Professor Allan Manganello Gracie Jiu Jitsu Seminar – June 2018

Robin French with Professor Allan Manganello, Peter Squire and Latest Team Pedro Sauer UK Blue Belts - June 2018

With Professor Allan Manganello already travelling to Iceland for the Master Sauer seminar, at the beginning of June, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up; so we Pete and I made arrangements for him to travel straight onto the UK.

Accompanied by his wife and young son, Professor Allan took some time out mid-week to see some of the sites in the UK.

After time spent in London and at a local zoo, attention was switched back to Gracie Jiu Jitsu; starting off on the Friday evening with Blue Belt test for the latest cohort of Team Pedro Sauer UK candidates.

As with all of Professor Allan’s assessments, the test was thorough; and due to the format of the formal testing process, it was clear that they knew exactly what they needed to know. I’m happy to say that the guys all passed (well done again Sam, Sam, and Gary)!

As per our usual tradition, we celebrated a successful test in style, at Nando’s.

With our new class time being a little earlier on a Saturday, we were able to run our regular scheduled session before the seminar started; I opted to take class, whilst Pete looked after Professor Allan.

Getting going a few minutes after noon, the first seminar session focussed on armlock mastery. First a straight armlock from the triple threat guard position, before looking at some Kimura variations, also from the guard. Myself and the guys that had travelled to Iceland the previous week had already seen this session on the Friday evening. This meant that we could re-cover the material in more detail and to ask some better questions on getting the implementation just right.

After an hour break for lunch, the second session kicked off. This time the material was Guillotine mastery; more particularly connecting arm-in guillotines and anaconda chokes. Apart from some videos of Professor Rener Gracie demonstrating this stuff, this was the first time seeing this material. I found it very interesting and showed up some cool options.

In an attempt to make sure as many people as possible could get involved, we decided to switch our usual Saturday evening meal out, to a BBQ; which Pete hosted at his place. A highly amusing and sociable evening, we really should make these more laid back social events a more common occurrence.

As Pete had done the collection from the airport, it was my responsibility to get the Manganello’s back to the airport. So, after collecting them from their AirBnB in Chelmsford on Sunday morning, we headed off to Heathrow airport for their lunchtime flight. Fortunately the traffic was good, and we made it in good time.

Looking back over the weekend, I’d like to say a special thanks to Professor Allan for continuing to support our efforts over here in the UK!