See you on the mats.

Recently, there are a few companies that are offering anti bactorial soap for BJJ after training. The arm bar soaps are pretty cool and have interesting scents. The one I tried had coconut and acai flavor. http://www.armbarsoap.com/products.html Some other interesting links http://www.killerbeegi.com/bjj-gear/bjj-body-soap/ http://grounderssoap.com/products/eucalyptus-hemp-tea-tree-oil-infused-soap http://www.defensesoap.com/ https://www.etsy.com/listing/234875059/sandalwood-bjj-soap-ufc-mma-sports-mens http://www.aftermat.com/scrub-soap http://ideepure.com/product/athletebar/?v=79cba1185463

When you enter the mats, shake the hands of everyone. We run a pretty relax dojo, we understand if you come late to training. Just enter the mats and get changed quickly. You do not need to ask permission to enter or leave the mats. Please do not talk loudly during the technical lesson as the instructor needs everyone attention Try to keep the chit chat to a minimum especially during rolling. Give time for your training partners to tap In case, you train with a beginner and he/she does not tap to a submission, just release as it could be dangerous and they do not know any better. No shoes on the mats your shoes should be facing the street and not the dojo. no water bottles inside the dojo and the changing room. Please dispose of your fingers tapes in the rubbish bin. The beginners have to be on cleaning duties (empty rubbish bin, sweep, mop etc.) Wash your gi all the time. Trim your nails, brush your teeth if you have bad breath. Do not brag or celebrate when submitting

As usual, 2 options. Judo at Judokong.com or bjj @ citybjj. See you on the mats.

Ben will be teaching from 10.30 am: "ne waza (ground) will be yokoshihogatame (side control) and the basics of pinning someone down. Tachiwaza (stand up) will be osotogari"... Auckland BJJ members are welcome to attend. If you want more details on the Judo Club http://www.judokong.com/

BJJ Superstar; 7 time world champion; IBJJF hall of fame member; Xande Riberio is in town and teaching an open seminar tonight 24th February Due to his new and exciting affiliation Professor Douglas Santos  http://www.douglasjiujitsu.co.nz/  (Serge and Stu's instructor) has brought over one of the best Jiu Jitsu Champions of all time. There is still time to get in this exciting opportunity so give Douglas a ring and book your space for tonight.

Once is a while you have a good turn out and you decide to take a group picture for memories. When we started our club from scratch, I never let the attendance affect my mood. I learned BJJ from an acadamy that started from a very humble beginning and I always knew that it takes time to build up numbers. I did not want to become an instructor that would let attendance dictate the way I feel I teach Jiu Jitsu. If you let the number of students affect you, you are in for a roller coaster ride as number can go up and down really quickly due to many factors that sometimes you have no control over. When you look at the health situation of a martial arts club, you have to analyse the numbers of students but also of their respective belt level. This is what I call the pyramid of belt. Of course, a new club would have lot of new students therefore you would expect to see lot of white belts and blue belts. The purple belt, brown and black would be rare as it takes usually 5

We are continuing on the topic of half guard but this time it will half guard sweeps instead of passes. For the more advance students, we will doing deep half guard. Next week topic is turtle.

Auckland BJJ are an IBJJF team registered. http://www.aucklandbjj.com/p/we-proudly-announced-that-we-are-ibjff.html Our instructor Serge is IBJJF black belt certified. http://www.aucklandbjj.com/p/international-brazilian-jiu-jitsu-black.html If you want to query about affiliating to Auckland BJJ http://www.aucklandbjj.com/p/affiliate-program.html We follow the strict guideline of the IBJJF graduation system. Please see below the list of techniques that a student will demonstrate for their belt exams. BLUE BELT REQUIREMENTS On average, 10 to 14 months of training with a minimum of 100 to 120 classes plus passing the following test. Belt promotions are always at the discretion of the head instructor. Factors such as above-average class attendance, natural ability, or competing could possibly shortened the time to blue belt, while a poor attitude, bad temper, or a lack of common morality outside the school could lengthen it. THROWS AND TAKEDOWNS 1 leg t

When the organisers said you could do bombs diving into the lake after the lake, I did not know it actually takes place next to the actual lake. Great location and massive turn out for the 3rd annual event organised by low key MMA. Definitely want to go there next year. a few pictures that I found on facebook from our friend Gracie Gym Wanganui

A quick update from Jesse that moved to work in London. He choose to train at fight zone London and is enjoying it: Training report from London: "Never had my ass kicked so hard - the people at fightzone are some next level BJJ guys! Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a 6 pack and look like they ready to fight in the octagon. White belts fight like blues, blues fight like purples; it's nuts!! 50 classes a week and I've signed up for unlimited monthly membership - bring on the pain!:" http://fightzonelondon.co.uk/web/ from their website Jiu Jitsu Affiliation to Checkmat BJJ Academy Being a direct descendant of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lineage of Ricardo Vieira, the Fightzone London gym is also naturally associated with the renowned Checkmat BJJ team.  Checkmat Jiu Jitsu is one of the most well established Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teams in the world, with affiliates in Brazil, USA, United Kingdom and even China.  The team was founded in 2008 by

We are 1 month away from the NZ grappler nogi national competition. If you want to compete, start looking at your weight category. Please do not leave it to the last minute, we prefer that you compete at your natural weight but we also understand if you want compete at a lower weight category. Do not leave it to the last minute/week to cut weight. We had enough drama from students making too many drastic weight cut. Remember that if you do not make weight, you will be DQ and lose your entry fee. The club will refund half of your entry fee. If you want compete, attend as many classes as possible and tell Serge as we need to work on your competition game plan. If you are not interested in competing, that is fine as it is not a requirement in our club for promotion . Just train as usual. Some old blogs about BJJ competition: http://www.aucklandbjj.com/2015/03/to-compete-or-not-to-compete-that-is.html http://www.aucklandbjj.com/2014/08/bjj-competition-psychology-cake

Open mats from 10 am at city bjj on Saturdays.  8 West Street, Newton, Auckland, 1010.  http://www.aucklandbjj.com/2016/01/open-mats-at-city-bjj_29.html Or Judo beginner Classes on Saturday Our sister club Auckland University Judo Club is having beginner classes on Saturdays from 10.30 am. It is open (and free) to our students.  In fact all their Judo classes are open to our students Sensei Rick Littewood will be taking the class as Ben Uy is away to a concert, Great opportunity to learn from a 7th Dan Kodokan Judo black belt. http://www.judokong.com/ Dojo:  6 Woodhall Rd, Epsom, AUCKLAND

This week, we introduced 3 new drills for warm up: technical stand up, half guard pass and half pass sweep. The throw for the next 4 weeks is O goshi also known as hip throw. It is a great throw that can use for gi and nogi. I actually like getting thrown around with this particular throw. For the advanced students, Serge taught shin to shin guard and entries to single X and X guard. While, I do not think there are guards that everyone must master, we think it is important for our blue belts students and above to start getting familiar with more intricate BJJ guard. Stu also taught half guard in more details for the beginners. If you think, it is lot of information to grasp in one week, do not worry. We will cover the same topic in 12 weeks time. We plan to cover half guard sweep 4 times this year. That means 4 week of half guard spread trough the year. This week, we also continue on our competition sparring where we start from standing and play under competition point sys

Auckland MMA is hosting Adcc world champion for a seminar. SAT, 9/04/2016 AT 1:00 PM Orlando Sanchez BJJ Workshop - Auckland MMA Auckland MMA, Pakuranga, New Zealand Event Description Grappling and BJJ workshop with Orlando Sanchez - 2015 ADCC Grappling World Champion. Hosted by Auckland MMA, powered by NuZest and supported by Holistic Performance Nutrition. For more details https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/orlando-sanchez-bjj-workshop-auckland-mma-tickets-21645091050

We just bought a new website for Aucklandbjj.com. It is AKLBJJ.COM AKL is the acronym for Auckland.

We will covering top half guard on Tuesday 16 and Thursday 18 Bottom half guard on Tues 23 and Thu 25. As any other topic, we cover each topic 4 times through the year. Half guard was known as a transition position: closed guard to the inevitable side control/guard pass. However, it has become a major guard for many players. Happy valentine Day! See you on the mats.

Couple of pictures from judo class and city bjj open mats.

We now have 2 options: From 10 am, open mats at city BJJ http://www.aucklandbjj.com/2016/01/open-mats-at-city-bjj_29.html From 10.30 am, Judo introduction with Ben Uy at Auckland University Judo (our dojo in Epsom). http://www.aucklandbjj.com/2016/02/judo-beginner-classes-on-saturday.html Have a good weekend.

This week we taught sweeps. It is the third week we concentrate on the guard. Stu taught the fundamentals of guard sweeps. Serge taught the advanced sweeps: sit up guard on Tuesday and single X. We also did competition sparring with taking points. Next week, we are doing top half guard.

Our sister club Auckland University Judo Club is having beginner classes on Saturdays from 10.30 am. http://www.judokong.com/ Dojo:  6 Woodhall Rd, Epsom, AUCKLAND It is a good alternative to the BJJ open mats that we attend at City BJJ. The instructor is Ben Uy. Ben is a Kodokan Judo Black Belt. He is also a blue belt with the Auckland BJJ. Basically he is the hybrid: a product from the Epsom Dojo that trains Judo and BJJ at the same time. He won the silver medal at the NZ grappler National Competition 2015 (white belt) so BJJ rules and style is no problem for him. Our members are welcome to attend all the Judo classes but this class should be even better as he will introduce you to Judo throws (Tachi Waza) and ground work (Ne Waza) See you on the mats.

Tonight we farewell Jesse. He is off to work to work in London for 2 years. All the bestm thanks for the support.

Matt left training and completed a certicate of welding in 2015. In 2016, Matt is back training. Be like Matt.

Single x guard on thursday no gi for advanced students. See you on the mats.

With the recent inquiries and new inflow of potential customers, we noticed that BJJ is a lot more popular. We do enjoy the attention and we had to put a limit on the number one new students. Bare in mind, the limit is only on new students and we always will keep our doors open for our old students that want to make a come back. Actually, Mathew just came back training after taking a year off to do a welding course. Reasons for the limit: quality of teaching (ratio of teacher and students) and safety (too many students on the mats). So the question is why do we have so many queries and new students? We have been in Epsom for 2 years (2 years in Onehunga prior) and did not experience the same influx of students last new year. Are we too cheap? Is our "no contract policy" enticing all this "new" attention? Is the blog/website getting too popular? I already know the answers for the above. Yes, we are offering something else and get the attention

Guard sweeps. See you on the mtas.

Water bottles are to be kept outside the Dojo. Please take them home or put them in the recycle bin on your way home. Do NOT leave your water bottle inside the dojo after the training or any articles of clothing.

Happy new year to our readers and members.

Waitangi Day (named after Waitangi, where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed) commemorates a significant day in the history of New Zealand. It is a public holiday[1]held each year on 6 February to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document, on that date in 1840. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitangi_Day

BJJ Doco

We proudly announced that we are IBJFF certified as club and a team. This means our students can compete in any IBJJF competition events overseas. If you want to check if your club is IBJJF registered, check out http://ibjjf.org/registered/ If you want to compete overseas in IBJJF events and your club is not IBJFF registered, we are open to an option of an affiliate program. http://www.aucklandbjj.com/p/affiliate-program.html Our instructor Serge is IBJJF certified BJJ Black Belt http://www.aucklandbjj.com/p/international-brazilian-jiu-jitsu-black.html

Tonon vs Palhares. 2 kings of the heelhooks. I can't wait!.