Jiu Jitsu Gym Near Me in Highams Park: The Fighting Arts Academy

The Fighting Arts Academy runs its jiu jitsu classes inside E4 Health and Fitness Club at 14 Hickman Avenue, Highams Park, London E4 9JG, and an adult can train every class on a given day for £20. There is free on-site parking, a full-size boxing ring beside the mats, and Highams Park station is about twenty minutes from Liverpool Street. For anyone in Waltham Forest or Chingford typing jiu jitsu gym near me, this is a club where up to seven black belts can be on the mat at once.

The club was founded by head coach Darius Kumana and Marco Nigliazzo, who say they have trained together for more than twenty years and are both IBJJF-certified black belt professors. In 2025 the coaching team affiliated with Inglorious Grapplers under Professor Jude Samuel, whom the club describes as the first homegrown British BJJ black belt. The operating company was registered in April 2021, though the women's page points to a documentary from that same year, suggesting the club was training before the paperwork.

The wider team is deep for a suburban club: Andrew, a black belt who founded 50/50 Lockers, leads no-gi; Gica, a brown belt, takes wrestling; Vava, a Grand Union brown belt with about a decade of training, runs the women's and no-gi sessions; Affan coaches Muay Thai; and Dave, Tom, David and James add more black belts to the rota.

The academy is a club within a club, so the front desk you meet belongs to E4 Health and Fitness. From Highams Park station, head south toward Larkshall Road, follow it to Hickman Avenue and look for number 14 on the right, then ask reception for the academy. The 275 bus stops nearby, and drivers get the large free car park, which is rare for a London grappling gym.

Inside you will find a large matted area, the boxing ring, bags and pads, a changing room and a shower downstairs, while the host gym adds a weights room and a treatment room on the same premises.

New starters book through the MAAT app, where the code WELCOME2TFAA takes £10 off the first class. Wear tracksuit bottoms or shorts and an old T-shirt with covered shoulders to avoid mat burn, all with no zips or buttons. Leave jewellery at home, tie long hair with a soft elastic rather than plastic clips, and bring a big bottle of water. Turn up a few minutes early and introduce yourself to the coach as new.

Sparring is not compulsory, especially for absolute beginners, and the club says more than 90 percent of its students started with no experience. Tuesday's 6pm BJJ Fundamentals in the gi is the class built for people in their first weeks.

The hygiene page is blunt. Arrive clean, and use the downstairs shower if you are coming straight from work. Trim fingernails and toenails, tape cuts, keep shoes and flip-flops off the mat and bare feet out of the toilet, and stay home with any skin infection. Shirtless training is banned, so no-gi students wear a rash guard or full top, and spats are recommended. The club cleans its mats with a hospital-grade steam cleaner.

The terms add a short code of conduct: leave your ego at the door, tap early and often, respect the tap, never crank submissions, and do not celebrate tapping a training partner. Gi colour is relaxed, so any colour is fine, but the club asks you to leave belt decisions to the coaches and to wash both gi and belt after every session.

The published schedule is compact and spread over seven days. Monday and Thursday have a noon gi class, Tuesday stacks fundamentals at 6pm, wrestling at 7pm and no-gi at 8pm, and Wednesday adds an 8pm gi class after 7pm Muay Thai. Friday runs Muay Thai at 6pm and no-gi at 7pm before an open mat at 8pm, and Sunday has a single no-gi class at 11am. Monday evening also offers an online yoga and mobility session at 6:30pm for sore hips.

Saturday is the busiest morning: a high-belts open mat at 9am, women-only BJJ at 10am, a gi class at 11am, then Muay Thai at noon and Muay Thai sparring at 1pm.

The women-only class at 10am is taught by Vava in its own dedicated space downstairs, while the kids' class for 9 to 15 year olds runs upstairs at the same hour. Younger children aged 4 to 8 train at 9am, and the Tuesday 6pm kids' session mixes ages. That overlap lets a parent and child train at the same time, which is one of the reasons the Saturday car park fills by mid-morning. From around 16, or earlier by invitation, juniors move into adult classes.

Monthly direct debit plans are £80 for any two classes a week, £100 for five and £120 for unlimited, with kids at £75 for all children's classes. A five-class bundle costs £75 and a ten-class bundle £130, and the kids' day drop-in is £15. All students also need insurance arranged through the club at £60 a year, which is the line most first-timers miss when they budget. Plans can be paused or cancelled with a month's notice, and payments are non-refundable.

If you only want to roll once while visiting family in east London, the Friday 8pm open mat on a £20 day pass is the best value on the schedule.

Highams Park itself, the Epping Forest parkland reached from Charter Road, Woodford Green, has unrestricted opening times and a lake about 450 metres long that Humphry Repton created by damming the River Ching. Walking back toward the station, look for the 1925 signal box on Hale End Road, saved in 2002 and later turned into a crêperie, one of the more unusual buildings on any London Overground line.

The Fighting Arts Academy, E4 Health and Fitness Club, 14 Hickman Avenue, Highams Park, London E4 9JG. Phone 07786 377753, email thefightingartsacademy@gmail.com. Highams Park station sits on the Weaver line in zone 4, and the 275 bus serves the area. Spaces are limited and classes are booked in advance through the MAAT app, so reserve before travelling across town for a session.