Introduction: For anyone that wants to know my background in martial arts (as usual, this will be a little long-winded…), I started off with a year of fencing at Yarm School. Up to that point, I had never been especially interested in sports, mainly because I was crap at them all. Fencing appealed to me largely because I’m a geek: I saw it as a way of connecting with the fantasy books I read avidly (and still do) throughout my youth. The same impulse would lead me, somewhat bizarrely, to a brief stint at horse riding in another school. I think I started fencing lessons around 1993/1994, but not completely certain - I do remember it was just before I moved down South.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep up the fencing at my new school, so had to wait until 1999 to get back into martial arts. In September of that year, I began my English Lit BA at the University of Warwick, having spent the previous summer getting excited about what martial art I could try out (I got some kind of "intro pack" through the post, which listed the various sports on offer). At this point, I knew almost nothing about martial arts beyond what I'd seen in films, but decided that I wanted to try kung fu, due to my enjoyment of the related cinematic genre.
In my corridor in the first year, there was a guy by the name of John Booth who had some kickboxing experience (along with muay thai, I think: whatever it was, seemed to have kept him in good shape, so I assume it was probably one of the heavier contact martial arts). In the run-up to the Sports Fair (held near the start of the year annually, where all the sports clubs have a stall and try to recruit new members), I asked his advice on what martial art to take. John suggested kung fu - at that time, the only club advertising itself as 'kung fu' was a little known MA called Zhuan Shu Kuan. In short, it could be described as kickboxing with traditional trimmings (stances, forms etc). That's reflected in a name change that was brought in some time after I left university, from Zhuan Shu Kuan to ZSK Chinese Kickboxing.
I duly signed up with a friend from my halls. She soon lost interest, but I kept up my training three times a week pretty much throughout the whole of first year. I was also keen to grade, an ambition delayed after Glen Cudjoe (the main instructor) quite reasonably thought I wasn't displaying sufficient effort when demonstrating the first ZSK form. That would be a recurring problem (I'd eventually lose any interest in the traditional side of Zhuan Shu Kuan), but I was suitably improved to go for my first grading at the next opportunity, receiving a a blue tag.
I continued grading steadily, though my enthusiasm waned in the second year to the point that I stopped making so many Tuesdays. The fact that Tuesday Zhuan Shu Kuan classes were held at the (now defunct) gym on Westwood campus was probably a factor too – Westwood is on the outskirts, so a reasonable walk away. In the final term of second year, my ZSK attendance dropped significantly: I’d failed to make a smooth transition from the leisurely first year (where nothing counted towards your final mark) to the more important second year (which did count). That meant I had to cram furiously before the exams to catch up on all the reading I’d missed, so ZSK slipped down in my priorities. So word of warning to anyone just starting uni: enjoy your first year, but start working harder in your second. ;)
In the university holidays between the end of second year and the start of the third, I had a look at what martial arts were on offer near my home. It turned out that the leisure centre next to my school in Chesham had a kickboxing class, which IIRC was called ‘Pegasus Kickboxing’, run by a trim, grey-haired instructor named Mike. I can’t quite remember how many sessions I attended, but I’d guess around four, each of which were two hours long. Mike was keen on fitness, so there was a long warm-up, followed by hitting pads and later some sparring (to my surprise I found myself paired up with a girl from school I hadn’t seen in years). Not a bad place to train, so if it's still going, worth a try if you live around the Chesham area. I'm assuming Pegasus sends out competitors regularly, as there were a number of buff looking people in kickboxing trousers training away from the rest of class.
The start of the third year meant that I could have another wander round the Sports Fair, and perhaps try out some additional martial arts on top of Zhuan Shu Kuan (or ZSK Chinese Kickboxing, if you prefer). Over the course of my BA, I had a go at capoeira, samurai jiu jitsu (currently operating under the name of Jitsu. See this thread for more on that organisation), aikido, wing tsun and escrima. I think all of those were in my third year, but some might have been in the second. Either way, I wasn’t too keen on any of them, so continued to just train in ZSK.
By 2002, I was into the last months of my BA degree. I’d learned the lessons from second year, so worked much harder this time round. However, my Zhuan Shu Kuan training still suffered in third year – I think that must have been due to the BUNAC working holiday to Banff, Canada during the Summer, where I followed a friend (who I had first met in a Zhuan Shu Kuan class at the end of 2000). The scheme started before the end of term, meaning my training was cut short.
My marks for the BA were good enough for me to apply for a Masters degree later the same year, again at Warwick. I had no wish to leave university just yet, as most of my friends were still there another year, and I also wanted to continue training in Zhuan Shu Kuan/ZSK Chinese Kickboxing: I’d made a number of friendships through the club over the preceding three years, making ZSK a major part of my social life. So, I returned to Warwick after Canada, renewed enthusiasm meaning that once again I was attending every session of ZSK I could make (although in the third term, I injured my ankle, which again cut my training short that academic year). It was at this time (specifically the 26th October 2002, according to my Tung-Fu join date) that I got into the geeky world of internet forums, which in turn sparked an interest in MMA, and by extension, grappling.
I wasn’t ready for MMA yet, but on the advice of somebody from a forum, I decided to try and organise some groundwork sessions with a judo black belt friend of mine I knew from Zhuan Shu Kuan. We booked the activities room four or five times, where Mike ran me through some of the basic positions and a few submissions (I wish I'd taken notes, but I didn't get into that habit until a couple of years later). Towards the end of my Masters degree I had another opportunity to try the ground. One of the forums I posted at had a meeting in nearby Warwick (the University of Warwick, rather strangely, is actually located in Coventry. As ‘Coventry University’ already existed, the founders decided that Warwick would work as a name – the fact it sounded a lot posher no doubt helped), where I arrived late for the self-defence session with Dave Turton. He was followed by Andy Davis, an MMA instructor, but when it came to rolling, I wimped out of a fellow forum goer’s request to spar (something I was able to rectify three years later, when I met him again at the Midlands Throwdown).
Having successfully completed my Masters, I moved down to Bristol to be near my friends, as well as save up some money for our round the world trip. This meant that it was difficult to train in ZSK Chinese Kickboxing anymore, so I hardly went to any Zhuan Shu Kuan classes at all between the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2005. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, it was during my Masters that I attended my last grading in ZSK - I passed, and became a brown belt. However, although I initially had a vague idea that I'd try for the black tag and then black belt at some point in the future, I pretty much lost any motivation to progress further up the rankings over the course of that year. This was compounded by my inability to take more than one class of ZSK a week, as I worked in London half the week. If I ever find myself able to train more frequently in ZSK and living near Warwick Uni, then I might get back to grading, but I'm not really interested in learning the traditional forms and fixed spars, which means it's unlikely. I did enjoy prancing around doing bad impressions of kung fu flicks, though. :D
In Bristol, I had the opportunity to again try out some other martial arts clubs. First of all a friend and I popped down to a taekwondo class - a martial art which had taken a serious bashing in all the forums I frequented - in Kingswood, and it proved to pretty much fit what I’d read on the net (though I found it fairly enjoyable up until the ‘street style’ section: nice people). Next up was the excellent wushu club run by Neil Genge, which I tried purely for acrobatics – attending about five classes, I was thrilled to finally manage a somersault and kip-up, although admittedly the sprung floor kinda helped.
The last club I tried before setting off for Hong Kong was Kevin O’Hagan’s MMA class, which also marks the first time I started logging my training. Hence why it’s the first training log entry in this blog.
Between 2004 and 2005, I popped along to a few more MMA classes, mainly in London, along with a few other MA, like hapkido and kickboxing. I also made it back to Warwick a few times to train at ZSK Chinese Kickboxing, but very intermittent. In February 2005, I took on some major writing commitments at Warwick Uni, so decided to not only make my Zhuan Shu Kuan training more regular, but also get into Judo and something going by the name of 'Kempo Ju Jitsu'. Annoyingly, I got injured early on, which put me out of full training for almost a year (although after a few months I was able to train around the injury at ZSK).
On the 18th March 2005 (judging by this thread), I started logging my training by the hour, which fit perfectly into my growing love of data (heightened by the job I was doing at KPMG back then, an analytical career path I stumbled into but have somehow continued, moving from corporate to educational, then the charity sector). That involved some guesswork and estimation for my martial arts experience pre-2005, but has proved a useful tool in the years since. I have an old Bullshido thread to thank for what has become a huge spreadsheet.
Also worth mentioning that I headed down to a number of throwdowns from 2005 (the first one being that Tung-Fu meet in 2003) until around 2008, mainly due to the Bullshido website. These events were a chance to train and spar with a whole bunch of people from different backgrounds, not to mention a great opportunity to put faces to names on internet forums. Looking back, that process of getting lots of like-minded martial artists together acted as a sort of precursor for what I developed with GrappleThons much later.
Once I recovered from the shoulder injury in 2006, I endeavoured to finally join up at a BJJ club - my first option was the Gracie Barra gym in Birmingham, but their beginner classes were at times I couldn't make. So, that left the Roger Gracie Academy in London, where I began in November 2006 (unless you count the intro in October, which coincidentally took place exactly four years after I first started posting in online martial arts forums), having watched a class the week before. Reading on the internet, especially at Bullshido, provided an excellent set of principles that would serve me well as I started BJJ. This thread in particular has become something of a touchstone, and I'd urge anyone interested in training martial arts to give it a read.
I trained as regularly as I could in those first few months, in order to get my third stripe and move on to the advanced class (due to the greater choice of classes that would entail, as third and fourth stripes can train in both the beginners and advanced). Normally I managed two or three classes a week, which was all my convoluted travel schedule would allow.
Getting that third stripe in June 2007 was probably the impetus for concentrating fully on BJJ, as it considerably expanded the amount of classes I could attend. Before that, I had intermittently gone back to my old ZSK Chinese Kickboxing class (I think it had made the formal name change from Zhuan Shu Kuan to ZSK Chinese Kicboxing by this point), but since the promotion and an increase in workload outside of class, I was 100% focused on grappling. My last session of Zhuan Shu Kuan was April 2007.
My first BJJ competition took place August 2007: first fight, first loss, though amusingly I still got a bronze, because the guy who beat me went on to win the division (there were only four of us competing at super featherweight). Shortly after that, I popped over to the Belfast Throwdown: video below is me rolling with Waqi. At the time, he was a very experienced blue belt, who could easily have smashed me, but mercifully went light.
hi bro! i just started a blog similar to your to track my bjj progress as well. i hope you get to visit it so that we could exchange notes about techniques and stuff. i have been reading your blog for quite some time now and you have pretty good stuff here. my blog is groundboxer.blogspot.com.
Introduction: For anyone that wants to know my background in martial arts (as usual, this will be a little long-winded…), I started off with a year of fencing at Yarm School. Up to that point, I had never been especially interested in sports, mainly because I was crap at them all. Fencing appealed to me largely because I’m a geek: I saw it as a way of connecting with the fantasy books I read avidly (and still do) throughout my youth. The same impulse would lead me, somewhat bizarrely, to a brief stint at horse riding in another school. I think I started fencing lessons around 1993/1994, but not completely certain - I do remember it was just before I moved down South.
I duly signed up with a friend from my halls. She soon lost interest, but I kept up my training three times a week pretty much throughout the whole of first year. I was also keen to grade, an ambition delayed after Glen Cudjoe (the main instructor) quite reasonably thought I wasn't displaying sufficient effort when demonstrating the first ZSK form. That would be a recurring problem (I'd eventually lose any interest in the traditional side of Zhuan Shu Kuan), but I was suitably improved to go for my first grading at the next opportunity, receiving a a blue tag.
In the university holidays between the end of second year and the start of the third, I had a look at what martial arts were on offer near my home. It turned out that the leisure centre next to my school in Chesham had a kickboxing class, which IIRC was called ‘Pegasus Kickboxing’, run by a trim, grey-haired instructor named Mike. I can’t quite remember how many sessions I attended, but I’d guess around four, each of which were two hours long. Mike was keen on fitness, so there was a long warm-up, followed by hitting pads and later some sparring (to my surprise I found myself paired up with a girl from school I hadn’t seen in years). Not a bad place to train, so if it's still going, worth a try if you live around the Chesham area. I'm assuming Pegasus sends out competitors regularly, as there were a number of buff looking people in kickboxing trousers training away from the rest of class.
By 2002, I was into the last months of my BA degree. I’d learned the lessons from second year, so worked much harder this time round. However, my Zhuan Shu Kuan training still suffered in third year – I think that must have been due to the BUNAC working holiday to Banff, Canada during the Summer, where I followed a friend (who I had first met in a Zhuan Shu Kuan class at the end of 2000). The scheme started before the end of term, meaning my training was cut short.
My marks for the BA were good enough for me to apply for a Masters degree later the same year, again at Warwick. I had no wish to leave university just yet, as most of my friends were still there another year, and I also wanted to continue training in Zhuan Shu Kuan/ZSK Chinese Kickboxing: I’d made a number of friendships through the club over the preceding three years, making ZSK a major part of my social life. So, I returned to Warwick after Canada, renewed enthusiasm meaning that once again I was attending every session of ZSK I could make (although in the third term, I injured my ankle, which again cut my training short that academic year). It was at this time (specifically the 26th October 2002, according to my Tung-Fu join date) that I got into the geeky world of internet forums, which in turn sparked an interest in MMA, and by extension, grappling.
I wasn’t ready for MMA yet, but on the advice of somebody from a forum, I decided to try and organise some groundwork sessions with a judo black belt friend of mine I knew from Zhuan Shu Kuan. We booked the activities room four or five times, where Mike ran me through some of the basic positions and a few submissions (I wish I'd taken notes, but I didn't get into that habit until a couple of years later). Towards the end of my Masters degree I had another opportunity to try the ground. One of the forums I posted at had a meeting in nearby Warwick (the University of Warwick, rather strangely, is actually located in Coventry. As ‘Coventry University’ already existed, the founders decided that Warwick would work as a name – the fact it sounded a lot posher no doubt helped), where I arrived late for the self-defence session with Dave Turton. He was followed by Andy Davis, an MMA instructor, but when it came to rolling, I wimped out of a fellow forum goer’s request to spar (something I was able to rectify three years later, when I met him again at the Midlands Throwdown).
Having successfully completed my Masters, I moved down to Bristol to be near my friends, as well as save up some money for our round the world trip. This meant that it was difficult to train in ZSK Chinese Kickboxing anymore, so I hardly went to any Zhuan Shu Kuan classes at all between the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2005. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, it was during my Masters that I attended my last grading in ZSK - I passed, and became a brown belt. However, although I initially had a vague idea that I'd try for the black tag and then black belt at some point in the future, I pretty much lost any motivation to progress further up the rankings over the course of that year. This was compounded by my inability to take more than one class of ZSK a week, as I worked in London half the week. If I ever find myself able to train more frequently in ZSK and living near Warwick Uni, then I might get back to grading, but I'm not really interested in learning the traditional forms and fixed spars, which means it's unlikely. I did enjoy prancing around doing bad impressions of kung fu flicks, though. :D
The last club I tried before setting off for Hong Kong was Kevin O’Hagan’s MMA class, which also marks the first time I started logging my training. Hence why it’s the first training log entry in this blog.
Also worth mentioning that I headed down to a number of throwdowns from 2005 (the first one being that Tung-Fu meet in 2003) until around 2008, mainly due to the Bullshido website. These events were a chance to train and spar with a whole bunch of people from different backgrounds, not to mention a great opportunity to put faces to names on internet forums. Looking back, that process of getting lots of like-minded martial artists together acted as a sort of precursor for what I developed with GrappleThons much later.
I trained as regularly as I could in those first few months, in order to get my third stripe and move on to the advanced class (due to the greater choice of classes that would entail, as third and fourth stripes can train in both the beginners and advanced). Normally I managed two or three classes a week, which was all my convoluted travel schedule would allow.
hi bro! i just started a blog similar to your to track my bjj progress as well. i hope you get to visit it so that we could exchange notes about techniques and stuff. i have been reading your blog for quite some time now and you have pretty good stuff here. my blog is groundboxer.blogspot.com.
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