On the road

One of my favourite things as a black belt, is getting out in the community and figuring out how to learn and develop. An awesome part of this is listening to the stories from people who were fortunate to have experienced an era from some of the early-modernisation of BJJ.

When I offered to take my friend Pete the Greek along the south coast, initially it was to help make his life easier as the flights were expensive and convoluted with connections etc. Pete had just done an awesome wrist lock seminar at our club in Newquay and had a couple more seminars lined up as part of his ‘wrist lock-the-world’ tour.

However, it was also a no-brainier for me to join him as he was about to do a seminar at my friend Jack Magee’s club, Madhatters in Chichester.

The seminar was always going to be a good experience and a lot of fun, but I was privileged to spend time with and hear Jack and Pete trading stories from the late 90’s in Rio. It’s this depth in the culture of BJJ that has always really appealed to me, as I think it has many similarities with the surfing world.

Neither Pete or I had been to Madhatters before, and we were blown away by the size, how clean it was, the quality and also the great atmosphere within his team.

The following day we were due to head to Phoenix in Southampton, but Jack was keen to head over and take us to the very decent Common Grounds Coffee shop in Chichester, I always need my fix! 

I also took the opportunity to join Jack’s morning nogi class and get a couple of rounds in with his team; once again felt very welcomed.

Mark from Phoenix MMA had taken the day off and met up with us to make sure we knew where we were going, sort out the hotel etc. 

So we all went to The Pass Streetfood in Chichester for arguably the best burgers in West Sussex!

There was a huge storm brewing in the area, so when Pete took a rest, Mark and I went to (another!) coffee shop down by the water in Southampton. We were relaxing in the coffee shop, when there was an almighty explosion of glass outside the front door, a metre square window with frame and all had popped out and fallen 10 stories to the street below, narrowly missing a group of people!

It was time to bounce, so we dragged Pete from his rest at the hotel and headed over to a nicely-busy Phoenix MMA in Southampton. Phoenix figurehead Jimmy Johnston was there along with club owner Jon Chalance and a number of other black belts. For me it was also a nice surprise to bump into an old friend and then smash out another two hours of wrist locks before sadly drawing this trip to a close.

Phoenix MMA in Southampton is an incredible space spread over two floors offering all elements of MMA, including a deep BJJ team.

The guys were all heading for food after, and despite the temptation to join and hear more stories, I needed to beat the bank holiday traffic and make a beeline for home. I finally managed to crawl into bed around 3.30am!

Despite hearing all the old stories and wishing I could have been there, I feel very fortunate to be creating my own memories and building friendships and connections in my own way, and I know this is helping to sculpt me into the black belt I want to become, and have a positive influence to create a club I will be eternally proud of!