Clarissa Thomson

Clarissa Coppa, comes from a family of teachers, both, parents and grandparents, so teaching in definitely in the blood, Clarissa’s background has mainly been in recruitment and client relations, but her passion has been for mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for the past 10 years. She first got into martial arts through her love of fitness and soon started boxercise, before going on to train MMA with Trojan Free Fighters, where she developed a love for martial arts, later on she decided to specialise in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. She has competed in various high level tournaments including being a runner up at the CBJJE World Championships in Sao Paulo at blue belt, winning the European Master 1 Championship at blue belt and is current UAEJJF Master 1 World Champion at brown/black category.

She has for the last 3 years been working on a unique project in the UAE for the Abu Dhabi Education Council who teach jiu jitsu for the schools. She worked full time teaching two age groups of girls, 9-14 and 16-18, so has a broad range of teaching ability for different age groups, and experience of running and attending tournaments and competition preparation for children.

Her background with jiu jitsu started with Italo Ferreira Nunes who she trained with at Trojan Free Fighters as a white belt, until she moved to London due to work, where she started training MMA and no Gi with Thiago Monstrous Borges with whom she received her blue belt, before training Gi with Lucio Rodrigues and Paul Hartley, who she received her purple and brown belts from.

In 2012 Clarissa met her husband at a jiu jitsu tournament In Kent, She really gives him credit for getting her to take jiu jitsu in a Gi seriously, and she really got the bug! She has now developed a very similar style to Marcelo as they have a similar body type to jiu jjtsu. They can normally be found rolling around on the smallest mat in the strangest locations!

In 2016 Clarissa and Marcelo had their first child Sienna, Clarissa spent her whole pregnancy teaching up to a week before the birth, she resembled a large whale, and often had to be helped up off the mat from her students!, but she really enjoyed to keep active and still keep her head in the way of jiu jitsu, even if she wasn’t able to roll.

In March 2016 Sienna was born, after 45 days she was back at work teaching, and used all her break times and the other teachers to get herself back to fitness, so not to be away from Sienna in the precious hours she had off work. In April 2016 she decided to enter the Uaejjf World Championship as a long shot, as she felt her training was good, but definitely did not put pressure on herself as she knew that her life style was not necessarily the same as some of the appoints, but to her surprise she won the brown/black category for Master 1, before being surprised by Marcelo by receiving her Black Belt in 2017.

We are now very excited to bring Jiu Jitsu to North Somerset, not only to develop and teach self defence skills to students, but also to show the life style and benefits it can bring with both kids, and adults. It can improve confidence, communication and interaction skills, as well as coordination skills. It can teach discipline, and aid weight loss and improve the mind, which can help with academic performance and improve focus and concentration

I am also looking forward to working with women to show how you can easily and confidently defend yourself with minimum effort, in a safe friendly environment, where you can afford to try positions make mistakes, have fun whether it’s first time, your experienced, coming back to fitness or recovering from pregnancy.