Daisy Fresh wrestling coach on hard training at PFS: ‘We’re as advertised’
Over the past couple of years, Pedigo Submission Fighting in Mount Vernon, IL has steadily grown into one of the best competition jiu-jitsu teams in the world. Better known as the Daisy Fresh crew, head coach Heath Pedigo has created an atmosphere that welcomes incredibly hard, grinding training. That training has turned out elite competitors like Andrew Wiltse and Jacob Couch, as well as a legion of lower belt competitors that will surely make their mark at higher levels soon.
On a recent episode of the Open Guardcast, a key member of the Daisy Fresh crew, Alejandro Wajner, spoke about the training atmosphere at the infamous laundromat.
Wajner put his budding MMA career on hold to pursue jiu-jitsu. But he and other Daisy Fresh grapplers still have their eyes on MMA.
It’s like that for myself and a ton of other guys in the gym, too. When Heath is ready, when he opens the gate and lets us in, we’re gonna start fighting MMA, as well, so [I’m] looking forward to that.
Perhaps more than any other jiu-jitsu academy in the world, Daisy Fresh has cultivated a training atmosphere that mimics high-level wrestling training.
All that’s Heath, Man. Heath saw that we could do it because we had the abilities and the tools, because he knew what we did before jiu-jitsu. So he wanted us to bring that into the gym. It’s just the culture that Heath has built. It was his idea to make wrestling a part of our curriculum.
The training at Daisy Fresh is notoriously hard. Is it always like that, or just when the cameras are on?
The training will be some of the hardest you’ll ever have because the intensity is very opposite to your traditional jiu-jitsu gym. Most people want you to take it easy, focus on the technique. Ours is more like a college level wrestling room. So you get in, grind, hard… competition training rounds. We still do do technique… but it’s more 80/20 or 70/30. It’s hard training, but every single person in there enjoys training… We get so much love from everyone in the jiu-jitsu community. We’re as advertised. All the stuff you see on Flo, all the stuff you see on YouTube, if you come to PSF, you’re gonna get what you see. It is as advertised, and everyone tells me that… The majority of us live together, and the majority of us train every single day.
