Two4 Martial Arts

ARES, WOW, FCC, Samurai, Budo…..we are coming 🔥💪

We're running our first summer holiday camp.

Four days of MMA, jiu jitsu, wrestling and games. 17th to 20th of August, 10am till 3pm, ages 10 to 16.

Come and train with Ioan Harris. He's 7–3 as a professional, a BJJ black belt, and a European champion. He coaches our kids every week, so this isn't someone new to them.

No experience needed. Most of our juniors walked in knowing nothing at all, and they compete for Wales now.

£85 for the four days, or £25 a day. £70 if you already train with us. Bring a packed lunch, water, shorts and a t-shirt.

DM to book.

Everyone has a training partner they quietly avoid.

You know the one. When the coach says find a partner, your eyes skip straight past them. Maybe they catch you every time, maybe they are a weight above you and relentless, maybe they just have your number. So you pair up with someone safer.

We all do it, and it is worth being honest about why. Most of the time it is not about safety. It is about not wanting to lose the round.

Here is what a tap actually is. It is information. It shows you exactly where the hole in your game is, for free, in a place where nothing is on the line. The person who taps you just handed you your next thing to work on.

Rounds against people better than you teach you to survive, and they tell you the truth about your game that a comfortable round never will. Rounds against newer people teach you control and precision, and give them the same start someone once gave you. Pick only the rounds you can win and you get almost nothing from either.

To be clear, this is not about the partner who is genuinely reckless, or double your size and clumsy, or a round you are sitting out with an injury. Picking your rounds for those reasons is just sensible. This is about the ones you dodge because a small part of you might lose.

Next session, go find that round. It is the one with the most to teach you.

Named after a snake that squeezes its prey. The choke finishes fights the same way.

The anaconda is a front headlock choke. One arm goes under the neck and out through the armpit, you lock onto your own bicep, and their head and arm are wrapped up together with nowhere to go.

It lives off one of the most common mistakes in fighting: the lazy shot. Dive at someone's legs with your head down and the anaconda is already waiting for you. It is why coaches everywhere nag you to shoot with your head up.

Then comes the roll. People call it the gator roll, which means there are two animals in this one move. It is not for show. The roll swings you to the side of the lock and traps the back of their head against your chest. The last inch of space disappears, the same way the snake takes up the slack.

And that is the real lesson in it. The squeeze is not what does the work. Beginners strangle their own arms trying. The wrap has to be deep, the elbows pinch together, and the pressure comes from your hips, not your hands. Get the position right and the finish is close to a formality.

Watch any MMA card. When a takedown gets sloppy, this is the choke that makes them pay.

Wrap first. Squeeze second. Come learn it properly. First class is free.

"What should I work on?" It is the question we get asked most, and the one that can't be answered well.

Not because we don't want to help but because the honest answer to a broad question is always generic. Turn up more. Drill more. Be patient. You already knew all of that before you asked.

Now compare it to this one. "My knee shield keeps collapsing when they pressure with their hips." That question we can answer all day. The grip, the angle, the timing, and you can fix it this week.

A specific question is proof of work. It means you were present in class, you noticed something, and you cared enough about one problem to carry it off the mats with you.

And that points at something bigger. Your coach is a guide, not the answer. Every black belt you have ever met got there the same way, by taking responsibility for their own jiu-jitsu. Present in class. Doing their own research outside of it. Focused and intentional when actually training.

Do those three things and you will never need to ask the broad question again. The specific ones start writing themselves.

So bring us a specific problem and we will give you everything we have. The direction of your jiu-jitsu is yours.

Here is a rule we actually hold to at Two4: you do not use submissions to punish people.

Every belt above white is a promise to look after the ones below it. Rank is responsibility, not a licence to smash. The higher you go, the more careful you are meant to be, not the more you get to prove.

You have met the other kind. The guy who treats every training round like a final, who uses rank and strength to dominate people who cannot defend themselves yet, who cranks a beginner to "teach them a lesson." That is not toughness. It is the weakest thing on the mat, and we do not build our room around it.

A good senior belt does the opposite. They control you without hurting you. They give you a hard round that leaves you better, not injured. They teach without punishing, and they make the newest person want to come back.

So if you are trying to pick a gym, watch one thing: how the highest belts roll with the newest people. That tells you everything about the room.

Ours protect you. Come and see.

Nobody gets promoted at Two4 for turning up enough times. A belt confirms a change that already happened in you, and your coach saw it long before you did.

So what is your coach actually watching? Three things, and none of them are your best round.

Consistency. Not the day you turned up on fire. The days you did not feel like it and came anyway. Progress is attendance plus time, and there is no shortcut around either.

How you treat your partners. Can the newest person in the room trust you? Do you control without hurting, teach without punishing, hold back when you should? Belts measure character at least as much as technique.

Whether you can lose and learn. Can you get tapped in training without it wrecking your head? The thing that stalls people is almost never a lack of talent. It is an ego that cannot let a round go.

Here is the trap: chasing the colour. Worrying about when your next belt is coming, training to impress, grinding to get noticed. We do not grade to a test here, so there is nothing to cram for. That focus is the exact thing that slows you down.

Stop chasing the belt. Get good, look after your partners, and keep showing up. It comes on its own.

Most people quit right before it gets good. There is a wall almost everyone hits, and knowing what it actually is makes it a lot easier to walk through.

The first few months, everything is new and you improve fast. Then it flattens. Suddenly you are getting caught by people you thought you had passed, and it feels like you have gone backwards.

You have not. What happened is the beginner rush wore off, and you finally know enough to see how much there is. Feeling how little you know is a sign you are learning, not a sign you are failing.

The other half of it is ego. Early on you had no expectations, so getting tapped did not sting. Now you do have them, and it does. That sting is what makes people walk away, not the difficulty of the sport.

Here is the part worth holding onto. Every blue, purple, brown and black belt you look up to went through exactly this and kept turning up anyway. That is the only thing that separated them from the people who left. Not talent. Attendance through the flat bit.

So do not read a plateau as a verdict. It is not proof this is not for you. It is the entry fee. Push through the hump and the game opens back up.

Keep turning up. That is the whole secret.

Booking your first class is scary because you do not know what you are walking into. So here is exactly what your first week looks like, start to finish, with the mystery taken out.

Day one you bring almost nothing. Shorts and a t-shirt, or a rashguard if you own one, and a water bottle. There is no kit to buy first and no belt to earn before you are allowed in. You turn up, someone meets you at the door, and you get shown where to go.

You will not be thrown in. You get paired with someone who has done this a hundred times and knows their job is to look after you, not to beat you. And we do not line you up to copy a move over and over. You learn by playing small games with one simple goal, at your pace, and the skill starts to click on its own. If you spar at all, it is light. Nobody is trying to smash the new person. That is not how we train.

And the big one, the reason most people never start: you do not need to get fit first. You do not get in shape and then come to BJJ. You get in shape by doing it. Week one is where it begins, not where you are supposed to already be good.

By the end of the week you will be a bit sore, a bit hooked, and part of a room that was full of strangers seven days ago. Everyone here had a first week. Yours is one class away.

First class is free. Come and see.

The knee shield is the first guard frame most people learn. It's also the one most people use wrong.

Here's the mistake. You end up flat on your back, square to your partner, with your knee just resting on their chest like a doorstop. Then you wonder why bigger people walk straight through it. The knee was never the point. It's the least important part of the whole thing.

A frame is structure, not muscle. The knee shield works when three things are doing their jobs. The shin keeps distance, yes, but your bottom leg has to stay active, hooked and ready, not dangling. Your hands frame and switch grips to keep their posture broken. And you protect your angle, because the moment you go flat and face them square, the shield is just a knee they pass around.

Get those three right and a much smaller person holds off a much bigger one without straining. Get lazy on any of them and it collapses, no matter how strong you are.

So stop thinking of the knee shield as a wall to hide behind. It's a frame you steer with. Active bottom leg, busy hands, and never give up the angle.

Come build the frames the whole gym runs on. First class is free.