Training in Korea
I’m in Korea to visit my family. I have days mostly free so I’ve been training with John Frankl. John is a totally cool guy who teaches BJJ at two different locations in Seoul. He has a regular academy in Apgujeong which is a nice part of Seoul. He also teaches classes at Yonsei University. Yonsei is a prestigious university here in Korea. John graciously allowed me to train with his crew so I’m going to classes at Yonsei while I’m here in Seoul for the next two weeks.
The Yonsei academy is in the top of a big gymnasium that looks like an airplane hangar. You climb up these rickety stairs to get to the mat room. When I was changing one of the students saw me standing barefoot on the old mat, and was all, “You probably don’t want to be standing on that barefoot.” I hopped off that sucker like I had ants in my pants.
On the other side of the mat room there are some new mats that were being mopped down when I showed up. There’s a soft spot in one corner of the mat. I wanted to do one of those super-dramatic breakfalls like they do on TNA but I decided I should try to make a good impression and not be an ass right away.
The team here is really cool. It’s about half expats and half Korean people. John will first give the instruction in English and then give the Korean version for the benefit of the Korean students. John and the other expats all seem to be fluent in Korean which makes me feel like a total dumb ass. I grew up in a Korean family but I can barely count to ten.
Anyway, back to the team - it’s interesting rolling here because the population is so transient. A lot of these guys trained in different places and everyone’s game is sort of different. I get the impression that people come and go here which makes me wonder how “deep” John’s team is. I’m guessing that the Apgujeong crew is more static.
John is an excellent teacher. His style of teaching is very technical and he’ll explain the context of what you’re doing so it makes sense. He showed us some amazing setups off a pendulum sweep. Since I’m trying to improve my guard game I’m pretty stoked to try this stuff.
p.s. I will post some more pictures later…
June 19th, 2008 at 12:31 am
I had the pleasure of training with John in Manchester, England a few years ago - in fact I think it was back when I got my blue belt! He is a super cool guy and a great coach, no doubt
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
It’s good to see you are still out there training even if it’s halfway around the world..
June 29th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I get a similar feeling with Turkish: when you grow up in a family where people are speaking what is supposed to be ‘your’ language, feels kinda silly when you can only manage baby-talk. I’ve been telling myself for years its all sitting there in my subconscious waiting to be teased out by an extended stint in Turkey, but yet to get off my arse and actually do something about it (e.g., military service, or even just a long holiday with my gf).
Cool that you’re presumably getting the chance to work on your languages in Korea, particularly if you can do it while training BJJ.