Gokor's Gym in Los Angeles

[revtruhrt]

I sat in on the MMA class at Gokor's Gym in North Hollywood the other day. Here are my impressions, in case you are looking for a place to train.

The gym itself is pretty nice for an MMA gym. There was a huge mix of students---people who had been there maybe a month to legit professional fighters. (The day I was there, Manny Gamburyan and some other UFC guys were training alongside the regular students.)

Gene Lebell starts off the class with some judo instruction, which was AWESOME. And then Gokor takes over with some submission techniques. Afterwards, they'll have open grappling and Gokor will walk around correcting form.

I've been doing Muay Thai at Muay Thai Academy up the street and randomly heard about this gym. It's weird, because Gene and Gokor are so famous, but a lot of people out here haven't heard about it.

I'm not the most experienced jiu-jitsu guy (I can pull guard, do an armbar, and start crying when someone stacks me), but it looked a quite bit different than BJJ. You'd see more scrambling (from the sambo part of their system) and some weird rolling submissions.

And the takedowns were UNREAL.

Everyone was super nice. Manny, Gene, and Gokor all came up to me and shook my hand during the evening. And I was just kind of hanging out in the spectator area. Definitely a cool, relaxed vibe at this palce.

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Also, if anyone here trains at Legends, do you feel like you get your money's worth? It's about the same price to train at both MTA/Gokor's Gym. But I live in Studio City, so I don't want to fight the traffic to get into Hollywood if I can avoid it.

[agentofevil]

Hey man, glad to see another LA cat around here

I trained at Gokors old school in little armenia a couple of years ago and definitely had the same experience, both Gokor and Manny were really knowlegeable and helpful teachers as well as a lot of the seniors you can randori with. I had to stop going because of my job but was always looking to check out the operation in North Hollywood.

As far as Legends goes I took Eddie Bravos class only and I think its really great if you like his style of BJJ. The privates they make you take are important even if you have some background because they show a lot of his foundation terminology so when you join the regular class youre not all fucked up with his wacky terms for positions. The price is fair for 3 nights a week including the takedown class ( although I never have time to make that one as much as I would like)

I cant really speak about the legends MMA classes because I only take eddies class, so i think the cost is worth it, but again you either like eddies style (no gi bjj) or Gene and Gokors (Judo, takedowns and Sambo) So I think its more of what type of training you are looking for specifically.

Hope that helps