New Club New Location

By now most of the people following me both publicly and anonymously know the Judo club is moving to a new location. For those of you that didnt know it...the Judo club is moving to a new location :). Last night was the last official night the Judo club trained at Maxercise. While I am sure we will be back for team training, in houses and just "one off" type training sessions it still felt a little weird as we bowed out last night. Maxercise has been good to me over the years but I decided it was time for something different. I will be helping Ray by teaching BJJ on Tue and some Saturdays. I also plan to attend as many classes (both BJJ and Judo) as humanly possible. Just having the numbers in class will help us grow.

About the Club - The location is great. We are offering Judo, BJJ and Kettle Bell classes to start with other programs to come. We are steps from a subway stop and we have a big glass window in the front that is very welcoming. The building is really old so we have been working on it A LOT over the past month to get things "up to snuff". My main area of focus this month has been building a foam sprung floor for the club. Big thanks to the Denver Judo Club for providing detailed instructions on how to build a foam sprung floor. See the links below

http://www.judocalendar.com/denverdojo/Floor/How%20to%20build%20a%20floating%20Denver%20Dojo%20floating%20floor.pdf

http://judoinfo.com/tatami.htm

So far the floor is coming along exactly as planned. I made a few modifications to the instructions the Dever Judo Club provided and I cannot wait to take some falls on it. Truth be told, I am a little nervous. I really hope it the floor lives up to the hype. After the floor is done there will be plenty of "weekend warrior" project to do.

After class we all went to our favorite watering hole to celebrate the move. I always liked a beer after class, but last night the beer tasted particularly good.

Jumping around a little but, I am a little nervous we wont get enough bodies in the BJJ classes. There are lot's of folks in the Judo club that would benefit from cross training, but I am not sure they will actually make the commitment. The fact is the Judo guys like standup more than ground work. If the BJJ portion of the club is going to be successful we will need to retain the few people that cross train, perhaps convince a few more to cross train, but most importantly attract new people to the club that are primarily interested in BJJ.

I am really hoping the girls in Judo step up and cross train in BJJ. I have always thought the mark of a strong BJJ club is a club with a strong women’s program. A club with no girls or just 1 or 2 girls is usually a snake pit.

I am willing to do what it takes to make the club a success, I can only hope we catch a few break here and there to help us out.