Been up North for three weeks and done a few classes:

Brazillion Ju-jitsu

Been to a couple of these. Got to wear a gi and everything. It's like fighting a load of snakes this BJJ! So wriggly and if I'm not careful I get owned by guys much smaller then me.

I have found the key thing is to be staying in tight and be slow and methodical. I started off too aggressive and it ends up getting me tired quick.

My strength actually hinders my learning here I think, as whilst I seem to dominate in sparring sometimes it is down to me being stronger rather than my technique – which is still shite!

Boxing

Done a couple of classes in this and it is definitely my achilles heel. Keep on getting punched in the face which is a bit crap. I lack the co-ordination, speed and finesse to be good at this yet, but I am learning. Just little things like keeping my guard up and the constant moving, ducking and diving are already better.

I find this far more intimidating than kick boxing as you have to get up close to actually punch them. Kick boxing I relied on my legs too much and didn’t pay attention to my upper body.

Wrestling

Woohoo I fucking love wrestling! I'm good at this one. Been to 3 of these. Hardly anyone goes to this class. I think quite a few people are scarred because it so rough, which means I get to learn loads due to small class size.

Like with martial arts in general it all seems to be about the hips and core strength. We do all these mental neck exercises and other strange conditioning techniques. The instructor is this Romanian dude who is pretty small but strong as fuck.

Again my strength helps me a lot here and out of everything I find the techniques here easiest to pick up. However it is scary when a guy bigger than you picks you up and your just hoping he doesn’t dump you on your head!


MMA - 1 hour conditioning, 1 hour technique

Been to a couple of these too. Conditioning is tough! Start with a warm up and then some shadow boxing. Then we do loads of crazy exercises. Loads of press-ups, fucking loads of press ups as well as the usual million and one types of sit-ups too! We then do a bit more sparring just with boxing, which is useful for me.

In the second hour it is more like the BJJ class, although we tend to do quite a few throws and stuff too. More rolling, which is cool.

Overall

I really have enjoyed all of the above and am well into the grappling. Boxing, not so much, but appreciate it is important. This stuff does seem to make you really happy and like I said before does make a man out of you too! Would recommend it to all.

I am moving to the Caribbean tomorrow morning. I hope they have something like this over there. At the moment all I have seen is karate, which I want to avoid!