Today’s class was taught by a Korean gent who also teaches at the Apgujeong academy. In this picture he’s the guy making the tripod.

The class was taught in Korean so I was sort of scratching my head and trying to follow along. But Dane helped me out by translating. Dane is passing guard here.

A lot of the blue belts were practicing leg locks and heel hooks. These moves are off limits for white belts at Shawn Williams’ academy so I don’t know any of this stuff. Brian is doing a heel hook on Dane here.

The instructor helped me out with my sit-out from the north-south bottom position. Then he got hungry and decided to open some cans.

It’s the monsoon season in Korea so it’s raining like a mother. During class the rain was pounding on the roof of the hangar where we work out and it was really loud. For some reason I can’t stay hydrated here. My pee is a really weird radioactive yellow color. That means you’re dehydrated.

Anyhoo, I’m going to try to take better pictures today.

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…