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| | | BJJ Globetrotters Newsletter // October 2023 | | Dear Globetrotters,
After the busy summer of camps, September was a month of recovering and planning for next season. I finally had time to wrap up some details on all the camps for next year and there were lots of announcements. In case you missed any, here are all of them: Obviously, Camp 100 is a bit special as it will be nothing like a regular camp. We're basically hosting a full scale festival in a castle to celebrate that we have done one hundred BJJ Globetrotters camps. The regular tickets sold out in a few hours, but if you can contribute with something to the event (for instance DJ, entertainment, audio/visual stuff, etc.), then you can still apply for "contribution tickets". Read more on the Camp 100 page.
Writing this, I am sitting in an airport in Portugal and waiting for my flight to Poland for Zen Camp. It's the first time we've attempted doing this for a full week and I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in the forest and on the mats there!
Have a nice day,
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What you'll find in this month's newsletter: - Featured Globetrotter: Matt McDonald
- Globetrotters Academy in Focus: Pirate BJJ
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| | Less than half of the tickets left for next camp in beautiful Tallinn |
| | * From April 22nd to 27th, 2024 *
* In Tallinn, Estonia *
* Less than 20 minutes from Tallinn airport *
* Huge mat space in a beautiful medieval town *
* Six-day training camp *
* Gi and no-gi classes all day long *
* High-level international instructors *
* Yoga every morning *
* All experience levels and affiliations welcome! *
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| | | | Featured Globetrotter: Matt McDonald |
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| | Age: 36.9
Belt: Purple
Profession: My background is in software engineering, and currently I’m working on a property maintenance company and rehabbing ugly houses.
How many years in BJJ: 4.5 years, with some time off for injuries.
Other martial arts: I wrestled in high school, where I won the superlative award for Best Catwoman Costume.
Where do you live: Sarasota, Florida, United States
Where are you from: I was born in Columbia, South Carolina, but I’ve moved around a lot. Columbia, Missouri is mostly where I grew up. One day I’ll probably moving to another Columbia.
Other fun or curious information you would like to share: - I’ve started doing a kimura with my feet from side control. For now I’m calling it the Mattlock.
- I have a cautionary tale about competing without understanding the side effects of your medication. I was taking antibiotics for the week leading up to my first tournament. Overall it wasn’t bad, but it did affect my stomach. Midway through my first match, I realized I was starting to have a downstairs mixup. We were in a scramble, and ended up way off the mats. I was confused at why we weren’t being reset, everyone was yelling, and I had to tap really early to an armbar so I could run to the bathroom before things went south. I’m just glad my opponent never got to knee mount.
- I’m really into miniature wargaming, to the point that I go to several conventions. I have several armies and spend a ton of time hunched over painting my models.
- I co-founded a startup that now employs around 3000 people and has branches in 36 states.
- My wife is smart, beautiful, kind, and puts up with me for some reason. And she’s definitely not helping me write this.
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| | Tell us what inspired you to travel and train? I found a post about BJJ Globetrotters on Reddit when I was a few months into BJJ. I went to the Heidelberg camp in 2019 and fell in love. I also sent a bunch of emails out to people on the Matsurfing website, and went to visit anywhere that someone answered from. I ended up training with people who didn’t speak much English and it was a really neat experience.
Tell us about your most recent travel and your upcoming travel – where have you been and where are you going?
I’m writing this from Asheville, North Carolina. Some of my training partners and I took a road trip up to spend the weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains for Camp Grappalachia - which I only learned about because I met several awesome people at Maine Camp a few years back and stayed in touch. Our next trip is to Poland for Zen Camp, with a stopover in London to visit a friend who has an addiction to wristlocks.
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| | What are the things you enjoy about travelling? The bread! The US doesn’t have good bread, and I love finding the good stuff when I travel. More generally, I’m usually looking to try all of the local foods.
Can you give us some examples of experiences you had that makes it worth traveling and training?
Oh man, where to start? I dressed up as a Happy Meal for a wrestling match. Attended a dinner concert for an 80s Estonian pop star. Watched an underground scooter race. Participated in the most epic dodgeball upset. Jumped into Lake Michigan in February. Went to prom at camp. Grappled on a waterfall. Wrestled with a viking in Iceland. Took a helicopter tour in the Faroe Islands. Explored a black sand beach on an ATV. So many cool experiences, and they were all made so fun by the people that we were with. Some of my closest friends are people that I’ve met through traveling and training.
What has so far been the most surprising experience for you when traveling?
Some of the people at Globetrotters camps are able to party so late and be on the mats so early. It will always be a mystery to me. |
| | Are you a budget traveller – and if so how do you plan for a cheap trip?
I have a budget, but I’m not a budget traveller. I like staying in fun places, and at a lot of camps I will organize sharing a large Airbnb. My best budget strategy is to play the reward points game, and my favorite tool is roame.travel which helps me find cheap award flights.
If you were to pass on travel advice to your fellow Globetrotters, what would it be? Take more photos. Many times I’ve been scrolling through my photos and been reminded of a fun event that I’d completely forgotten about. Without photos, those memories might have been forgotten.
I think it’s also important to get out of your comfort zone from time to time. Try something that you wouldn’t normally do - it can be good for you to be a little uncomfortable from time to time. It builds character or something.
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| | | | Last 5 tickets left for next Caribbean Island Camp! |
| | * December 4 – 10, 2023 in Saint Barthélemy *
* Easily reachable from United States and Europe *
* Seven-day Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training camp *
* Six nights central accommodation *
* An affordable chance to visit exclusive celebrity island *
* Dinners in local restaurants *
* Daily surf lessons and board rental *
* Catamaran boat trip *
* Fresh bread from local bakery every morning *
* Laundry service *
* Stay extra nights at affordable rate *
* Minivans and cars available for exploring the island *
* Some of the world’s best beaches *
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| | | | BJJ Globetrotters Academy in Focus: Pirate BJJ |
| | Where is the gym located?
Pirate BJJ
312 Palmer Road, Suite A
Madison, AL 35758
USA
How many people train there?
Currently we have 30 kids training and 9 adults, hoping to continue to grow both the adult and kid classes.
Is the gym growing - if so by how many new members each month or year?
We are growing! Albeit slowly, we’ve been adding 1-2 people here and there. It’s still our first month of operation so people are just finding out about Pirate BJJ. We have had a couple new kids since opening and a couple new adults.
What are the highest and lowest belt grades training?
Highest belt is a 1 stripe purple. The lowest is a no stripe white belt with a couple weeks of training.
When did the gym open?
Labor Day - September 4th, 2023!
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| | Some facts about you:
Name: Seth Spratlin Age: 37 Belt: 1 stripe brown Profession: Mechanical Engineer Years in BJJ: 6, my jiu jitsuversary is August 7th, 2017 Other martial arts: None Currently living in: Madison, Alabama, United States Originally from: I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. My dad is a Marine so growing up we moved every three years all over the US. I would call the southeastern US where I’m from. Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina are where I’ve lived the most. |
| | Please tell us the story of how your gym came into existence Well, like all good pirate stories, my gym began as a mutiny. I had been training at the same gym since starting Jiu Jitsu, and after a couple years had created and was running my own kids class. This former gym was set to move to a new building and was merging with a karate program into a mega-martial arts thing. I have long had a tumultuous relationship with my former coach, and I found out he was plotting to steal my kids’ class from me in the move and reorganization. So I struck first, and opened Pirate BJJ, taking my kids class and a few adults with me in the split.
Tell us about the people that train in the gym – who are they? I call them the Skeleton Crew: those few plucky adults who came with me in the move. They are less traditional, less formal than many practitioners. Most of them, myself included, are nerds. We like watching UFC, and we all have engineering and/or military service backgrounds. We don’t like silly warmups before class, and everyone is excited that I am moving to the ecological approach of teaching jiu jitsu.
Why do they train? Everyone has their own reasons. I know one is a lifelong martial artist who discovered he liked BJJ the best, another is former military who fell in love with BJJ after training combatives in the Army. Some are high school wrestlers who do BJJ because it’s like the pickup basketball version of their sport, and some are just coworkers of all these people: they got pestered enough to try it and now we won’t let them quit.
What are some of the challenges of running a BJJ gym in general, and in your area specifically? There are two main challenges I’ve faced so far. The first being the wearing of many, many hats. I’m not just an instructor, I’m the adult class instructor, the kids class instructor, the mat enforcer when out of towners visit, I’m also doing construction work to remodel the inside of my building to function as a gym better, I’m a businessman getting all the appropriate licenses and equipment, I’m the accountant doing billing and payments, I’m the IT guy running our website and social media presence (Pirate BJJ on FB and @piratebjjllc on Instagram!). If it’s related to running the gym then I’m either doing it myself or coordinating getting it done.
The other big challenge is one of the hats - advertising. Just getting the word out so that people know we exist. But doing that cheaply because everything about opening a gym is expensive. It’s tough.
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| | How do you see the future for BJJ in your area?
There’s a ton of potential here. We’re in Madison, but basically a suburb of Huntsville. There’s a huge Army base here, tons of law enforcement, and lots and lots of other engineering nerds like myself. Along with the ever-increasing popularity of BJJ, there’s just going to be a ton of growth in the area. I think there will be several more gyms that open in the next few years, hopefully mine has grown dramatically in that time.
What’s the best thing about your gym?The merch! Everybody loves a pirate theme! Ha, but seriously the openness. I have belt requirements and expectations available for anyone to review, so what I think constitutes each belt level is not a secret. I’m always happy to talk with anybody about what I’m doing or why in terms of how I teach classes and how I do promotions. I actively encourage everyone to go train anywhere and everywhere, and we gladly welcome anybody who wants to train, regardless of whatever gym they call home. And we have an excellent group here. We like to train hard and get after it and help each other get better, but we all have jobs to go to the next day so we take care of each other as well. Everybody here is just chasing skill, trying to get better at this crazy art we all love.
What would you recommend Globetrotters to see in your area apart from the inside of your gym? The NASA Space and Rocket center is not even 5 minutes away from Pirate BJJ. It is a fascinating place to tour if you are remotely interested in space or the US history of space travel. A lot of retired engineers who worked on programs like Apollo just hang out there and they are happy to talk about what it was like and what they worked on.
We have a ton of fabulous local breweries, restaurants, and food trucks right here in Huntsville and Madison. There’s a thriving classic car scene here as well. We’re also close to a lot of cool places to visit: Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Nashville if you like blues and country music, and Atlanta is just around the corner too.
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Thanks for sharing! If you'd like to visit Pirate BJJ, you can contact them here. |
| | | Our biggest camp and biggest mat space of the year! |
| | * From July 22nd to 27th, 2024 *
* In Pärnu, Estonia *
* Easy bus connection from Tallinn and Riga *
* Direct flights from Helsinki and Stockholm *
* Huge mat space in a beautiful beach town *
* Six-day training camp *
* 25+ black belt instructors *
* 45+ gi and nogi classes *
* 25+ hours of open mats *
* High-level international instructors *
* Yoga every morning *
* All experience levels and affiliations welcome! *
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