By Neil Farrell
Tucked into the Starbuck’s shopping center at Fairchild Way and Los Osos Valley Road in Los Osos is a place where young kids to the elderly can get a great workout and learn a Martial Art that might just some day save your life.
Married couple, Rob and Jaime Lewis, are the owners and instructors at Team Moreira Jiu Jitsu de Brazil, teaching a fighting form that is more about wrestling and leverage, than striking an opponent.
“Brazilian Jiu Jitsu differs from other Martial Arts,” explains Rob, dressed in the traditional “Gi” used by students and instructors alike, “95-percent of a match takes place on the ground. This is about grappling, submission holds, and chokeholds. It’s a way for a smaller person to defeat a larger person.”
The Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or BJJ for short starts standing up but doesn’t stay that way for long. And like traditional wrestling, one could find him or herself on the bottom.
Rob says he teaches students how to “escape, survive, turn the tide, and be able to submit your opponent.” There are arm locks, leg locks and choke holds, and it’s not taught like Karate or Kung Fu, with students standing in lines mimicking the poses, strikes and blows.
“I’ve found it not to be effective,” Rob says. There are some 34 types of Martial Arts and 20 forms of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu alone, and Rob, a student of several styles, says, “This is the style I believe in the most.”
The Team Moreira refers to BJJ master and former Ultimate Fighting Challenge competitor, Joe Moreira of Brazil. Moreira pioneered the BJJ style in the U.S. and continues to teach and champion the style today.
Rob has taught BJJ since 2008, working for a time out of a studio on Second Street, then out of the garage of one of his students. Jaime was a student who decided to try the sport after a photo shoot in 2011. She was into sports photography, Jaime explains, and was in the studio taking pictures and “I thought it looked like fun,” she says.
“She started kicking the butts of the boys pretty quickly,” says Rob. “She’s my most successful student in terms of tournaments.”
Jaime says tournaments are held all over — including Long Beach, Brazil and worldwide. She competed in the 2012 Pan American Championships held in San Francisco and won gold. The studio wall is adorned with her certificates from tournaments.
They opened a studio in April 2015 on Ninth Street but that small space didn’t last long. “It took off way faster than we expected,” Jaime says, “and we had to find a new spot.”
They’ve been at the new studio for a couple of months now, and classes are healthy with 20-25 students in a typical class. Word of mouth has worked well for them, as with the small town, when one family’s kids go they soon get their friends interested. “Ninety percent of the kids in town know each other,” says Jaime.
Rob teaches beginners, intermediate and some advanced students, both adults and kids and they even have a women-only class that Jaime started.
Since BJJ is so much like wrestling, women didn’t really want to be included in “a class full of sweaty men,” laughs Jaime. The women-only class is non-judgmental and “pretty empowering for the ladies who come.” They’ve also taught self-defense classes at Cal Poly through its SAFER Program, Rob says.
Team Moreira Jiu Jitsu de Brazil is located at 1236 LOVR, Ste. E. See their website at: www.teammoreirabjj.com for class schedules and pricing. Call (805) 242-6252 or email them at: [email protected].