Saint Petersburg FL Training

Hi all,

This is my first post. I new to the bjj world but have a wrestling background. I have been training at a local mma gym that grapples 2-3 times a week. I'm currently undecided between switching to st pete gracie, Clearwater gracie or staying where I am due to not wanting to train in the gi. Does anyone out there have suggestions as to were I will be able to progress the most?

Side note: I have no interest in actual mma fighting. At the most I would like to compete in local low level grappling tournaments for fun.

Any help would be amazing.
Thanks in advance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joey Johnson

Hi all,

This is my first post. I new to the bjj world but have a wrestling background. I have been training at a local mma gym that grapples 2-3 times a week. I'm currently undecided between switching to st pete gracie, Clearwater gracie or staying where I am due to not wanting to train in the gi. Does anyone out there have suggestions as to were I will be able to progress the most?

Side note: I have no interest in actual mma fighting. At the most I would like to compete in local low level grappling tournaments for fun.

Any help would be amazing.
Thanks in advance.

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Hi Joey! I'm moving to USF from Boca in about 2 weeks for school. I have been researching the jits and mma scene in the area and what I have found is that it is dominated by Gracie Barra; however, many of these gracie schools do considerable amounts of nogi (what both of us are really interested in). Some of the schools I'm intested in checking out are: Evolution Martial Arts, Robson Maura's academy(for gi), Gracie Tampa, and a few smaller MMA schools. Evolution's head jits man is Ryan Cook and I've only seen good thing about him in videos plus his focus in nogi! Robson is obviously a legend. Gracie Tampa is also largely nogi and is led by Rob Khan, also a nogi guy. I hope this helps and I'd definitely like to train with you in the future.

If anyone has the DL on the jits scene or any instructors/gyms in the Tampa area please post!

Gracie Fighter Tampa is a Cesar Gracie affiliate. Plenty of nogi.
http://graciefightertampa.com

Be sure to train with Tyler. You can learn a fuck ton from him.

Gracie Barra Tampa has some good guys. The one good thing is Gracie Barra schools are very tournament or oriented. So if you like competition they will help. I do wish we had more NOGI classes but whatch gonna do? Need 10 to make it to Central Florida already. I'm sure we'll get one right after I move to SoCal lol