Week one, by the numbers

A week ago I wrote that everything on this site had become testable. This is the report on what happened when people came and tested it.

The numbers

Six sessions ran: three no-gi, two gi, one open mat. Fifteen people trained across the week, and between them they had somewhere north of forty live rounds. Nobody got hurt, and nobody got thrown in at the deep end to see how they’d cope.

Because the sessions are planned rather than improvised, I can also tell you exactly what we covered: five takedowns, seven snap-down and Russian-tie entries, three pins, two guards, seven sweeps, five submissions, two escapes. I’m not listing that to show off the syllabus. I’m listing it because “structured coaching” is an easy thing to claim and a hard thing to fake — a planned week leaves a paper trail, and this is ours.

Fifteen people isn’t a big number. It’s a real one, and the room already feels like a team.

Who actually came

The room was genuinely mixed: total beginners, experienced grapplers from other clubs, people coming back after years away, teenagers — and people a long way past the age most gyms quietly assume this sport is for. I said this club would work for all of them at once, and week one was the first honest test of that claim. The modern coaching approach held up: everyone worked from the same session, at their own level.

Every session ended with a lot of talking. That’s not time wasted after the real training — it’s part of it: the question you’re embarrassed to ask is almost always the one three other people needed answering too.

Both sports, from day one

The gi classes ran as promised — Tuesday morning and Friday night, Adrian coaching both. People turned up in gis on the first Tuesday of the club’s existence.

One rank across both sports, earned against written criteria. That was the deal on paper; it’s now the deal on the mat.

Sunday

Sunday was the free open mat, and afterwards most of the room walked to the pub. Families, kids, first-timers and the people who’ve trained for years, at the same table.

I can put numbers on everything else in this post. I can’t put one on that, and it’s the part I’d have been most disappointed to lose.

Week two

Week two starts tonight, 19:30, no-gi. The first two weeks are still free for anyone local — shorts and a t-shirt is all you need. Twelve of the thirty founding places went in week one; £45 a month, kept for good, and when they’re gone that’s that. Details on the pricing page, or just book a trial.

If you were waiting to see whether this place would be what the website said it would be — that’s fair. Come and see.