Class Structure And What To Expect

Now you’ve signed up for your first of three trial lessons https://kingstonbjj.com/free-class-offer/, it’s nice to get an idea of our class structure and what to expect.

Our head instructor is Diccon Lynes https://jjgf.com/academy-member/diccon-lynes. He began studying Jiu Jitsu 18 years ago and now focuses on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu self defence under Eddie Kone, a Rickson Gracie association Black Belt Fourth Degree.

Our BJJ classes in Kingston and Surbiton follow the same structure every lesson and importantly, contain the following elements.

Have no concerns! Our warm up is designed to be light and this means it is achievable by anyone. The beginning of our class starts with students lining up and Diccon explaining what we will be focusing on for the lesson.

Starting with a slow jog, we progress to facing in and out around the edge of our mat. The warm up is light, with an emphasis on raising the heart rate and subsequently, the body’s temperature. We finish our warm up with hip escapes and forward and backward rolls. This ensures that we constantly build repetition into some of Jiu Jitsu’s key movements. We teach people how to perform hip escapes and rolls from day one. It’s sometimes best to just watch, to get a better idea of how to perform each movement. Then you can try it yourself.

Very often, we incorporate some standing self defence into the last part of our warm up. The benefit of this is that we build volume into our self defence techniques. The self defence techniques are a continuation of the warm up and feature lighter, less dynamic self defence techniques. Examples of these are how to deal with clothing grabs, hair grabs, shoulder grabs and pushes.

With a clearly defined class structure, each lesson at Kingston BJJ is broken into three key elements. All three are essential to Jiu Jitsu. We pride ourselves on our strong standing self defence focus. As a result, a third of our BJJ class is given to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu standing self defence, every session.

Our self defence work regularly includes defences to throat grabs, punches, upper body control, standing guilloties, standing headlocks, clothing grabs and many more scenarios. This means we are constantly refining our technique.

Outling our class structure and what to expect at Kingston BJJ.
Weight distribution is an important element of standing self defence.

With our priority being self defence, we spend a huge amount of time perfecting our headlock escapes on the ground. Of course we also look at all of the many Jiu Jitsu positions and their escapes. Namely but not limited to: side control, the mount and back control. Because our interest is preparing ourselves for a self defence situation, we spend very little time looking at what would be considered sports Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

We have four 1.5 hour training sessions per week and our time majors around strong fundamentals.

Class structure and what to expect at Kingston BJJ

We couldn’t write a piece on class structure and what to expect without discussing sparring. The sparring we do gives us the opportunity to implement new ideas and concepts into what we already know and practice. The beauty of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is that we can practice together with full resistance. Our tapping system acts as a safeguard. At Kingston BJJ, the emphasis of our sparring sessions is to build our knowledge and develop. Students are deterred from absolute all out effort, being encouraged to think, apply and stay safe.

We are looking for finesse and great use of mechanics rather than a reliance on strength and athleticism.

Our training sessions are enjoyable because they are all about learning and not all out fighting. Subsequently, with the right training partners we are able to grow our Jiu Jitsu.

Our number one priority when sparring is to look after each other. We never try to hurt each other and strive to always have fun. With this ethos, sparring (training) sessions become a thoroughly enjoyable and wholly beneficial experience.

After sparring (we call sparring ‘training’), we walk around the mat together to bring our heart rates down. This allows us to return our heart rate and body temperature to something closer to normal. The walk around is also a great social aspect.

We stretch for 5 minutes after each session and the stretching is led by Diccon. We stretch all areas of the body and particularly work on relaxing and stretching the back.

Now you’ve read about our class structure and what to expect – check out our Google reviews https://kingstonbjj.com/reviews/. Send us your details via our contact form https://kingstonbjj.com/contact/ or send us a WhatsApp message.

Start learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Kingston BJJ where our priority is self defence.