Very short and sweet. My names Aaron Thayre, I'm fourteen and I start Jujitsu at the local university in the new year
Checking in I suppose. Don't have much of a biography as yet. But been doing JuJitsu for a bit over a year and hopefully for a long long time. It's just so darn fun.
Most university jujutsu clubs are affiliated with the Jitsu Foundation. Once you spot that, it's not difficult to find a club that will teach you wherever you end up!
The Jujitsu Foundation as an org. do http://www.jitsufoundation.org/JuJitsu.asp?Page=The_Jitsu_Foundation_-_randori_nationals As does your club http://www.jitsufoundation.org/juji...ub&clubid=University_of_Portsmouth_Jitsu_Club
Little bit of both really... We spar in the sense that we get down on the floor and do full on ground fighting and standing throwing matches (a la Judo) on a fairly regular basis in the run-up to our randori nationals. This is what a lot of others would refer to as our only form of "true" sparring. However, we also train using other methods of pressure testing that don't involve the use of sparring in the traditional sense of the word. Essentially our training is something like as follows: Learn the move - An introduction to the technique, initially practised with the daft exaggerated attacks that tend to be ridiculed on a daily basis. This is largely due to the novices thinking that this is a good way to attack rather than something we actually teach. Practise the move - Once the move has been learnt, we tend to advance on to practising against much more realistic attacks. Our usual instruction is that the attacks should be as hard as the defender can realistically deal with while they get used to the technique, then as hard as the attacker can go once the defender is comfortable with dealing with the attack. So far this has been more or less what other styles would do, but where we differ is: Pressure-test the defender - Our pressure testing works differently to traditional sparring methods in that we have a designated defender and a set of attackers who are either armed or unarmed and are not told to attack in any specific way (unless the defender is practising a certain technique in this situation, but that's an exception rather than the rule). Depending on the type of exercise, the defender may be expected to deal with one attacker fully before anyone else attacks (the easiest exercise, and only really a challenge to the very beginners) or they may be expected to deal with a flurry of attacks that they have very little time to deal with, or they may need to fight multiple attackers simultaneously. There may also be specific situations where the defender is, say, jumped from behind by a couple of attackers trying to take him to the ground and pummel him, which falls under pressure testing in our style. Essentially we do things a little differently, but having done both sparring and what we do, I prefer my own training method to the usual ones despite having being criticised on occasions by people claiming that without full contact sparring every session you're not really doing a martial art. Anyway, if you're worried then give it a go and see what you think. If you don't like it after a couple of weeks you'll probably be out of pocket by less than £10 if their prices are like most other Foundation clubs, so you have very little to lose.
Unfortunately the ribs are taking more time to heal than I had hoped! When they're better I'd still love to pay a visit to you guys and have a bit of a bounce-fest
24 year old puertorican living in NJ USA. Started traditional jujitsu and dislocated my shoulder but going to continue as soon as I recover. I just wont do any competition fighting. Site Captain of security at a Pharmaceutical.
