The thing is as well, people seem to think that you become
a black belt and you can magic your way out of anything, so
they bloody crank it on you! You have to be on your game all
the time so I train full time; that’s five days of jiu jitsu, a full day
of yoga and a day of conditioning.
You do vary your training; you train with Darren and
Helen Currie, very experienced and older school black
belts under Chris Haueter. Your jiu jitsu doesn’t neces-
sarily reflect the old school, however. What’s training
like for you?
At Pontefract, so Combat Base HQ, it’s really open and
humorous training. We all take the p**s out of each other
but mostly it’s an environment where people can positively
experiment with their own jiu jitsu.
Darren promotes the message that it’s all collective within
the club and we have a lot of different strengths. When
we do team training days we bring in a lot of people who
are particularly good at different elements of jiu jitsu and
everyone can collectively learn together, so there is no
particular style that is encouraged and it’s great.For example, I play a lot of foot locks and a lot of guard
but I’m not the only one within Combat Base. It really is a
melting pot of styles, it’s not like some gyms I visit where
everyone plays the same game or everyone is a carbon
copy of their coach. We’re encouraged to be as diverse
as possible.Free training and no politics are encouraged, as long as
knowledge comes back to the gym and makes everyone
better. Openness and learning are first and foremost.Yorkshire is the biggest county in the UK, but truth be
told there’s not a huge amount of jiu jitsu there. Win-
ning what you have and performing on the stages you
do, you’re almost blazing the way. Do you feel that?
If I’m helping do that, for sure I like it. I live in a place
called Goole and we’ve just started training there. There’s
a couple of purples and browns but jiu jitsu there is very
young. It’s a very small gym.We travel to Pontefract three times a week, but any further
than that you have to travel to Bradford or Leeds. There’s
just not an abundance, man, and I even look at where I’m
from, in Rotherham, there’s nothing there either. Sheffield
only has two gyms too.For such a big population, there isn’t a great amount. You
look across to Manchester and the North West and there’s
a ton. It’s strange for me, coming up in the Manchester jiu
jitsu scene. Before the likes of BJJ247 doing comps, before
even Grab and Pull, it was Ground Control. I’ve been lucky
to have that scene nearby where there are tons and tons of
gyms and it isn’t as busy in Yorkshire.It’s strange, jiu jitsu does seem to populate the M62 cor-
ridor but we have a way to go until we’re up there with
Manchester and London.It’s not like you aren’t helping, though!
I’m doing my best to put it on the map!LLOYD
COOPER
Lloyd Cooper
is a black belt
representing
Combat Base
in Yorkshire“One thing I like
to say is that some
people are in the right
place at the right
time, but if you keep
showing up at the
right place then at
some point it will be
the right time for you”