NZ Jiu Jitsu School of Self Defence

18/12/2025

30th Anniversary
Thirty years ago, on 17 December 1995, NZJJS was founded by Mike Hickson and Doug Bailey. Over that time, NZJJS has had clubs in at least 10 locations, produced 12 black belts and seven international reps. In 1997, we adopted Olivecrona Jiu Jitsu as the style we teach and, all these years later, we are still learning about OJJ and developing how we deliver it. Thirty years on, NZJJS is in more modest shape and with plenty of new faces but now, as then, we still love what we are doing.

27/10/2025

Kim Chenery continues with his DIY Dojo Makeover. After years of stashing staffs, sticks and knives in the corner bin, we now have a sexy weapons rack. I guess we will be doing OJJ weaponry over the next few weeks ...

22/09/2025

Thanks to Kim Chenery's persistence, we now have another 14 Hastings club photos on the wall. There are a few gaps, such as during Covid, but it is great to have these all up as a record. 1990-2024.

28/05/2025

Congratulations to Connor Maddaford, who caught his purple belt on 28 May. He shows so much courage training with adults night after night, and never shies away from randori with them. His technique is pretty slick and that must help overcome the size and strength differences, but it is his tenacity that sticks out. Well done, Connor; we're super proud of how you are coming along.

27/03/2025

12/01/2025

Happy New Year! We're bowing in for the year on Wednesday 15 January at 6pm, with drinks after class. See you there!

11/12/2024

Well, that's a wrap for 2024. Reflecting, it's been a really pleasing year with Kim Chenery gaining 4th dan, Simon Hill gaining 2nd dan, and Keith Collier and Simon Hill achieving their C1 Assistant Instructor qualifications through NZJJF. From a club point of view, we have pressure-tested and refined a few fundamental techniques, but the biggest gains have been in us asking why we teach in certain ways when they don't align with our context of self defence. We also questioned why we use traditional movements for weaponry when everything else we do is OJJ, and that led to us OJJing fighting with weapons so we can seamlessly transition between unarmed fighting and fighting with any length weapon. They are still works in progress but have resulted in a big leap forward for Olivecrona Jiu Jitsu.

11/12/2024

Great news ... on 4 December, Simon Hill received his Nidan 2nd degree black belt. It's been a tough few years for Simon with some niggly injuries, but he has increasingly dived into self-directed research around his jujutsu, showing us that he has moved past the shodan transition from pupil to student. His solid technical base and natural inquisitiveness will serve him well over his next period of focused study.

06/11/2024

NZJJS had a super celebration tonight, 6 November, as Kim Chenery was made a yondan, 4th degree black belt in Olivecrona Jiu Jitsu. As well as being highly proficient on the mat, Kim has developed to become an enthusiastic and sincere teacher with a strong understanding of the principles of OJJ and an honest approach to testing the style. In NZJJS, 4th dan marks the evolution from instructor to teacher, and Kim has been showing the attributes of a teacher for quite some time.

Usually, such a milestone is observed with congratulations, but from his teachers and his clubmates, we'd like to say, 'Thank you'.

29/10/2024

One of the greatest conundrums in the martial arts is how to practice fighting as realistically as possible without someone getting badly hurt or killed. Ways of managing the risk to practitioners have evolved over time: remove the danger from techniques and situations or remove dangerous techniques and situations.

Historically, jujutsu was the mostly unarmed fighting repertoire of the Japanese warrior class, employed against mostly armed adversaries. The koryu (old school) styles kept lethal techniques in their systems but removed the danger from the techniques by formalising attack and defence movements within a culture controlled by strict etiquette. The majority of modern jujutsu systems practice in this highly codified way.

Jigoro Kano radically changed the way he practiced jujutsu when he set up the Kodokan. He saw value in removing dangerous techniques so that his students could fight with full intent, providing just enough care to avoid seriously injuring an opponent or allowing the opponent to submit in the face of possible injury. Judo is still competed in this way, with kata retaining the control and etiquette of its koryu origins.

I think we have found our own way to test Olivecrona Jiu Jitsu in our Hastings club, removing danger by using helmets, groin guards, gloves and padded weapons so we can fight relatively hard and avoid serious injury. It's not a new concept, being similar to the use of protective equipment in kendo, for example. We still have to exercise some care for our opponents, but it really allows us to test our jujutsu and ourselves under pressure. Well done, Kim Chenery, for introducing helmets to randori and allowing us to further push the boundaries of OJJ.

06/08/2024

It's a bit embarrassing but after three decades teaching jujutsu, I've only just started to critique how we teach, within our context of self defence. And it is really fascinating! Two things have made this happen: honest, open-minded fellow instructors, and helmets and gloves.

In thinking about the context of self defence, we have looked at the physiological factors such as anaerobic activity and psychophysical factors such as arousal levels and sympathetic nervous system responses, and considered their impact on the ability to do jujutsu under pressure. From the dozens of real-life videos we have watched, most fights last less than 40 seconds and this is dictated by the above. By 40 seconds, an attacker simply runs out of puff and intent.

So why, as teachers, have we been putting our pupils through training activities when they don't fit our context? Why do we do multiple 3-minute rounds of outfighting sparring when our observations of real fights show they are mostly over in 30 seconds? Is having pupils bouncing around doing outfighting sparring actually imbedding experiences that don't support good self defence outcomes?

How much of class time do we have pupils working in the 'white zone' at normal heart rate? We know this is important for learning because in this zone the frontal cortex is fully operational. But if we then move the class into a randori exercise, do we structure it to move the pupils out of 'white zone'? How often do we structure a randori exercise to blast them through 'yellow zone' and well into 'red zone', so they are working in short bursts of activity at 160 BPM? Then how do the techniques and tactics hold up?

This is where well-structured exercises wearing helmets and gloves are invaluable to test if what we think should work in a self defence context actually does. Do a combination of set moves to close the gap get the pupil to a safe place? Or is it better to teach fundamental strikes, movement and clinching at an early stage, and then get them to 'just do jujutsu' at a later stage to close that gap? Our testing shows the former results in us eating a bunch of punches to the head and poor success, while the latter results in fewer knocks and more opportunistic strikes delivered on the way in. You don't know until you've tried.

"Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face". Or get gassed.

This is exciting learning for our teachers and really revealing for our pedagogical biases.

26/06/2024

Super proud of these two, Keith Collier and Simon Hill, who recently passed the New Zealand Ju-Jitsu Federation's C1 Assistant Coach qualification. Thank you, Kim Chenery, for the encouragement, and Simon Ogden, for the assessment. Hopefully this first step on their coaching journey encourages Keith and Simon to complete the NZJJF C2 Club Coach course.