This week, we covered guard subs for fundamentals. Serge taught a knee shield guard pass on Tuesday and on Thursday the advanced group got the freedom to drill and exchange techniques on Thursday night. I think it is important to give such opportunities to let students brain storm some techniques instead of insisting on turning every class into a mini seminar which I was guilty of doing in my first couple of years when I started coaching. Also, we almost completed the first two month of the semester. Nogi Nationals is 7 April so we just got about 4-5 weeks of preparation. Bare in mind that the Regional GI is on 12 May so it will a quick turn around between the 2 competitions. Also, we still have some tank tops left for sale $20 as per the picture.

It seems that there has been a few clubs changing affiliations over the past year in NZ. One of them switch to an affiliation overseas while another swapped to another NZ affiliation after a fall out. Also, I just find out that someone has lost his last affiliate as they no longer desired to run a BJJ program. Only time will tell if they will be able to recoup the students from the old affiliates and  flourish as they already found a new site to run their program.

From their facebook event: 6 Hour Charity Roll Saturday, March 10 at 10 AM - 4 PM pin Bucklands Beach BJJ 4 Wharf Road, Auckland, New Zealand 2012 Once again the team at Bucklands Beach BJJ are working alongside Variety Children’s Charity to help raise funds for underprivileged kiwi kids. This open mat will run continuously for 6 hours and is open to any club or affiliation that would like to come along and help this great cause! Anyone that would like to donate that is unable to attend on the day, please feel free to contact us.  Last time only three people managed the full six hours! Let’s see how many can complete the roll this time!? Please check out The Variety website  https:// www.variety.org.nz/ For more information please contact Andy at https://bucklandsbeachbjj.co.nz/

Last week, for the Nogi advanced class we covered a specific situation to prepare for the National Nogi competition: when your opponent stalls into your guard. Instead of trying to teach specific techniques, we just organized 30 minutes of rolling in that specific situation to let people develop and modify their techniques in order to avoid the staller. For the beginners class, we did knee on the belly on Tuesday nogi and Thursday Gi. Knee on the belly is devastating position and we cover it at least 4 weeks per year. For the Gi Advanced class on Thursday, Stu continue on teaching the worm guard made popular by Keenan (also known as lapel guard. He is likely to keep teaching this guard for the rest of the semester. By the way, we are teaching the class as normal on Waitangi day 06/02/18. See you on the mats.