a part of. Every one of their students I rolled with had a high level grappling game, which I attribute to the volume of drilling they do combined with their enthusiasm for hard training. One of the favorite things that I heard while there was that "You can teach a tough person technique, but you can't always teach a technical person to be tough."

Overall, I walked away from that training with two lessons learned. The first was how much you can accomplish in a short amount of time with the right framework. The second was a new perspective on drilling. I'm a rolling junkie and sometimes I look at drilling as something to get through in order to get to the rolling portion of class. The students there though showed me what the results of consistent, dedicated drilling look like.

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.