Singapore Ju-Jitsu

I must give a shout out to Stephen Chee Shihan, founder of Ju-Jitsu Kobudo Singapore, who made our man Rob Line so welcome. As some of you know, Rob was a big presence at my club, having trained up to brown belt and was a winner of several medals in the random attack competition. He left the UK to take up a post in Singapore and wondered if he could find a good club out there. Well, Rob just emailed me to say he found a club and wrote a detailed account (which I will post in full on the Imperial website in due course) of his first session, here’s a snippet from his article:

“I had emailed the most promising looking jujitsu club last week, explaining what I was looking for and a little of my background training with Jikishin. I received an immediate reply from Stephen Chee Sensei, inviting me to join his dojo and make sure to ‘bring my gi’ on Sunday. Result. Turns out Stephen Chee Sensei is a 6th dan Jujitsuka, affiliated to the World Jujitsu Federation, which was developed by jitsu luminary Prof. Robert Clark in Liverpool.

After warm-up, was sparring. The rules were 1) no punching in the face. 2) Er..that’s it. We rotated along the line swapping partners every 20 seconds, and trying to work throws in. I managed an inside hock counter to a roundhouse kick on one of the brown belts - happy with that – and then the next fellow attempted a cheeky hip throw. I pushed him off and swept his leg - he didn’t go down, but was certainly well off balance. That was fun.

Finally we repeated the 20 second sparring rotating line-up, but with groundwork. This was interesting also, and I have to say that practicing at Seymour’s BJJ-infused groundwork sessions stood me in good stead. I fought three blackbelts, one orange belt and one brown. Drew the first four and submitted the last one, so I was quite pleased. With that the class was nearly over ; some warm down exercises brought things to a conclusion.”

From the impressions given by Rob, it seems they run things pretty well in Singapore and ju-jitsu classes are no exception. I noticed on the web that Stephen Chee is not only a 6th dan in jujitsu, but is a 5th dan in judo, 4th dan in karate and is also a qualified krav maga and arnis instructor…phew! What a cv. Good luck to Rob in his continuing jujitsu studies.