Packed out

Meerkat’s JJ dojo hit a record number of jitsuka last night – 30 bodies on the mat in all, the previous highest was 29 but that was two and a half years ago. At one point last month I was wondering if my club had hit the buffers as numbers dwindled to about 5-6. Mind you, that was in mid December when everyone was out partying (except me). My new advertising campaign is clearly working brilliantly – I hope the latest bunch of newbies fall in love with jujitsu as much as we have.

Last night was interesting for another reason. A black belt from Hungary visited us and asked if he could provide a demonstration of ‘his’ techniques. I’ve spoken to this chap via email for several months as he has been planning to come to London. His aim is to start a school of Nihon Tai Jitsu in the UK but wanted to hook up with senseis from the current scene. I wasn’t sure at first what to make of him. After all, one doesn’t just walk into someone else’s dojo and ask to teach their students. To some people, it may be seen as a sign of disrespect. But we’ve always pretty open to new ideas and I let him have half an hour to showcase his stuff.

What we saw was a very rock solid display of fairly standard classic ju-jitsu techniques. Mostly culled from very similar stuff we do on the second dan syllabus.
He did them very well and was clearly very proficient but I began to get nervous as some of the techniques were too advanced for the new guys and with so many people on the mat, I was paranoid there would be an injury. But to the newbies – it looked awesome. For the poor ukes he picked on, I could sense a little reservation and nervousness. A couple of techniques misfired since he was not aware that his uke was particularly flexible (Sam W), I mean really flexible.
His English was good although some aspects needed to be explained better and the techniques demonstrated a little slower. But as he stays longer in London, this will improve. For me, I was happy to give him a stage to demonstrate and introduce himself. It was also invigorating to watch traditional jujitsu especially when you see someone perform it so well. It is interesting to see that although from a very different country studying under and different style – the jujitsu is actually very similar.