Planning is key
With talk of reopening in some way looming, we have been planning for every possiblity and how we will improve things from before. Here is the lowdown for our plan for returning to action.
We do not yet know when we will be allowed back in the physical gym. When we do start going back it seems we will have to social distance. Once we get back to full classes we will also have to change the way we do things, and be more disciplined in terms of self hygiene and extra steps in the gym. Let’s look at 3 levels of returning, from not returning to social distanced returning and finally a full return and how these will vary and what we will be doing. After that we will look at how we have planned new classes and changes at the gym to make it the best gym we can for our students.
1. We can’t return yet and the status quo prevails.
If this is the case, we continue with our training at home using Wave Online (here is a free week if you haven’t been training). We will work the schedule accordingly and make sure the times work around people’s jobs and give them options for partner training and ways to keep their Brazilian Jiu Jitsu on point.
We will continue with our engaging content and weekly chats so we can see what you guys are up to. We are also still here to help with anything we can do. We have a wonderful community and we can all make use of this and if you need anything from work, training, and life advice, or to help with shopping we are here for you as usual.
We will also be creating more outdoor events if these are allowed during the initial stages.
2. Open with social distancing
This is going to be interesting, We will have to run movement classes with limited class sizes. Everyone will have to pre-register and class sizes will be limited to about 10 to keep the 2m distancing. I have heard that they might cut the distance to 1m as this brings the UK in line with Europe, either way this means no contact but at least we can train in the same room, and socialise… at a distance of course.
This will basically be Wave Online… but offline :) we can do the movement drills classes and all our online classes in the gym and just have to watch our space.
This will be a positive move as we will be adding more movement drills to the warm ups and classes as they have been fun and are tricky and beneficial for getting your body working in the right way to pull off the BJJ techniques.
3. We are go go go!! Full open back up.
This is the dream. We go back to full contact training, with all the classes, socialising and hard training. This then leads on to all the below goodies.
All the goodies :)
First, off the obvious stuff we have been doing. We have painted and renovated the arch and got all new mats. Once Ikea opens we will have a whole new reception area shop with gis, rash guards, t-shirts, drinks, snacks.
We have enough aloe hand sanitiser to sanitise 1000 elephants. We will increase the cleaning routine and have a transition area for getting on the mats with a shoe rack to put your flip flops and bottles away.
In a month after opening we will have a mega grading opening party. We know you haven’t been training as much as you would like, but you had earned your grade before this all happened and getting it will give you the kick up the ass to get you over the hump.
We are going to start with the schedule below, with more nogi classes and more focused classes for beginners and advanced students.
Wave’s return schedule
We will have an optional grading test day every three months on the last Sunday for you to test your basics and get you through to the next levels. This will end with an optional competitive segment so you can get some competition practice to boot.
Do you have any suggestions for our return? What would you like from a BJJ club when they get back to full swing?