Training road trips are one of the best experiences in jiu jitsu. There is something about walking into a gym where nobody knows you, introducing yourself, and getting to work. You see how other schools train, you test your game against unfamiliar styles, and you come home with a perspective that your regular training partners cannot give you. Every grappler I know who has done a training road trip talks about it for years.
The problem has always been logistics. Planning a multi-gym road trip used to mean Googling gyms city by city, copying addresses into a maps app one at a time, checking hours and drop-in policies for each gym individually, and trying to string it all together into a route that makes geographic sense. It was a lot of work for something that should be fun.
That is exactly why the Road Trip Planner exists on BJJ Recon.
How It Works
Start by browsing the BJJ Recon map. When you find a gym you want to visit, tap the road trip icon on the gym card and it gets added as a stop. You can save gyms to two separate named trips, so you can plan a weekend run and a longer vacation route at the same time.
Once you have added your stops, open the planner. Set a starting point by typing your home address, your home gym, or wherever you are leaving from. Then drag your stops into the order you want to drive them. The drag-to-reorder interface makes it easy to rearrange your route until it flows the way you want.
When your route is set, tap “Open in Apple Maps” or “Open in Google Maps” and your entire trip opens with all stops pre-loaded as waypoints. Every gym, every address, ready to navigate. You are not copying and pasting anything. You are not switching between apps. You built the route in BJJ Recon and it transfers directly to your maps app with one tap.
Five Routes Worth Driving
To give you some ideas, here are five BJJ road trip routes that work particularly well based on gym density and geography.
The Florida Coast. Start in Orlando and drive south through Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Myers, and end in Miami. Florida has one of the highest gym counts in the country, and the I-75 to I-95 corridor is packed with academies. You could easily hit a gym every hour of driving. The Brazilian influence in South Florida means some of the most traditional jiu jitsu in the country is waiting for you at the end of the route.
The Texas Triangle. Austin to San Antonio to Houston to Dallas and back. Texas has an enormous BJJ scene and each of these cities has a distinct flavor. Austin is techy and competitive. San Antonio has deep roots. Houston has incredible diversity of styles. Dallas has size and depth. You could spend a week on this loop and never repeat a gym.
The SoCal Run. San Diego up through LA to Santa Barbara. This is arguably the most gym-dense stretch of highway in America. San Diego alone has over a hundred academies. You could train at a different gym every day for months on this route, and the quality of instruction at the top schools is world-class.
The Pacific Northwest. Portland to Seattle with a detour through Bend. The PNW grappling scene is quietly elite. Portland and Seattle both have strong competitive communities, and the smaller towns in between have surprisingly good gyms with welcoming cultures.
The Colorado Loop. Denver to Boulder to Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. Colorado has one of the highest gym densities per capita in the country, and the entire Front Range is drivable in a day. Add altitude training to the mix and this is a trip that will challenge your cardio as much as your technique.
Bucket List Integration
The Road Trip Planner works hand-in-hand with the Bucket List. Save gyms you want to visit to your bucket list first, then pull them into a road trip when you are ready to plan the actual drive. After you visit each gym, mark it as visited on your bucket list with the date. Over time, you build a permanent record of every gym you have ever trained at.
And if you are flying to a gym rather than driving, the Fly feature on any academy’s info card lets you search flights directly from BJJ Recon. Enter your home city and it opens Google Flights with the destination pre-filled.
Share Your Trip
Every road trip you create has a unique shareable URL. Tap the share button and send it to your training partners via text, WhatsApp, email, or social media. When they open the link, they see your full route with all the stops. They can save the gyms to their own bucket list or build their own version of the trip.
This is one of those features that sounds simple but creates real viral moments. Someone posts their road trip on Instagram, tags the gyms they visited, and those gyms share it with their students. Now fifty more people know about BJJ Recon and start planning their own trips.
Stop Researching, Start Driving
The best training experiences I have ever had came from road trips. Walking into a new gym, meeting new people, getting humbled by someone whose game I had never seen before. That is what makes this sport special. The Road Trip Planner just makes it easier to get there.
Check the how-to guide if you want a walkthrough of the planning process. Otherwise, just open the map, start adding gyms, and see where the road takes you.
