Congratulations to the club's very first newly promoted grey/white belts: Ella, Aimee and Roma! These students have been consistently training with us for over a year, continuing their improvement and showing a great standard.

This week in class we have been looking at how to defend and escape against omoplata attacks. This technique is very high percentage. It does not rely on super strength, agility or flexibility. It is considered the superior method of 'rolling' out of the omoplata attack compared to the facing away version (which more often than not, lands you in further trouble.)

Some excerpts from this week's classes. We have been looking at the omoplata. This shoulder joint attack is very versatile both as a submission in its own right, and also as a mechanism to move to other positions or attacks.

Big Well done to Grant Brown who took bronze today at the Surrey BJJ Open in his first ever competition.

Flow rolling exercise at the club last night. The idea with flow rolling is to move, attack, defend, counter, chain moves together and find space and leverage without too much force or resistance. Ideally little to no grips are made. It is not as easy as it first appears, flow rolling is definitely a skill that gets better with practice. It is also a valuable addition to training - it allows skilled players to partner with novices players, it is also a good way to roll when recovering from injury or when pairing small with large partners. It is a useful supplement but does not replace hard submission hunting sparring.

From September 3rd, our club will have a new location and new timetable. See this photo for details. PM me here for any questions but all beginners and newcomers are welcome to attend any of our Thursday 'Fundamentals' classes at 7:30pm.

This is a warm up game in the kids class we call 'Seal Ball'. The idea is that the kids must use a body motion called the seal (moving forward or backward on their bellies and using only their arms for power). The first child to grab the ball must reverse seal back to the beginning but if their opponent grabs the ball too, they both must wrestle for it. The winner is the person who makes it back home.

Home Alone, one of my favourite defence concepts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. In this video of an entire lesson for new students, I show how Home Alone is very effective from a variety of 'bad' positions. Later in the video I show another concept, that of making your opponent fall into space in order for you to escape. https://youtu.be/H2CSvgCvTag