Rolling on the High Seas: A BJJ Cruise From the Archive

From the Jiu Jitsu Style archive: in July 2015 we ran a short news piece about Grappler's Escape — a Caribbean cruise built around Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training, with Andre Galvao, Saulo and Xande Ribeiro on the seminar roster. More than a decade on, the original blurb has aged into something more interesting than a holiday ad. It's a snapshot of the exact moment BJJ stopped being a niche hobby you trained at the strip-mall academy and turned into a global lifestyle, complete with destination camps, retreats — and yes, cruises. We're reposting the original write-up below, then taking a look at where the "grappling getaway" went next.

The 2015 write-up

Who's up for a Caribbean cruise, training alongside Jiu Jitsu legends such as Andre Galvao, Saulo and Xande Ribeiro?

Grappler's Escape was a premier cruise vacation experience for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu enthusiasts of all levels, their friends and families. It offered a platform for traveling to new places, training with world-class instructors, and holidaying alone or with the family all at once. Alongside the BJJ bootcamp and seminar programme, the trip carried all the amenities of a traditional cruise: excursions, island touring, beach time, diving and snorkelling — plus everything on-board to fill the quieter hours.

The 2015 edition left Port of Miami aboard the Carnival Breeze on October 4th, heading to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel for five days and six nights of world-class Jiu Jitsu training, sun, and travel. With an all-star cast of champions from three different academies on board — including three of the top five pound-for-pound BJJ competitors of all time — it offered a uniquely powerful learning opportunity inside what was, essentially, a holiday.

A decade on

Looking back from 2026, what's striking is how normal this idea has become. In 2015 a BJJ cruise was still a novelty — a "you did what on vacation?" conversation when you got home. Today the calendar is full of grappling getaways: New Wave Jiu Jitsu camps in Austin, Atos camps in San Diego ahead of every IBJJF major, BJJ Globetrotters running multi-week training trips out of Iceland, Estonia, Costa Rica and Tenerife, and any number of seminars that quietly turn into mini-vacations because a half-dozen students fly in together.

The cast list has shifted, too. The Ribeiro brothers and Galvao are still on the mats and still coaching, but the names pulling in students from across the world now include Mikey Musumeci, the Ruotolo brothers, Gordon Ryan, Ffion Davies and Kaynan Duarte. The platforms have shifted with them — instructional apps, BJJ Fanatics, and a steady drip of free coaching on YouTube and Instagram have closed some of the distance between a regional gym and the elite rooms. But none of it replaces what the cruise was actually selling: a week with high-level training partners, in a setting that gives you a reason to bring the family.

The lesson the original piece was quietly making is the one that's held up best. If you can stack a holiday on top of a week of hard training with people far better than you, you'll come home a better grappler and you won't have spent the week feeling like you were neglecting everyone you love. The packaging changes; the value proposition doesn't.

See you on the mats.

Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, July 2015. Refreshed for 2026.