White Rhino, which is located in 314 S Main St Lexington, is a gym that offers Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Muay Thai.
Coach Phil Dunlap is highly experienced in martial arts, he’s considered a master in Nanban (a burmese grappling martial art), Sambo, and he’s a second degree black belt in BJJ. He’s also had an impressive amount of fights. He’s had over 250 fights since he was 53. Dunlap reflects on the journey he’s made and the team he has.
“I moved to Virginia a little over three years ago, and I was originally going to stop teaching and focus on training and competing, but there was no place in the area to train at, so I ended up opening the school here. I had schools for 20 some years in New York and Vegas. I would say the greatest gift of this would be the sport itself and training in general, as it brings so many people into your life, and you get to see a side of people that you wouldn’t see in the real world,” Dunlap said.
The training in White Rhino usually consists of the first part focusing on technique and the second part with live Jiu Jitsu rolling.
Member Brian Alexander shares how this gym has benefitted him.
“This gym has benefitted me by being around a good group of people there and pretending to beat each other up. I like BJJ because I really get to push myself and test myself to the best of my abilities,” Alexander said
White Rhino also contains people who compete very frequently. The competitive members of White Rhino’s BJJ are dedicated to the sport and all have big plans for the future. One of the competitive BJJ fighters is Kelby Barfield.
“I’ve been training for about a year now, and I’ve been in some competitions that have been leading me up to my first MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fight, the journey has been super fun, definitely challenging at times, being a lighter competitor, but overall, it’s definitely benefited me.” Barfield said.
BJJ has had a huge impact on the people that joined this gym, whether it was people who did it to compete or people who did it to stay healthy.
