Curitiba and CM System
I arrived late at night; luckily the cab driver knew exactly where he was going, and the big well-lit "CM System" sign indicated we'd arrived at the correct destination. I buzzed the door a couple times, and a tough-looking dude with a shaved head and a nasty black eye walks up. He is a stone dead ringer for Royce Gracie, and he waits for me to speak.
"Um...eu venho...uh..treinar aqui em..."
"Training?" he says.
"Yeah," I say, relieved.
"Cristiano knows?"
"Yeah."
"OK."
We walk down a flight of stairs and opens the door to the apartment. A small room contains three bunk beds and just enough space to get my suitcase by. I am shown the kitchen, lit by a single light. My new friend, whose name turns out to be Joe, explains there's a sink, some dishes, the microwave is new, the oven doesn't work but the stove's burners do. The cabinets are few and for some reason about 7 feet high, such that almost everyone has to reach up to get what they need. I'm shown the bathroom (no hot water, and don't flush the toilet paper) and finally my bedroom, which I'll be sharing with him and two others.
Joe tells me that the main room is for the Brazilians and this room is for the foreigners, and that I definitely want to be in this room because the Brazilians are going to be coming back late after drinking and clubbing and will be loud. We try without success to get one of the bunk beds into our room. I tell him not to bother and simply grab the mattresses off the unused bunks in the main room and put them on the floor. Joe mentions the internet so I hack in for the wifi password. But my battery is low and the router is occupying the only plug I can find.
I'm not quite sure what I've gotten myself into. To be honest, I'm a total fucking princess by most people's standards. I think even among people who grew up middle-class in Canada I'm a little bitch when it comes to living conditions. I'm equally happy in a Holiday Inn Express as I am at a Hilton but get me much below that and my resolve is getting tested. I particularly hate public bathrooms and shared bathrooms and am just generally really easily grossed out by stuff. Like I said, I'm a total fucking princess when it comes to stuff like this.
A day later, I have to admit, it's not that bad. The guys here are all great. Joe, who at first I thought was a scary, intimidating badass, actually is a super low-key and thoughtful person (who also shares a Ryan Hall man-crush in common with me). He took his time to show me around the neighbourhood and got me acquainted with everything. He's an interesting guy too. He's 48 years old and basically came down here 4 months ago with very minimal MMA training, showed up, and decided to start training three times a day with a bunch of killers. The Brazilians I'm sharing the place with are pro MMA fighters Naldo Silva (7-2) and Paulo Diniz (4-2). There is a language barrier but they also seem like good guys. And they are loud but it didn't stop me from getting a decent night's sleep, nor did my bed situation. So ultimately I think it'll be okay.
Perhaps the most interesting part of my day was around 6:30 or so, about an hour before the night time BJJ class. Obviously Diniz and Naldo have a lot of friends in the academy so they just sort of hang around in our apartment before class. The computer is in our room and eventually someone gets the idea to put on the GSP/Koscheck fight from Saturday night. I am introduced to a number of other pro fighters and all of a sudden there is like half a ton of professional, high-level fighter in my bedroom analyzing this title fight. It was pretty wild.
The coolest part is that I have this really intimate look at the lives of professional fighters on the margin. These guys have sacrificed a lot to train and live in this gym. They of course are living very modest lifestyles, but they seem genuinely happy with their lot. They are doing what they want to do and that's really all that matters.
As for training, it's definitely different from in North America. I've probably been to about 20 gyms in North America and Europe and they are all pretty much the same. Show up for class, do the class, go home. Here it's much less formal. Only the 7:30 PM class looks like that. At 11 AM there is "Pro Training" which is either boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, submission grappling, or MMA, depending on the day of the week. Today was boxing so I skipped it on account of my arm. So did everyone else, other than Joe. Later on, Joe would tell me he was going to grab Diniz around 4pm and just do some work with him in the gym. Completely informal, ad hoc training. That's one thing that's pretty good about living on-site; I pretty much just have 24/7 access to the facilities whenever I want.
The "noon" (read 12:30) BJJ class was just me, Diniz and one other blue belt. We did some easy warmups, some quick drills and pretty much just rolled. The 7:30 PM class, as I mentioned, was a more structured class with warmups, techniques, and rolling. Lots of rolling. I was really shocked my cardio made it through since I basically haven't rolled in three weeks; luckily I sort of kept up with running, skipping and similar boring-ass cardio while in Floripa.
The dudes here are tough though, no doubt. A few of them are going easy but a lot of them are playing for real. I'm being super-protective of my arm, to the point where if I feel a threat on my left arm, I will give up a position that's probably more dangerous than the original attack. But I think that's the right thing to do. I'm not too proud to tap here, even to white belts. I don't know anyone and really it doesn't matter. I'm here to learn, and I can't learn if I'm not healthy.
That's it for now for life at the academy. There's stuff to talk about with respect to Curitiba and the neighbourhood as well, but I'll have to put that on hold for now (not that hard since I haven't done much other than shop for groceries so far).
"Um...eu venho...uh..treinar aqui em..."
"Training?" he says.
"Yeah," I say, relieved.
"Cristiano knows?"
"Yeah."
"OK."
We walk down a flight of stairs and opens the door to the apartment. A small room contains three bunk beds and just enough space to get my suitcase by. I am shown the kitchen, lit by a single light. My new friend, whose name turns out to be Joe, explains there's a sink, some dishes, the microwave is new, the oven doesn't work but the stove's burners do. The cabinets are few and for some reason about 7 feet high, such that almost everyone has to reach up to get what they need. I'm shown the bathroom (no hot water, and don't flush the toilet paper) and finally my bedroom, which I'll be sharing with him and two others.
Joe tells me that the main room is for the Brazilians and this room is for the foreigners, and that I definitely want to be in this room because the Brazilians are going to be coming back late after drinking and clubbing and will be loud. We try without success to get one of the bunk beds into our room. I tell him not to bother and simply grab the mattresses off the unused bunks in the main room and put them on the floor. Joe mentions the internet so I hack in for the wifi password. But my battery is low and the router is occupying the only plug I can find.
I'm not quite sure what I've gotten myself into. To be honest, I'm a total fucking princess by most people's standards. I think even among people who grew up middle-class in Canada I'm a little bitch when it comes to living conditions. I'm equally happy in a Holiday Inn Express as I am at a Hilton but get me much below that and my resolve is getting tested. I particularly hate public bathrooms and shared bathrooms and am just generally really easily grossed out by stuff. Like I said, I'm a total fucking princess when it comes to stuff like this.
A day later, I have to admit, it's not that bad. The guys here are all great. Joe, who at first I thought was a scary, intimidating badass, actually is a super low-key and thoughtful person (who also shares a Ryan Hall man-crush in common with me). He took his time to show me around the neighbourhood and got me acquainted with everything. He's an interesting guy too. He's 48 years old and basically came down here 4 months ago with very minimal MMA training, showed up, and decided to start training three times a day with a bunch of killers. The Brazilians I'm sharing the place with are pro MMA fighters Naldo Silva (7-2) and Paulo Diniz (4-2). There is a language barrier but they also seem like good guys. And they are loud but it didn't stop me from getting a decent night's sleep, nor did my bed situation. So ultimately I think it'll be okay.
Perhaps the most interesting part of my day was around 6:30 or so, about an hour before the night time BJJ class. Obviously Diniz and Naldo have a lot of friends in the academy so they just sort of hang around in our apartment before class. The computer is in our room and eventually someone gets the idea to put on the GSP/Koscheck fight from Saturday night. I am introduced to a number of other pro fighters and all of a sudden there is like half a ton of professional, high-level fighter in my bedroom analyzing this title fight. It was pretty wild.
The coolest part is that I have this really intimate look at the lives of professional fighters on the margin. These guys have sacrificed a lot to train and live in this gym. They of course are living very modest lifestyles, but they seem genuinely happy with their lot. They are doing what they want to do and that's really all that matters.
As for training, it's definitely different from in North America. I've probably been to about 20 gyms in North America and Europe and they are all pretty much the same. Show up for class, do the class, go home. Here it's much less formal. Only the 7:30 PM class looks like that. At 11 AM there is "Pro Training" which is either boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, submission grappling, or MMA, depending on the day of the week. Today was boxing so I skipped it on account of my arm. So did everyone else, other than Joe. Later on, Joe would tell me he was going to grab Diniz around 4pm and just do some work with him in the gym. Completely informal, ad hoc training. That's one thing that's pretty good about living on-site; I pretty much just have 24/7 access to the facilities whenever I want.
The "noon" (read 12:30) BJJ class was just me, Diniz and one other blue belt. We did some easy warmups, some quick drills and pretty much just rolled. The 7:30 PM class, as I mentioned, was a more structured class with warmups, techniques, and rolling. Lots of rolling. I was really shocked my cardio made it through since I basically haven't rolled in three weeks; luckily I sort of kept up with running, skipping and similar boring-ass cardio while in Floripa.
The dudes here are tough though, no doubt. A few of them are going easy but a lot of them are playing for real. I'm being super-protective of my arm, to the point where if I feel a threat on my left arm, I will give up a position that's probably more dangerous than the original attack. But I think that's the right thing to do. I'm not too proud to tap here, even to white belts. I don't know anyone and really it doesn't matter. I'm here to learn, and I can't learn if I'm not healthy.
That's it for now for life at the academy. There's stuff to talk about with respect to Curitiba and the neighbourhood as well, but I'll have to put that on hold for now (not that hard since I haven't done much other than shop for groceries so far).