Hey everyone , Summer is here!!! In this newsletter we are going to give you a heads up on what is going on at the Den over the next few months. Check out this picture from our annual Lions Den summer BBQ we had 2 weeks ago!! We had great weather , a great turnout and it was a blast. Big thank you to our members Pete Annello and Ryan Smithson for the live music , Mandy for the great food and also our Face painter and Balloon artist which the kids loved! We cannot wait for the next one.
Here at the Den we are constantly making changes to give our students what they want in terms of classes and also what they need to improve. That being said , here are the new additions you will see for classes. We have added a kids Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Class to the schedule which is an AFTERNOON class on Fridays at noon. This is open to all youth members 7 & up. We have also changed our Wednesday 11am afternoon BJJ class to a mixed ages class for the summer. This is open to all Youth BJJers who are a Gray belt with white stripe and up as well as adults. These classes are on from June 26'th - August 7'th. We are proud to say we are the only local school offering kids BJJ in the afternoons.
We are also expanding our Muay Thai program !! Our Muay Thai program and student base has been steadily growing over the past 5 years and we have had a large demand for not only more classes but kids classes too. You may have already noticed we now have Muay Thai classes 6 days a week for adults. On August 1'st we are kicking off our new program which will include adding 1 more class per week for adults as well as adding 3 Youth Muay Thai classes per week. We will also be adding our new Ranking System for our Muay Thai program where our Youth and Adults will now graduate through the ranks. This is something that traditional Muay Thai has been beginning to do and we want to be on the forefront of this.We have been working on this for sometime and are excited to finally be ready to implement it. With this added program we are also going to be making a big announcement when we kick this off in 7 weeks. We are bringing in an old friend and the big guns to help with our program. It Truly does not get any better than this.
We expect to be able to add a couple of weekday afternoon Muay Thai classes in the fall as well.
We have our next BJJ belt promotion August 18'th and have a ton of youth students are on track to be promoted. We also have a bunch of adults who we are expecting to promote to Blue belt at this one! Keep Grinding!!!!!
The Summer is also what we here at the Den consider our competition season for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is the time when we have the most amount of tournaments in BJJ within a few hours of us. We will have students and coaches at the Springfield Mass Naga event on June 24'th. On July 8'th all of our youth BJJ students will compete at the local NAGA right here in Albany NY. In August we probably have the most fun and toughest competition of the year in Wildwood NJ. We have students and coaches at this event each year. We usually hit the beach together , try to stay at the same hotel , some pool time , the tournament and some of us bring the kids to the boardwalk one night and do the rides. Its a great time and we have soo many great stories we share from this event such as great wins for our students to just the fun times we have had going out to dinner or on the boardwalk. We had a great football game on the beach 2 years ago and last year we had a blast finding and catching hermit crabs in a tidepool on the beach. More info for these events is all on our website on the "events" page. We also plan to do the sunshine and rainbows tournament on August 27'th in Saratoga as well as the Naga tournament September 9'th in New Haven Connecticut . Competition is completely voluntary for adults and we only ask the kids to do 1 per year. Some students do more but it is totally up to you.
Our only other event this summer would be our UFC viewing party on July 29'th. This is a night when we open our doors to all our members and watch the UFC event together. It is a pot luck event so each family brings a dish to share and there is always a ton of great food. Drinks are supplied by us and this event is free for all current members to attend. You can also bring your spouse or a plus 1. Sorry, no kids can attend this event unless they are in our MMA program. It's an earned privilege for them .
That is all for this newsletter. We will have another one out in September which will cover our students who will be fighting in an MMA event that month , our next BJJ belt promotion, our first Muay Thai promotion as well as our November Seminar and the special guest we are bringing in for that. SEE YOU ON THE MATS !!!!!
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