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