1 Year On

It all started with a coffee with Jordan Desborough Jarvis, a humble but amazing grappler and fighter.

I had just started to leave the military and decided to have a coffee with my friend Jordan, who was a former MMA Cage Warriors Lightweight Contender and an extraordinary talented grappler. The conversation moved on to what we were going to do when we left the Royal Marines (Jordan is now the Head Coach at SBG Manchester) and he said to me why dont start a Jiujitsu school.

1 year on and looking back, the first few months of starting Mahara Jiujitsu was a hard and frustrating time for me. No one was turning up, I was advertising, putting up posters and getting the name into the local news paper.

For three months every scheduled session I would put the mats out, wait......... the class start time would come and go, I put the mats away and go home.

Now what can I say, the BJJ school is growing weekly on monthly, and what makes me smile and leaves a sense of fulfilment is that at the end of each session each student is smiling and talking about Jiujitsu.

Sharing a passion and love of something is quite an extraordinary thing, yes don't get me wrong BJJ is a hard martial art to even remotely start to master, but Jiujitsu has endless roads to go down, with many twists and turns. When you go home or are at work and in the grey space of time you have you think about technique, or I'll try this position tonight you know you are hooked.

It's ironic I did a podcast with one of the dirty dozen last night ( the first 12 non Brazilian people promoted to BJJ Blackbelt ) and one of John Will and my takeaways is that turning up and training, not giving up, being consistent even when you don't feel like it is what makes the average person great.

Mahara Jiujitsu will remain a constant as long as my ass faces down, keep showing up even on the dark and miserable days, just train and enjoy the journey.

Adz