If you’ve been following me on slideyfoot.com over the last two years, then you’ll know that I’ve put an increasing amount of time and effort into organising something I’ve dubbed the ‘GrappleThon‘, an idea which I first saw in March 2011 via a live stream from Martial Arts Planet in Ontario, Canada. I arranged my first event (changing the name from ‘Grapple-A-Thon’ to simply ‘GrappleThon’) in September 2012, in support of the charity I currently work for, Meningitis UK. The second GrappleThon took place last weekend and went really well: we raised a fantastic amount of money for RapeCrisis (almost £8,500 at the time of writing, which is over $13,000!).

Fundraising for charity is a great feeling. I was also really impressed at the way the BJJ community came together to help a good cause. I want to expand that community aspect, enlarging the scope beyond just national. I hope in future to do simultaneous GrappleThons at various gyms around the world: we almost managed it in 2013 with a club in Arizona, so for 2014 that’s one of my goals.

As somebody has apparently snapped up grapplethon.com (which wouldn’t have been suitable anyway, given the GrappleThon is very much about charity, not business or profit), I thought I’d better grab grapplethon.org before somebody squatted on it. I’ve got big plans for growing the event, so we’ll see what happens over the next few years! 🙂

If you happen to be viewing this on the mobile template, don’t forget to check out how to run your own GrappleThon, here. 😀