I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You found my BJJ blog!
As a local resident, the London 2012 Olympics has offered a unique opportunity to see some great sporting action and I was delighted to attend the women’s freestyle wrestling finals last night. We were in the house for the 48kg and 63kg medal matches and ceremonies. The crowd was fantastic, with a particularly strong Japanese [...] Read more »
Big BIG props to Camilla Hansen of Checkmat BJJ and Steven Burton of Alliance UK who faced each other at the UK Premier BJJ Open on 26 February. Camilla was the only female purple belt to register and the guys in the men’s division welcomed her into their own division. Huge respect to the men’s [...] Read more »
The UK has its first homegrown female referee of BJJ competition, Pippa Granger. Granger, as readers may know, is one of the UK’s keenest female competitors, having fought in upwards of 50 BJJ tournaments. Her interest in competition has led Pippa to qualify as a referee and twice she’s followed the official course run by Alvaro [...] Read more »
On 9 October 2010, the founders of Fenom Kimonos and Zebra Tournament Systems hosted the first annual Women’s Jiu Jitsu Championships in Frisco, Texas. In an historic event, 76 women and girls, supported by friends, family and spectators, competed in gi and no-gi divisions. While a report from one of the event’s founders reflected on [...] Read more »
I was recently approached by a friend who is writing a piece on the topic to consider ‘what is it like to be a woman in martial arts’. I think some personal context is necessary to highlight my point of view in responding to this question. I’ve been training in martial arts for 10 years. [...] Read more »
During 2008, I competed as a white belt at the Gracie Invitational at SENI and at the Kent BJJ Open (now the English BJJ Open). Here’s a video of my first fight at the Kent Open with Seetha Udin of Checkmat. I went on to win my second bout on points and to lose my [...] Read more »
The Gracie Invitational at the SENI exposition in May 2008 was my first BJJ competition; I also competed at the Kent BJJ Open in that year, shortly before a second knee injury took me out of that part of the game. I won my first fight by arm bar and below is a video of [...] Read more »