Trevor began his Judo career in 1979 at the age of seven and a half years old. He went on to spend his youth and young adult life competing and winning medals all over the UK. These included Junior medals such as Hampshire Champion, Southern Area Champions, and wining two silver medals in the British Judo Championships on different years at Crystal Palace National Port Centre in London. He quickly joined the British Schools National Team Champions winning the National Teams Bronze medal.
By the age of eighteen Trevor had won a medal at the Under 21 British Judo Championships at High Wycombe and got in to the British Judo team as well as represented Great Britain with the Under 21 squad in Belgium. This began his international career.
Soon Trevor was traveling and competing in international competition and winning medals in ranking events all over the world, including Silver men’s National teams, Bronze in the Scottish Open, Silver in the Irish Open, Silver and Gold at the Millennium Open, World Disney Sports Complex, Orlando, Florida in 2000, as well as Gold in Holland.
At the very early start of the 1990 ‘s Trevor began training down in Bournemouth at the Bulldog Gym on a Sunday morning with Phil Norman, where he started mixing up his Arts. Doing shoe fighting and M.M.A., and NoGi grappling. This is where he first met Alex De Souza, one of the first Brazilians to bring Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to the south of England. As a little time went on Trevor would take the occasional class and Alex would soon become Trevor’s B.J.J. coach.
Trevor got his judo Black Belt in 1993 with the British Judo Association (B.J.A.) and the following year began training in Sport JiuJitsu, after being introduced to it by his judo coach at the time Dave Kavanagh. Sport JiuJitsu is a mixture of Kickboxing, Judo & Wrestling, and Jiu Jitsu. This is a combat based martial art, where you score points for any strikes and throws, and a submission is a straight win by applying arm locks, strangles, wrist locks and leg locks; during this time Trevor started training kickboxing with Gary “Smiler” Turner in Frimley. The two had met previously through national team training to help with his striking.
In 1996 Trevor won the National trials in north of England and as a result became part of the Great Britain Sport Jiujitsu team and went to the JJIF European Championships. By 2000 Trevor had won the International Sport Jiujitsu Association (ISJA) World Championship in Leeds having battled through an adult twenty-eight-man Division. In the first round he defeated an opponent from Canada, then he defeated his next opponent from Japan, then in Australia he defeated an opponent from Australia. He claimed his gold medal by defeating an opponent from New Zealand – who had beaten Brazilian and American opponents on the other side of the bracket.
Trevor went on to win another four world championships from 2000-2010 including the WCJJO World Championship in 2001 in Leeds; the WCJJO Teams World Championship in Kitchener, Canada (where he was also a World Individual bronze medallist) in 2004; the WCJJO Teams World Championship in Jersey, Chanel Islands in 2007, and the WCJJO Teams World Championship in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2010.
Between 2000-2005, Trevor also competed in the AMA National Ground Grappling (Submission) Championship in Yorkshire. He won the tournament five years in a row.
Trevor Birmingham - Personal Training and Martial Arts 