East Coast Jiu Jitsu Academy seminar at North East Jiu Jitsu

Marcus Phelan, Ellis Younger, Sam McNally

Thought I'd make a little blog post to share what an awesome weekend we had at NEJJ! Marcus Phelan and Sam McNally came over to do a seminar on the 22nd August, both purple belts under Darragh O'Conaill out in Dublin, Ireland at East Coast Jiu Jitsu Academy. What a pleasure it was to share the mats with these beasts and learn from them!

Marcus and Sam flew over from Dublin to Newcastle on the Friday, we didn't waste any time and went straight from the airport to the gym to get some rounds in! We trained for around an hour and a half just straight rolling and got some good training in. The rest of Friday was basically spent eating food, a few of us headed through to town (Newcastle) and ate some Mexican food. Zapastistas is a good spot to grab a burrito for anyone interested. We then went to get some sugary goodness at a dessert bar close by and after, chilled on the night in an awesome cafe which had the coolest seating arrangements ever... Floor seats! Cushions on the floor surrounding a table! So simple yet so genius! We tried some herbal teas and talked jiu jitsu for an hour or two before heading home. Day 1 was a success!

Smile! :D

Day 2 (Saturday) was the seminar day! In the past arranging seminars has proved to be stressful, getting enough guys to come in and people pulling out last minute etc but this was the smoothest yet, zero stress and a good turnout! It couldn't have went any better! Sam showed some guard retention drills and concepts and Marcus showed some spider guard sweeps and attacks, I loved it how they taught and how both their systems merged into one. It was great for all the guys and I hope everyone took something from it! We will no doubt be working it a lot over the coming weeks! Sam and Marcus then rolled with pretty much everyone after they taught and it was an awesome few hours of solid training! Success!


Saturday night a good bunch of us went at ate at a good restaurant in Newcastle called Man Vs Food, the food was delicious and servings were super generous! I will definitely hit that spot again and would recommend it to anyone into that type of food! After we ate we headed into town and went to a few bars and had a good laugh.

19 on the mats! A record number at NEJJ!

Sunday was pretty chilled, it was mostly spent sleeping and eating and getting a little bit training in, open mat on Sundays are usually pretty busy and it was good to get some rolls in and work on some stuff we learned over the weekend! Overall it was an awesome weekend with some great experiences and I would like to say thanks to all the NEJJ lads for showing up and training and a special thanks to Marcus and Sam for coming over and teaching! I hope to arrange this again sometime soon and plenty more opportunities like this will be available!

Stay tuned within the next week or two for the gym switch! NEJJ is going from strength to strength, we should be switching places pretty soon and will have almost double the mat space, a little change up in the schedule and class layout and I will be looking to add in some extra classes potentially including, yoga, kids class and a girls class!

Thanks for reading!

Ellis

NEJJ

'North East Jiu Jitsu' 

Hey guys and gals, for the first blog post i'll give a short (as I can) introduction to the team, how we got started, what the year has brought so far and goals for remainder of the year etc. 

North East Jiu Jitsu started or was 'founded' if you like at the start of February 2015, complications occurred in previous destinations where we used to train so I (Ellis) and the team were left without a place to train, after help from a few good friends I got a small room sorted and matted it out, boom, we had a place to train full time with 24/7/365 access. 

With some switching up of the timetable adding more available times to train and more structure to classes the motivation was high, basically one of my personal goals for the year was to get out and compete at as many IBJJF competitions as possible, this resulted in my personal training output being high as there was always motivation to improve and be in shape with the rigorous competition schedule, so it only helped bring the team on as well as myself. We trained hard throughout the remainder of the winter months with the team quickly growing, picked up some great new additions to the squad, making the gym even stronger and even more of a family! 

2015 has been an all around success, I have took 4 IBJJF golds this year, been promoted to purple belt, there has been a couple more purple belt promotions on the team, we have a small crew of 4 people training full time, night time classes are approaching an average of 10 a night, basically the gym is going from strength to strength and we're slowly creating the right environment to cater for whatever anybody's goal who walks through the door is. Whether it be to be the best competitor they can possibly be, to keep fit or just to make some new friends. 2 years ago we were just a small bunch of friends, all white belts training without any instruction, now there is multiple classes every day, guys training full time, private tuition available all day every day, British champions, European medalists... the list goes on.

Approaching the back end of the year and the next big change is just around the corner, at the start of September we're moving to a bigger space, again, this wouldn't be possible without the help from a friend. With the change in locations, i'm looking to change the timetable up a little and add more classes, potentially daytime classes instead of open mats, kids classes, girls classes and maybe even some yoga. I'm always looking to keep rising the bar higher and higher and with the move will come along with a fresh burst of motivation to help achieve this. (Stay tuned with the Facebook page or contact me directly for information.) The goals for the rest of the year are to just keep steepening the progression line, make it out to more competitions, get the team traveling together as a whole, winning team trophies but most importantly enjoying jiu jitsu, the thing we love to do! 

I thought for the first post I'd give a little insight into the year so far and what is to come. I will look to keep this blog as active as possible, basically just posting any news, maybe some technique/instructional videos, competition results and just general progress. Hope you stay tuned and keep up to date! As always, anyone is welcome to come down and train and visitors from out of town train for free! Just drop me a message!

Ellis