10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 7 (Braulio's Grading)

(This is part 7 of this series. If you haven't seen part 6 it can be found here.)   It's time to start over...   As I mentioned previously, the BJJ ranking system for kids changed in autumn 2007, and we were required to be graded again. This meant taking a trip to Gracie Barra Birmingham, and be graded by both Braulio and Victor Estima.   Some of you probably never got the chance to go to Braulio's old gym, but personally I had the opportunity to go...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 6 (I Don't Like It Anymore...)

(This is part 6 of this series. If you haven't seen part 5 it can be found here.) So, everybody left... In my last post, I mentioned that we moved to a new gym, and all of my training partners pretty much left. So now it was pretty much me and my brother, and if I'm honest that's the way it stayed up until April 2009 when I moved into the adult class. So, we are now in this new gym. We didn't even stay there for that long, less than a year I think, I'm...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 5 (We Moved Gym)

(This is part 5 of this series. If you haven't seen part 4 it can be found here.) Woop woop! I won something! So, as I explained last time, I won my first medal in competition. And that feeling of victory in competition is amazing! It's something like no other. In my experience, once I have won my first match in competition, pretty much all my nerves melt away and you feel way more...

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Update (23/04/14) - 10 Years of BJJ, WPJJC 2014, Budo Jake, and Road to 100K!

A lot has happened in the last week...   Since my last update post I have uploaded one interview and three parts to my series '10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey'. And I can thankfully say that everything has been a tremendous success! So, I know I always say how thankful I am to you guys, but I really am! Everybody who views my content, leaves comments on it, shares it on social media etc, really does help motivate me to carry on creating content for you guys.   Well, so...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 4 (I Finally Won Something!)

(This is part 4 of this series. If you haven't seen part 3 it can be found here.) I guess you live and learn...   So, I got whooped in my first ever competition, which I'm sure many of you have experienced. But, I never quit training, I just carried on.   When I was in the kid's class, there were many kids of similar age and size to me, and even a few older kids,...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 3 (My First Competition)

(This is part 3 of this series. If you haven't seen part 2 it can be found here.) So I competed for the first time...   My first ever competition was on Sunday, October 10th 2004. The competition itself wasn't even a BJJ competition, but a traditional Ju-Jitsu competition run by the NJJC (National Ju-Jitsu Council). Back in 2004, I don't think there were any BJJ competitions run in the UK, or very few. I think the only BJJ competition to run at that time would have...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 2 (The Early Days)

(This is part 2 of this series. If you haven't seen part 1 it can be found here.)   So, I was about to have my first ever BJJ lesson. Obviously, since I had never trained any 'traditional' martial arts before I didn't have a gi. So, I wore basically the same thing that I wore to kickboxing, which were Thai shorts and a vest. If I'm honest, I can't really remember much about my first lesson of BJJ. The only thing I can remember is Chris coming out and introducing himself...

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An Interview with Budo Jake

Today, I bring you an interview with Jake McKee who is commonly known is the BJJ community as "Budo Jake". Jake is the founder of BudoVideos.com which provide live streams of every major IBJJF event, and many different grappling tournaments from around the world. In addition to this he also hosts the popular Jiu-Jitsu based web shows "Rolled Up" and "This Week in BJJ". I hope you guys enjoy...

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Update (14/04/14)

This is probably going to be the quickest update post I've ever done. The reason for that is there isn't really that much to say, but I do have a few things.   Firstly, I started a new series which I called "10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey", which as the title suggests is about my Jiu-Jitsu story. The reason I started this is because I have been training BJJ now for a decade, which is a very long time in my book! And I thought I would share my story with you as hopefully...

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10 Years of BJJ - My Jiu-Jitsu Journey - Part 1 (The Beginning)

So I have being doing BJJ for 10 years! I don't know the exact date when I started, but I know it was in April 2004, and I was 9 years old. Actually, except for three other people, me and my brother are actually the longest running students at our academy (Chris Rees Academy/Gracie Barra Swansea), which is quite weird when I come to the think about it! There were loads of people training before me, but for whatever reason they just stopped and I carried on.   So I thought...

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