by Guillaume Laflamme
Shawville
Mar. 12, 2024
A long-time martial arts practitioner has begun offering Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes in Shawville for children and adults.
Travis Neumann, founder of Shawville Martial Arts, is leading the classes hosted at Pontiac High School on Tuesday evenings.
He said the program aims to promote confidence building, discipline and self-defence skills while helping participants stay active.
“It’s a passion of mine that I want to share with the community,” Neumann said.
The program offers three different . . .
classes separated into groups by age.
The first class, which starts at 5:30 p.m. for children between the ages of six and eight, and the second class that starts an hour later for children nine to 12 both use game-based learning to help promote physical activity.
The program also offers a class for adults from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m..
“I’m really hoping to work on fitness, confidence and giving them some basic jiu-jitsu skills, for fun, for competition and for self-defence,” Neumann explained. “With the older groups, it’s going to be a little bit less focused on game-based learning and a little bit more technique-based.”
Robin Huckabone has been attending the adult class for the last three weeks. She signed up for classes after seeing a Facebook post promoting the program.
“I really like it [ . . . ] It’s something I look forward to, just to keep everybody active. It’s a good price and it’s really close to home,” Huckabone said.
April Dubeau, a mother of three and a former practitioner of martial arts, was looking for a local program to enrol her kids in when she also saw a Facebook post about the classes. She believes the program will give her children positive skills to help them navigate conflict.
“I just felt like it instils discipline and good values and knowing when you should fight, when you should not fight, protecting yourself and stuff,” Dubeau said.
Jason Smith, a martial artist with 20 years of experience and Neumann’s instructor from Renfrew Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is helping Neumann lead the classes at Pontiac High School.
He said he hopes the classes will help students deal with adversity.
“You’re going to run into problems and sometimes that problem isn’t going to go away. And they learn resilience. They learn how to think through problems,” Smith said.
According to Smith, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial art that was developed by a family in Brazil in the early 1900s.
He said the Gracie family was introduced to Japanese jiu-jitsu and judo by a travelling martial artist, but Hélio Gracie, a member of the family, had health issues preventing him from being able to train effectively.
“He didn’t have the strength. So he developed a ground fighting system, which is what essentially Brazilian jiu-jitsu is,” Smith said. “It teaches a smaller person to use leverage to get out from underneath a bigger person.”
With growing interest in the program from the community, Neumann hopes to expand his program to offer more classes throughout the week.
