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| | | BJJ Globetrotters Newsletter // January 2026 | | Dear Globetrotters,
Happy New Year to all of you out there! I hope 2026 will be a great one for you, with some interesting BJJ travel plans. Walking into a gym somewhere in the world is always such a fantastic back door to truly visiting a place and getting to know the people there. Even if you are not traveling far, but just doing a one-day road trip to another town for an open mat, it is almost guaranteed to be a good experience that brings new friends.
I am writing this from Copenhagen airport, waiting for my flight towards Austria and the Winter Camps. This one has always been the most exhausting of the year so I'm actually a bit puzzled why we came up with the idea of doing two of them back-to-back this time 😄 If you don't receive a newsletter next month, go look for me somewhere in the Alps please.
This year is shaping up to be busy once again for our camps, and here is the updated ticket status for all of them: I wish you a wonderful first day of the year and all the best of luck for 2026! | | | |
What you'll find in this month's newsletter: - Photos from Caribbean Island Camp last month
- Featured Globetrotter: Adam Miniter
- Globetrotters Academy in Focus: BJJ Lab Winterthur
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| | | Together with more than 200 Jiu Jitsu enthusiasts, we’ll will spend a week together in the forest with more training and activities than you can possibly handle. We take care of absolutely everything – food, accommodation, laundry, and Jiu Jitsu. All you need to do is show up and get in your gi or shorts! |
| | | | Photos from Caribbean Island Camp last month |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Bring the family to Austria next summer! |
| | For this summer camp, we’re heading to beautiful Wagrain for five days of training among the rolling hillsides that are now brilliantly green and ready for you to explore.
We will have lots of Jiu Jitsu and activities for all ages!
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| | | | Featured Globetrotter: Adam Miniter |
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| | Age: 25
Belt: Blue
Profession: Assistant Psychologist
How many years in BJJ: 3.5
Other martial arts: No
Where do you live: Ireland
Where are you from: Ireland
Other fun or curious information you would like to share: Have driven a motorbike over an active volcano. |
| | What inspired you to travel and train? I have always loved fighting games and fighting in movies, so I always felt drawn to trying one out. I did boxing, taekwondo and such, but none of them clicked until BJJ. I still remember getting caught in a mounted triangle on day 1, but I loved it as it was exactly what I was looking for with real “sparring” feedback I hadn’t experienced previously. I have since trained a lot with my college club, which really built on the social aspect of BJJ, and my home club (where I continually get tapped by that now-purple belt who triangled me on day 1. Some things never change).
For travel I think most people like the idea of going on holidays, but I think when I studied abroad in Krakow, Poland it clicked alot more. Making use of as many Ryanair flights as possible, I have been very lucky to get a good bit of travel in with friends and family. Even that aforementioned BJJ college club does international trips, and I have trained with BJJ Globetrotters in Heidelberg twice, and in Alicante, Spain with Irish grappler Darragh O’Conaill once. They were my introduction to BJJ abroad, which led in part to this last trip.
Tell us about your most recent trip and what's next – where have you been and where are you going?
So…..it’s a long list. On this trip I hit: Paris, Eindhoven, Amsterdam, Bremen, Berlin, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Ljubliana, Innsbruck, Konstanz, Strasburg, Jura, Lyon, Grenoble, Annecy, Courmayeur, Trento, Venice, Florence, Saturnia, Naples, Paestum, Amalfi, Palermo, Etna, Messina, Tripani, Malta, Genoa, Nice, Cannes, Grasse, Montpellier, Andorra, Barcelona, Sitges, Valencia, Granada, Seville, Cadiz, Lagos, Lisbon, Sintra, Nazare, Porto, Leon, San Sebastian, and Bilbao. Just a few lol.
I was driving my motorbike around, doing some workaway stints in farms, gardens, and such. I got BJJ training in aswell, and it was really cool to see and train with people from all over the world. The biking was unlike anything I had experienced back at home in Ireland (such as actually having good weather) and met countless amazing people over the course of the journey. It’s hard to accurately describe the trip as a whole, but I would say that instead of looking at it as a holiday I do truly view it as an adventure (as cliche as that might sound). The difference being that an adventure has highs, lows, and unknowns, and you are different coming out the other end of it. To budget through it, many a day I went to Lidl for cheap food (baguettes with a ball of mozzarella became a regular fine dining experience for me) but I was surprised how comfortable I got with that side of things. After a while, you look forward to the consistency of a reliable meal, even if it won’t win any Michelin Stars any time soon.
As for what's next, after spending Christmas with my family at home, I am off to Thailand in the new year for a month of Muay Thai training, which will be a new experience. I absolutely cannot wait, but I doubt there are many Lidls over there.
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| | What do you enjoy most about travelling? Honestly, part of me came to like the unknown element of it after a while. Who will I meet, what will I see, where will I go? There are days that you just want reliability of “knowns”, but becoming more comfortable with the excitement of the “I don’t know” elements was a pleasant surprise. This being said, I had my accommodation nearly all planned before leaving, so that left the unknowns to be more exciting and less disastrous if not solved.
Any particularly memorable experiences that made it all worth it?
Probably too many to write about, but I’ll mention one in particular. I got unlucky coming through a roundabout in southern Germany at one point (mainland Europe has some Lovecraftian roundabouts. I can’t say that I am a fan of them all) and I had to straighten the bike to avoid gravel, and ended up hitting my right brake level on a curb, bending it backwards. Needless to say, not having brakes is not a good idea.
Thankfully, I managed to find a mechanic a few days later (taking a blowtorch to the metal for 3 - 4 hours did not do the job unfortunately) who bent it back into place. I think it was that same day, I was staying in one of the nicer accommodations on the trip, with an elderly German couple who played for an orchestra and lived in a log cabin. I left all my excess bags there, and it was just me and the bike for the evening. I went to the shop and bought a bag of cherries (the area is famous for them) and a freeway lemonade (70c well spent). Driving through fields of fruit, I ended up by the lake and pulled up on a raised carpark overlooking the setting sun. Sitting back and enjoying them cherries and lemonade after solving one of the first “big” problems on the trip was just… peaceful. Not as exciting as the volcano, but that memory definitely stands out.
What has surprised you the most while travelling? How much you can enjoy socializing and improve at it, even if you don’t consider yourself extremely extroverted. Due to the continuously changing nature of this trip, I met a lot of new people, inside and out of BJJ. From that, you get exposed to so many people, you just begin to acclimatize to socalizing in a way that home life doesn’t afford (in my experience). That initial anxiety of “Oh no, what will I say to introduce myself” and such just dissolves when you have done it a billion times. Changes like that, ones that are earned through experience, I think are lovely surprises. |
| | | Are you a budget traveller – and if so how do you plan for a cheap trip? I am and I am not. I absolutely could have budgeted better for this trip and spent less, but I think I found a balance that worked for me that I afforded myself the experiences I actually wanted. A few tips I would give from what I went through:
- Have accommodation planned and booked with the money set aside (I used Revolut). This takes away the headache and consistent pressure of finding the next spot, and means that you know right away if you can afford it. Once the money is set aside, do not touch it for something else. Saves you paying way more for last minute accommodation.
- Shops like Lidl, Mercadona, and others have really good cheap baked goods and fruit and veg. A ball of mozzarella is about 90c and has 20g of protein. That, with the premade cold 99c coffees they have—or smoothies—and you have have quite a substantial breakfast/lunch/dinner for really cheap.
- Before buying stuff (especially things like sweets, fizzy drinks etc.) just simply ask yourself do you actually want it. If yes, then fire away. But I often found I bought out of habit moreso than an actual want. Keep in mind, 10 Cokes or Sprites could equate to a nice dinner out somewhere. Them things add up, so it's good to make them count.
- It will cost more than you expect, I found. Have your planned budget and have your “means”. The bigger the gap. the better. You can go outside planned budget. You can't go outside your means.
- Do free things too and learn to enjoy them just as much. Going to parks, sitting by lakes, swimming at beaches, all these can be amazing and don’t cost a dime.
- Workaway and WWOOFing were great resources. I spent nearly 2.5 months out of the 6 helping on farms or in gardens for free accommodation and food. Most places are very very fair with the work balance, just make sure to read reviews and communicate with the owners. Absolute worst case scenario is you can just leave, as it's not contracted work. Some of the nicest periods of time though for me were from these places and the people in them.
Any advice for your fellow Globetrotters? Three parts with this. - Before leaving, I watched a Youtube video on how to go touring for the first time (i.e. a long motorbike trip). The first bit of advice was to just do it. Actually go, as if you wait for everything to be perfect and the stars to align, you might never go. You’ll be surprised at your own ability to figure the other stuff out on the fly.
- Plan it even if you don’t think its possible. This comes from Tim Ferris’s book, "The 4-Hour Work Week", and is how Thailand ended up being possible for me. I just assumed I couldn’t go, especially coming off the back of my 6-month touring trip. But part of the book makes you plan it out and make it real, not just a vague “it’s too expensive” or “I just can’t”. It is very possible some of your plans and ideas are not affordable, or manageable, but it gets you to stress test them. Best part is, if they “fail” to stand up to the stress test, it means you can actually do it!
- Do it for you and enjoy the journey. That includes the journey when you are back home too :)
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| | | | Heidelberg mega-camp is filling up already, don't wait too long to get your ticket! |
| | We’re heading back to Heidelberg for our biggest camp of the year and another incredible week of BJJ training, workshops, diving competitions, morning yoga sessions, midnight cocktail bar crawls, and free beer open mats.
This stunning university town has become a regular on our annual camp calendar and we are excited to see you all there!
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| | | | BJJ Globetrotters Academy in Focus: BJJ Lab Winterthur |
| | Where is the gym located?
Lagerhausstrasse 6, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland. It’s very near the main station of Winterthur.
How many people train there?
We have classes for children and for adults. In total we are about 40 people.
Is the gym growing - if so by how many new members each month or year?
We opened up in June 2025 and we are very happy about the amount of members we have. I don’t know the exact growth per month.
What are the highest and lowest belt grades training? Everybody is welcome to train at our gym and at the moment we have a lot of white belts. The highest belt training frequently at our gym is a brown belt. The association head coach (Patrick Louys) stops by from time to time.
When did the gym open?
We opened up in June 2025.
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| | Some facts about you:
Name: Tom Rodriguez Age: 28 Belt: Brown Profession: PhD candidate in Economics Years in BJJ: 9 Other martial arts: Thai Boxing experience Currently living in: Zürich, Switzerland Originally from: Switzerland |
| | Please tell us the story of how your gym came into existence Me and my brother wanted to have our own place to train and to teach people BJJ in a modern and relaxed environment. So we decided to open up a gym together. We found our gym space in Winterthur and were immediately convinced. We are still working full time so we are enjoying the gym without having to worry about the finances too much. We have a lot of cool new training partners and seeing how they are getting better week by week is truly the best part.
Tell us about the people that train in the gym – who are they? We have people from all walks of life. Students, blue collar workers, desk jockeys, and everything in between. I think it’s like in every other gym and it is great to have both young people training for competitions and parents trying to stay or get in shape.
Why do they train? As said, some want to compete one day and others just want to get in shape. But I think the common denominator is that they are having fun :) At least I hope so. |
| | What are some of the challenges of running a BJJ gym in general, and in your area specifically? It’s challenging to bring new people to the sport. I think a lot of beginners are afraid to visit a martial arts school because they have an image in their head about some aggressive dudes who might hurt them. Once you get them through the door though, most realize that it is no different from any other sports club.
How do you see the future for BJJ in your area?
I think BJJ is growing as a sport and therefore I believe BJJ will become more common in our area as well.
What’s the best thing about your gym?Our structured curriculum paired with a friendly and helpful environment where everyone is welcome to train and our goal is to help each other improve.
What would you recommend Globetrotters to see in your area apart from the inside of your gym? Only two minutes away from our gym is the old town of Winterthur. It’s a beautiful area with historic buildings, cafes, shops, and restaurants.
I might be a bit of a nerd for this recommendation, but you should definitely check out the Technorama (Swiss Science Center). It has many experiment stations where visitors can discover natural phenomena first-hand and with all the senses. It is very cool and I can personally recommend it for all ages.
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Thanks for sharing! If you'd like to visit BJJ Lab Winterthur, you can contact them here. |
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