A Visit to Penn Training and Fitness

Well, big news in that I got married the week before last on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Besides having a great time with friends and family, I managed to squeeze in some time to visit BJ Penn’s school in Hilo. I thought I’d share the experience with you guys in case you were ever interested in stopping by.

The school is located in Hilo, which is the eastern side of the Big Island. Hilo is where more of the locals live, while the Kona on the west side is where the resorts and tourists are. We were staying in Kona and drove to Hilo, which takes about 2 hours.

The gym doesn’t look like much from the outside with typical old island style architecture. First thing you see when you go in is that the front of the gym is actually a regular fitness gym, which was fairly busy at about 5pm on a Wednesday. The MMA academy is through a door in the back and down a flight of stairs. It’s basically a converted warehouse with an octagon, a ring, heavybags, and a grappling training area in the back. If you’ve seen any of BJ’s MyGymShow episodes, it’ll all look familiar to you.

My wife was nice enough to hang out and wait while I took a no gi class with BJ’s brother Jay. We figured we probably won’t be back in Hilo very soon, so I had to take advantage of it :) It was too bad BJ wasn’t there himself, but we knew it was a crap shoot anyway. The drop in fee was around $25 which was good for a whole day of training. Jay was super cool. He had us do some guard passing drills and would then shape the class around the techniques he saw us to be deficient in. Very technical, very targeted instruction, and I didn’t feel like I got cheated out of twenty five bucks. There were only 3 other guys in the no gi class that day which was a bit disappointing. I was hoping to see some MMA legends hanging out there, but no such luck that day.

A big mahalo to Jay and everyone at the gym. I hope I get the opportunity to visit again! \m/

*