other incredible month at TRIQUEST! Thomas Fan’s teacher, Master Jose ‘Ze Marcello’ was invited over for his second seminar in Hong Kong. Most of those who attended the first seminar four years ago were on hand to partake in this one.
Professor Ze is a fourth-degree black belt under Sergio “Bolao” Souza. He dominated the Mundials and Panams in 1996-98 and the Europeans in 2008. Professor Ze has founded Icon Team which now boasts 50 affiliate schools across the world and extends here to Kylin at TRIQUEST in Hong Kong.
From Monday through Saturday, Professor Ze taught nonstop at Kylin with groups and privates, and at Grips and Versus as well.
During the seminars with Kylin students, Professor Ze worked with us most strongly on the half-guard position, refining certain aspects of it to make the best possible defence. Then he taught us transitions from the half-guard: several sweeps, chokes, submissions and escapes to back mount, with a final emphasis on the back-mount position of one knee over the shoulder to tighten the choke and control the body. The professor also covered a variety of positioning concepts like leverage and balance, most notably to bridge with the head. He showed how important it is to maintain contact pressure on your opponent during transitions and submission attempts.
Grips BJJ hosted a seminar on Tuesday with a great turnout.
In a semiprivate seminar at Versus Performance, Professor Ze worked with brown belt Quinton Arendse, and black belts Makoto Aramaki and Oswaldo Neto. For myself and a couple of other students who were white and blue belts, we were lucky to see the professor coaching at an extremely advanced level.
Aside from being incredibly knowledgeable, Professor Ze is an extremely good instructor, able to get across his teachings in quite a simple and effective manner. He is always positive and full of energy and love for the sport, which transfers over to his students. His ‘flavor’ of jiujitsu is based on leverage and contact which makes it powerful even for smaller people and very fun to play. But above all, Ze Marcello is a genuinely nice person, and treated us all with kindness in a humble manner you might not expect for someone of his experience and credentials. We had such a great time with him even outside of the gym, and we can’t wait to have him back again!
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