This past week, we had a knife seminar with Antonio La Salandra, the man who trains the Pope’s security.
He taught a comprehensive class on knife fighting and defenses against knife attack. We worked on skills from the standing position and from mount position.
We also worked on how to handle the situation where the attacker is frantic and tries to hit you. Finally, we worked on skilled from the situation of a crowded environment, which forces us to still try to defend ourselves without losing balance because of the close proximity with other people.
Then, we worked on Japanese Kickboxing. Antonio came from a Kyokushin Karate background as well Seidokaikan Karate/Kickboxing and also was a Kickboxing world champion.
He showed us some great tricks that can be used for self-defense and be combined with the skills he taught in knife defense. Everyone loved all the knowledge and skills he had to contribute and greatly enjoyed the class. All of our coaches had a wonderful experience learning and observing his teaching methods and comparing with ours. We look forward to having him back, hopefully in the spring.
On Friday we had our Parent’s Night Out: Halloween. But Before that Sampa was awarded as the Elite sponsor of Gladstone Elementary for the 5th Year consecutive. Great to help the school and help over 600 kids among other sponsors, that day was an event so the kids could say thank you to the sponsors and Sampa BJJ was there.
We love Halloween here at Sampa and our Halloween party is one of the biggest parties we throw.
This year, we had a little over 20 kids who came to celebrate with us. We started with a haunted maze that our staff had set up for the kids go through the maze as many times as they wanted.
They loved the haunted maze and many kids did the maze multiple times. Then, we turned on the light and let them go through the maze without the scary parts so that the kids who were scared could conquer the maze.
Once the maze was over they watched our Halloween movie pick: Transylvania. While they were watching the movie, we cleared the maze and set up an obstacle course on the mats. We also made hot dogs for the group. The kids were then allowed to do any activity that they wished: play in the obstacle course, watch the movie, or just play with their friends. The parents picked up the kids around 9:30. Overall, our Halloween party was a success and we can’t wait to do it again next year.
The next day, we held a wresting camp. Kids all over Glendora came to try our wrestling camp and they loved it. Nearly all kids who attended signed up and we’re excited for them to join our wrestling program.
We want to see some of them get into competition and tournaments with the skills they learn from us. We have many coaches with wrestling experiences and who are willing to teach and share their knowledge with the kids. We will have our wrestling classes on Friday at 4 pm and on Saturday at 11 am at our Glendora location. We are excited to build up this new wrestling program and hope to see many students from our community come out and try it.
If you’re interested in joining us for any of our events or classes, please contact us at 626-335-4971.