6309 SW Capitol Highway, Portland OR, 97239
503 432 7450
info@southwestportlandmartialarts.com
All the kids want to spar the coaches in class. Why is that?
Well, I think it’s because we’re super fun but also because we have really good control. Add on to that the fact that we’re much bigger than them and if they slip up and wallop us, we can usually (some of the kids hit hard) take the shot without too much trouble.
With all that in mind, we sell it to the kids. Try to make it so everyone wants to spar YOU as much as they want to spar us. They get it. That means getting confident with your skills, having fun, and having great control… all three of which are incredibly awesome goals.
SW Portland Martial Arts Blog
I Wanna Spar the Coach!
July 8th, 2024My Poor Little Attention Span
July 6th, 2024The last few weeks smushed together
In case you can’t handle absorbing things in larger than one second increments, here is a compilation video from the last few weeks at the gym, including one of our kid’s camps and all the usual excitement as well.
July BJJ Theme: Guard
July 5th, 2024
Guard. If you look around a BJJ floor at any given time during rolls, you’re likely to see about 50% of the pairs of players in some sort of guard.
Given the frequent occurrence of the position, it makes sense to focus on it. Heck, it wouldn’t be wrong to spend about 50% of your time on guard. There’s certainly plenty of stuff to cover: closed guard, open guard, half guard, passing the guard, sweeps, submissions, z-guard, k-guard, and all the guard variants I’ve never heard of or have forgotten.
If the theme works anything like our last few, everyone will come out at the end of the month a much more formidable player. My plan is to stick to closed guard and the fundamentals of the position. Hopefully the other coaches have some fancier stuff to keep everyone entertained.
Round and Round We Go
June 2nd, 2024My head is spinning…
What have we done over the last three weeks? Lots of combinations in the MDP classes, work on the butterfly guard in BJJ, keeping our hands up in kids class during sparring, and apparently, some sort of amazing double scorpion kick.
Membership Benefits
May 4th, 2024
As you can see, we’ve added a new membership benefit: if you’re a paying gym member, you get $20 off a massage with one of our favorite LMTs, George Bare of Vital Integrity Massage.
Pretty cool stuff, obviously, but did you know you also get access to our whole schedule? That’s right. CrossFit classes, Yoga classes, all the various martial arts classes. If you are a paying member, they are ALL open to you. I mean, I guess don’t go to the kids class for 4 year olds unless you are actually a four year old child, but you get the idea (I hope.)
If you’ve got kids, you also get a discount on our kids camps and free access to our movie nights. You also get access to our book club meetings because, well, our gym is full of people who love to read.
Most importantly, you get to hang out with amazing people and learn awesome things.