Thanks again to Kev for another great seminar and grading! For his fifth visit to Artemis BJJ, Kev shared some awesome mount and back techniques, along with a series of techniques. He and Can then promoted four people, including club stalwart Simon to a well deserved purple belt.

Our next grading will probably be next Summer again, although we have a number of people who are likely to get their blue belts after the Bristol Open in Feb 2020. The club is looking to send a large contingent as always, should be a fun day. 😀

It has been a while since our last grading, so we’ve had a few interim promotions, but the big one was today. There are a number of people at the club who came in with a lot of existing training, who have therefore been overdue for their belts ever since they joined. Thanks to the continuing support of Kev Capel, that’s now been resolved, meaning we have four new purple belts.

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Yay, four new purples @ArtemisBJJ yesterday, plus two blues! I try hard to not emphasise belts at my club (one of several reasons I don't give out stripes), as it's important people focus on just getting better, with belts serving as a nice side effect. Also, makes for a handy photo. 😉 Big congrats to everyone who got promoted. Those who follow the Artemis BJJ Instagram should recognise @mj.dalton, who is my uke in many of the vids. 😃 It was also brilliant to see Lisa, who hasn't been in for a while due to an injury. Although I'm the head instructor, the majority of Lucy's training has been with Lisa, so it was great to have her there to see Lucy promoted to blue. Looking forward to Lisa's knee getting better: thanks for the great photos (Sara took good ones too 😃)! _________________________________________ Of course, none of this could happen without Kev: I can't thank @rgabucks enough for how he supports the club. 😎👍 ________________________________________ #bjj #BrazilianJiuJitsu #SlideyClub #SupportWomensBJJ #ArtemisBJJ @BJJglobetrotters #bjjglobetrotters

A post shared by Can (Jun) (@slideyfoot) on Jun 17, 2019 at 4:50am PDT

Big congrats to everybody who was graded today, thanks also to Sara and Lisa for their great photos and videos!

Coinciding with our first ever Artemis BJJ Camp, we had a small grading on the Sunday too. Three well deserved blue belts were handed out by Kev and Can, meaning that Jade, Nick and Paulina joined the ranks of Artemis BJJ blues. Well done to all of them!

As we have now gotten through the big backlog of promotions, we’ll be switching to less frequent gradings. Kev will therefore next be along in 2019, though Can will also be promoting a few people to blue belt in the interim (especially as a couple of people who would have been promoted at the weekend weren’t able to make it). Thanks again to Kev. 😀

For our first Winter Grading, there were plenty of deserving belts to be awarded. We still had something of a backlog from the last grading, with several people who weren’t able to make it back in June. After a great two hour seminar from Kev on throws and leglocks, the promotions began with one of those longtime students, Matt Robinson. He has been with us from almost the beginning, starting when he was around 12 years old.

Matt was followed by six blue belts, including his mother. Tracey has been an absolutely central part of Artemis BJJ pretty much since the club started. She’s done a lot behind the scenes, worked really hard on her jiu jitsu, stepped up to teach the kids class and also competed for the first time last weekend.

It was also great to see two of the stalwarts from the daytime open mat sessions receive their blue belts, Heidi and Rich M. The daytime sessions have really grown over the past year, contributing to the club’s overall growth spurt in 2017. Big Marcus, Steve M and Sam L all earned a promotion to blue too: for a full list of the current blue belts (with links to their promotion videos), head over to our BJJ rank page.

The promotions didn’t end with blue. There were a lot of higher belts to give out as well. Two of our instructors were upgraded to purple, Paul and Rich, who have both been a major part of Artemis BJJ. Not only do they run their own sessions at the club, they also ensure the classes run smoothly when Can is away. Eugeniu also earned his purple belt, after four years of training at various schools around the world (including his native Moldova). Finally, Can was promoted to brown belt by Kev.

Thanks so much to @rgabucks for sticking with me all these years, especially his incredibly generous support of @ArtemisBJJ. Kev is both an awesome instructor and an awesome person. 👏 It was wonderful seeing my students get their well deserved belts today, particularly the instructor team: they’ve all been immensely important to the continued growth of the club and making it a fun, friendly place to train. Thanks guys. 👍😃

A post shared by Artemis BJJ (@artemisbjj) on Dec 18, 2017 at 6:56am PST

As has become tradition, we headed off for a delicious meal at Pieminister afterwards. Thanks again to Kev!

Can and Dónal founded Artemis BJJ back in January 2014, with the women’s class beginning shortly afterwards in July 2014. We’ve grown a lot since then, going through many changes. The most significant was Dónal’s move to Wales in late 2014, meaning that Can suddenly found himself running a jiu jitsu club on his own. It’s been a steep learning curve with some interesting challenges. Perhaps the biggest has been to decide how to grade the excellent students we are lucky to have on our mats.

As it turned out, the solution was much less difficult than expected. Can originally began his training in 2006 at the Roger Gracie Academy. He soon met a purple belt there, Kev Capel. A few years later, Kev mentioned to Can that he was starting his own school back home in Buckinghamshire. So, when Can was living near High Wycombe in 2009, the choice of where to train was obvious: Kev’s still relatively new school.

Although Can moved to Bristol in 2011, shortly after he was promoted to purple belt by Roger Gracie and Kev, he had no desire to be graded under anybody other than Kev. Can has met countless people in BJJ, but there are very few that can match Kev’s combination of teaching skill, character and integrity. That connection has therefore been maintained ever since, with Can making sure to travel up to Aylesbury regularly.

When Artemis BJJ was founded in 2014, it was intentionally not affiliated to any large organisation. Instead, Can decided he wanted to go the BJJ Globetrotter route (having been impressed by the way Christian ran things, particularly the great atmosphere at his BJJ Globetrotter Camps), as that fit well with his principles and feelings about jiu jitsu. While Can remained individually under Kev, grading under him, he was not sure how to get his own students promoted.

The solution was sat in front of him the whole time: as soon as Can asked his instructor, Kev straight away agreed to pop down and do a grading seminar. We can’t thank you enough.

On the 11th June 2017, Kev was able to grade twelve students to blue belt, many of whom had been training long before Artemis BJJ was in existence (ranging from two years to over a decade). He also promoted Artemis BJJ stalwart Chris Jackson to purple belt, very well deserved: Chris has been a blue belt for a long time.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVNgEXohn3t/?taken-by=artemisbjj

A special moment of vindication and pride was seeing three women get promoted. Creating a women’s class was a priority for Can when he started the club. It’s continued to grow, especially now that as of this year, it is in the capable hands of Lisa. Huge congratulations to Milka, Ruth and Kirsty!

We took a lot of video, plus plenty of pictures: that’s all up on Instagram. Well done to everybody who got a new belt! At the same time, a belt is just a piece of cloth: the goal is to get better, the belt is merely a pleasant side effect that comes with that improvement. Though admittedly it is nice being able to give them out. 🖖

Thanks for the write-up on the MYGYM blog, Anona!