I visited the St. Petersburg school last night to check out the new gym and support the opening of the new school. It's in a really nice location, and the class was excellent.
Elite Training Center has a very well-equiped facility, with weight training equipment, a huge matspace (where they were doing a pilates class when I came in) and a second matspace for martial arts. It's a spacious place, and it looked extra large thanks to the mirrors on half the walls. There was a mens locker room with showers and several bathrooms for women. I saw several wavemasters and speedbags, and (my favorite) a crash mat for throws.
We started with warm-ups: carrying a partner, sprints (at 20% and going up to 100%), pull-ups using your partner's lapels. For techniques, we worked on breaking the head-and-arm clinch to a two-on-one clinch, then drop to single leg. Then we worked on an outside single leg, with focus on going low on the penetration step and driving your head into the ribs, and ending with finishing the single by circling out, lifting the leg up and sweeping the other foot.
A new guy came in who had tried BJJ in his basic military training and wanted to do some more. I helped him with his first lesson (mount escape, guard pass, side control to mount, americana), then he joined the rest of the class.
After drilling we did several rounds of passing the guard, with each person doing top and bottom then switching partners until everyone had cycled through.
To end the night, we did sparring for takedowns. Now I'm terrible at stand-up, but I hit the two-on-one and single leg several times, which is more a testament to the quality of the instruction than to my skill.
I did get a flying reverse omoplata, which is just all me.
Overall, a nice gym, high-quality instruction and a welcoming atmosphere. I definitely recommend checking it out.
