It depends what you want to get out of it. I can only speak for the Jitsu foundation because I've never trained with the others. It's not an authentic jujitsu tracable back to the samurai, it's adapted judo moves with a few moves of aikido and a few from karate thrown in. This is probably a good thing though because Kano's refinement of jujitsu is what allowed him and all of his students to beat the jujitsu students. It has a great social atmosphere because there's a club at almost every university so you can train anywhere in the UK and they have national and regional events. London is particularly good because of its size. Because it's a huge organization there is quality control and what is taught for gradings is around 95% identical at any club you go to. I'd recommend at least trying it, and trying a university club because: 1. It's first lesson free 2. It's very very reasonable afterwards: £30 for 3 months, a £20 pound gi as it's all subsidised. 3. The social tends to be good. They go for a drink afterwards, not a booze up but a civilized drink, and they organize social events some of which are pretty much just shameless booze ups. What isn't the same at every club is the amount of free fighting. If you want a lot more randori then I know Kingston do a LOT and their sensei is awesome. I saw a competition between his club and another club and they won nearly every match with only 2 draws. To be fair at that point the club was only doing minimal ground fighting, i.e. 2 or 3 months a year for half an hour per session. The club I'm with, Queen Mary, have started doing a lot more ground work due to demand, and also the drive to win medals in the Nationals, a competition. And their fitness is usually a bit more intense. Because of the lack of stand up free fighting at low level I train in judo as well which I now actually want to make my primary martial art because I enjoy this a lot. But as far as I understand it you'll find most if not all JJJ places have a lack of free fighting. It was true of a club I went to as well that wasn't affiliated with TJF. The only bad points about TJF are: 1. lack of free fighting (already spoken about and not unique to any JJJ organization) 2. Overemphasis on breakfalling (i.e. learning to fall so you don't hurt yourself. Their breakfalling is very good but they are obsessed with it and spend as far as I'm concerned a little too much time on it). 3. A few dodgy moves. They update the syllabus every so often to make moves more effective or to take bad moves off. There are a few moves on the syllabus that are either purely for show, e.g. defence from a katana, and there are moves that I've heard someone at the top level of the organization say doesn't work, and there are moves that work but to get them to work in real life you'd have to have godlike speed and precision. This is also true of any JJJ place though. In conclusion: It's a friendly place where you can learn some cool and effective stuff, you just need to keep an open mind about what works and what doesn't and ideally would supplement it with judo. Your breakfalling will be better than most judo players, even if you're bad at it. If you're good it will be flashy. They offer a lot in terms of national and regional events both from a training point of view and a social point of view.
I have just seen this thread and wanted to chip in with a suggestion if you havent found a club yet.As you are in canning town how about nipping across the river to sidcup ? http://www.atemijujitsu.com/ £50 per month, train as much as you want is the dearest tarrif, first lesson free.Great guys and a short drive from you at night when the tunnel traffic has died down. We had quite a few marines who were based at stratford during the olympics popping down so not so far from canning town.
