The Road to Giant Jiu Jitsu - Part 2

I finished University in 2016 as a fully striped-up white belt and had recently won double-gold in a couple of local competitions so I was over-the-moon to receive my blue belt from James in October 2016! 

But a blue belt wasn’t the only thing I had gained from Jiu Jitsu in 2016.. I had decided that I would apply for teacher-training to become a Secondary School teacher (absolute madness, I know..) teaching Spanish and French to make use of my Modern Foreign Languages degree. As part of that training, I did a 2 month course at Marjon University in Plymouth. Carla was also on that course who had an interest in Martial Arts and was looking to start learning. Around this time, I also met my good-friend Kiko who was a mutual friend of Carla. She had been asking Kiko if he knew of anywhere she could start learning Martial Arts and he (I owe him for this one) said that he knew me and that I did BJJ. Full of confidence from my less than mediocre Spanish-BJJ Vocabulary and 4-stripe White Belt, thanks to Kiko and Jiu Jitsu Carla and I met.

Carla and I were based in Plymouth at the time and to train for our year-long training course (this was 2016 into 2017). So, after a quick Google search, we found a place that was then called “Masters Academy Plymouth” which was run by well-known UK BJJ Black Belt Tom Barlow and his Brown Belt Ian Harrop. Above is a photo of young us the first time we went to train with Ian with me rocking the Sambo style gi top and grappling shorts look!

We had an absolutely amazing time training under Tom and Ian in Plymouth. I’ll be forever grateful to them both. I already had the idea in my head at this point that I wanted to become a BJJ Coach myself in the future so I was constantly on the look out for things that I could learn from them about how to teach. 

Something that Ian was particularly good at was creating a safe training environment for all, especially women and younger people. Before every single sparring session, Ian would remind the class that if you were bigger, stronger, more experienced or had any kind of physical advantage over your training partner (like age) then it was on you to make sure you reign it in when needed to keep things safe. With me being a 100kg+ 23yr old, I was definitely one of the people he was talking to!

Carla often said to me how she really appreciated that Ian did this as it made her feel safer and seen/not forgotten about in the training room. This is something that, to this day, I take with me into my own teaching. Carla and I have been each other's main training partners since those days in Plymouth and, with that, came a lot of learning of how to train with such a size difference! More on that to follow in a different post.

I was training between Masters Academy in Plymouth and Exeter BJJ throughout 2016/2017 was doing as many competitions as I could. At the end of our training year, we both got jobs in the Buckinghamshire area and moved to High Wycombe which is where we met our current coach, Kev Capel. Kev had an affiliate RGA Bucks gym in High Wycombe which he taught at along with one of his brown belts, John Gilbert. From this point on we found a home with RGA Bucks and have been with them ever since.