Last night's class @ London Fight Factory

Last night's class was the 7pm session at London Fight Factory, with Luiz promising a special guest instructor, something he does on a regular basis, so it's always worth dropping in on any class as you never know who might be there to take the class.

Last night was no exception as five times world champion Terere was the special guest, along with seven other black belts taking centre stage.  Black belt Jimmy Johnstone brought Terere up for the night and the mats were packed out for the occasion, with fifty people on the group photo alone.

Terere started the class by apologising for his favela English, but with so many Brazilians on the mats, tranlsation clearly wasn't going to be an issue; two spider guard sweeps started the session and with mat space at a premium, you really had to control your opponent and stop them from colliding with other pairs, something which proved very challenging during the course of the evening.

 

With Jimmy Johnstone

Two back takes followed which required minimum space to practice and the technical portion ended with a neat way to pass the pesky DLR guard; all of the aformentioned diamonds have been stored away and will hopefully keep until my next class on Monday evening, so plenty to look forward to there.

Sparring followed and I had three tough rolls with Ron, the brown belt pikey, Ashley the purple belt beast and blue belt Monica, one very tough individual; thanks to all three for pushing me real hard after a quite lengthy lay off due to a back injury.  As I type this report the day after the session, I am pleased to confirm I am still in one piece; my back is fine and I was able to bend over and put my socks on, something of a novelty this past twelve months.

The obligatory team photo followed after two speeches from Terere and Luiz and another awesome session in the bag.  Huge thanks to Jimmy Johnstone for bringing Terere up to London and to Luiz for everything else and to all the guys I rolled with and my student Nayden for being an excellent training partner.

Ooooss