Guildford Martial Arts Academy

February 14th saw the first Interclub of the year and Guildford was on top form!

The men’s semi-contact was an intense, all-Guildford final between Mark Milne and Jens Henrikson. It was an exciting fight with awesome displays of lightning reactions, attacks and counters. Mark Milne came away with a well-deserved first place, a fantastic achievement!

Helen Milne also came away a winner, this time of the Junior Semi-Contact. She also competed in the Intermediate category and, with her strong focus and excellent timing, achieved 3rd place. Also in this category was Juliet Smith who entered her first competition at Intermediate level. Despite having never competed before, Juliet put up some good fights but narrowly lost out.

More wins came for Guildford from Daniel Engström, who won the +85kg Semi-contact category, with a great mix of techniques from the hands and legs!

Competing in the -75kg were Nick Oliver and Anish Anthony who achieved a well-earned joint 3rd, well done! Also in this category was Hemal Patel who did amazingly well despite it being his first competition.

Cameron Milne fought really well in a very tough group and was unlucky not to get 3rd place. Dillon Millington was also doing extremely well in his category however he had to pull out due to respiratory problems.

In the continuous categories, Jonny Steele flew through to the final very comfortably, winning all his fights in the preliminaries. He then fought really well in the final and was very unlucky not to get the decision as it looked from the outside he dominated his opponent.

Zuzana Krempeska went through to a straight final in the -55kg category, coming away with 2nd place. More importantly, she came up against some extremely tough and more experienced opponents and definitely was giving away a lot in height and weight in the open weight category. However she fought incredibly well, and was thoroughly unlucky not to get 3rd place.

So overall, this was even better than the last interclub with even Master Page commenting on how fantastic the Guildford team was – high praise indeed!

Well done to everyone who fought and a massive thank you to all the students who came just to watch, your support is always gratefully appreciated and makes a huge difference! We are already looking forward to the next interclub in May.

On Sunday 31st of January we had a few competitors enter the Watford Open Championships.

Helen Milne was there to compete once again. She seems to have come out of nowhere and just wont stop winning! So, it will come as no surprise that she took 1st place at the Watford open in her Semi-Contact points fight!

Jens Henrikson has returned once again! With his quick reactions, lightning fast hands and awesome counters, he stopped all his opponents and came away with a 1st place! It's good to see he hasn't lost his touch!

One of our very own instructors, Mr Kennedy, fought that day. As always, he was there from the start, supporting our fighters, coaching and competing.

Mr Kennedy made it into the finals of the Light Continuous category and went up against a former world champion. Unfortunately he lost the first round but then made a remarkable comeback and owned the second round! This led to a split decisions. The referees struggled to decide who won but in the end it seemed he just lost by a few points.

Well done to all our guys and girls. We hope to see more of you competing at the next competition which will be the Interclub!

Watford Open

This Sunday, the 31st, the Watford Open will be taking place. If you would like to compete speak to one of the instructors.

Interclub

The first interclub of the year is going to be helf on Valentines Day. For those who don't know when that is, it's the 14th of February. Contrary to the letter we have been giving out, it will not be held at Chessington Sports centre, but it now has been moved to Tollworth Recreational Centre. For any more details or if you would like to compete, speak to one of the instructors.

The academy is open today!

We apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause but the academy is closed once more.

The snow has once again interfered with travel to and from Guildford. WIth a number of trains being stopped and the icy roads, we have decided to close the academy.

Please check the website again tomorrow to see if we will be open.

We are finally open once again! The snow seems to have given up (fingers crossed) and we are back open as of 11th January!

All classes are running as usual! Hope to see you all soon!

We will still be closed today but will be definitely open Monday unless there is severe snow fall on Sunday night. Apologies for the inconvinience but we are looking forward to really getting going next week!

Due to treachorous travel conditions, the academy will be still closed on the 7th of January for all classes. We will be hopefully open as normal this saturday, please keep an eye on the news section of the website for any updates. Many Thanks.

Snow Day

There will be no classes running on the 6th of January due to all the snow.

We will hopefully be open tomorrow (7th) but check the news again tomorrow just in case!

End of Year

The academy will be closed over the christmas holidays. Our last day is going to be the 19th of December which will also be our end of year spectacular.

We'll be starting the day off as usual with the regular classes. After that, there will be a few awards handed out to those students who have worked exceptionally hard over the past year.

Student of the year awards will go out to one student from every programme and both a male and female student from the adults programme.

After the awards are all given out, there will also be a points fighting competition for Kidzone, Kids and Adults. All Leadership students are welcome to join in. There is however a £5 entry fee. For the spectators it's free to watch.

We would like to see as many of you there as possible so that we can have an awesome end to the a year which probably could have gone much better for Guildford and all it's students!

New Year

We will be opening again on Monday the 4th of January. We look forward to seeing all of you again in the new year!