I Turned My Living Room, Into A Dojo (Updated Photos)

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about converting my living room into a place where some of my friends and I could roll. Now don’t worry, I’m not giving up my living room. In Abu Dhabi, most of the houses are built in a certain style, where the houses have two living rooms – a large one to show off to your guests, and then one that you actually use. I turned the large one into a mat space, so now guests can come over and roll!

It took me a few weeks to even find places that sell any type of grappling mats here. After scouring the depths of Google, I finally found two stores, one in Abu Dhabi and one in Dubai. One said they could ship the mats from Brazil, which probably would have been ridiculously expensive, and the other was charging outrageous prices. A friend told me about a place where they sold cheaper puzzle mats and I went with those.

The fun actually started after we bought the mats. We went to the store, and I picked out 28 mats, 8 red and 20 grey. I’d originally wanted black instead of grey, but

they didn’t have enough. Turns out, they didn’t have enough grey either (I’m still missing one grey tile. I have to go back to the store for it). The guy loaded them up onto a large cart and followed us outside to our car…. our very small car. Since we’ve only been here a few months, we still have a rental car, and as you can see, it’s itty bitty. I don’t even think the back area is one meter wide. We had to fold the mats a little to slide them in. The guy from the store and I walked out, looked at the car, looked back at the mats, and then looked at each other. Then he goes ‘don’t worry, it’ll fit.’ I said ‘let’s do it!’ With my mom in the driver’s seat, and my little brother in the passenger’s seat, I folded the backseats down forward as much as they would go, and the store man and I proceeded to stuff 27 1mx1m mats into the back of the car. Turns out, they actually did fit, although they reached the top of the car. I had to squish into the passenger’s seat with my brother, and my mom couldn’t use her rear-view mirror, but it all worked out in the end.

Once we got home, I had to pry all the mats out and carry them upstairs, and then the next day I got to work. I had to clean both rooms, sweep and mop that sort of thing. I had to move the dining table in the smaller room, then drag in the sofa and television from the bigger room, and figure out how to arrange them. Then I started laying out all the mats, and putting them together. All together, I think it came out nicely. Now I can do drills at home, as well as other calisthenic workouts we do in jiu-jitsu, and get in some extra training on the weekends when I invite some of the guys over. What do you think?

Oss! See you on the mat.