All Posts

A fighter can look competent in separate rooms and still fall apart in the corridor between them. That is one of the most common problems in combat training. Boxing can be tidy. Kicking can be sharp. Wrestling entries can be technically correct. Ground work can make sense in isolation. Then the moment the ranges collide, the student hesitates, overcommits, or reaches for a favourite answer that no longer fits the question. This recent private lesson was about that corri

Poster of two green-lit grapplers demonstrating guard, with text: Master Your Guard, essential training games for beginners.

A lot of people think kicking is mainly about flexibility. Flexibility helps, of course, but it’s not the main issue when moving from one kick to another. The real challenge is this: can the body stay organised while one leg is in the air? For my client, we worked on transitioning from one kick to another without putting his foot down. In taekwondo, this sort of control matters. A student might need to chamber the leg, kick, bring it back, turn the hip, and kick again.

Guard passing gets messy when you treat every guard the same. That was the big theme in the eighth lesson of my couple client’s Submission Grappling course. We came back to guard passing, but this time we didn’t start with a single pass. We started with distance.

There’s a lovely moment in private coaching when a new movement stops feeling like “a move” and starts feeling like part of a conversation. That happened today with my 62-year-old kickboxing client as we began the fourth hour of his first lesson. We’d already laid down the basics. Today was about making them work together: round kicks, straight punches, and teeps.

The last private lesson of the evening is often where the most technical work happens. The room is quieter, the pace is more focused, and there is time to slow a movement down before putting power back into it. This session was a 1.5-hour regular private lesson with a client beginning another 10-lesson block. The goal for this new block is advanced training methods, not just more combinations or harder rounds. Tonight’s focus was clear: build better high kicks for Muay Thai,

The best rounds in grappling don’t always look like sparring. Sometimes they look like a tiny fight inside one position, with clear rules, short time limits, and one simple question: can you solve this problem before the other person does? Tonight’s session was a good example.

Kids learn boxing best when the lesson feels like play, but the play still has a clear purpose. That was the theme of this private lesson. The children had already started building the basics, so this session kept the energy high while adding more feel for distance, sharper reactions, and better defensive habits. We used games first, then moved into more structured boxing drills, then checked everything in the mirror so they could see what was actually working.

Over the last two blocks of 10 lessons, we narrowed the focus to elbow strikes. We covered the main elbow methods found in Muay Thai, then used mixed martial arts training ideas to test them against movement, clinch pressure, grips, and resistance. Then we came back to karate. More specifically, we came back to naihanchi.

Elbow strikes expose gaps that long-range kicking arts can hide. Once the range collapses, footwork, posture, hand position, and balance get tested fast. The theme came from recent work with Cotswold Karate School. We took elbow strikes from Muay Thai, placed them in a Taekwondo training context, and tested them through specific sparring rounds. The aim was not to turn Taekwondo into Thai boxing. It was to study a proven striking tool and see how it behaves under pressure.

This morning’s Triple C Boxing Fitness personal training session focused on that punch: the overhand right. It’s a classic boxing shot, often used to come over the top of a guard or catch someone as they move in. In a fitness session, though, the aim isn’t to hurt anyone. The aim is to learn clean movement, build confidence, burn energy, and enjoy focused training without getting hit.

Intense focus and skill on display as a boxer trains for 12 purpose-driven rounds, emphasizing sparring strategies, attack vs defense, scoring tactics, and muscle release techniques. Read more at Clubb Chimera's blog. Boxing Cross-Training Good sparring is not just “have a round and see what happens”. The best rounds have a job to do. They limit the choices, expose habits, and give the fighter a cleaner way to solve a problem under pressure. For this 1.5 hour private martial

Back control seems simple when explained from the finish: chest behind their back, seatbelt grip, hooks in, staying glued to them. Easy enough. Then the person underneath starts moving. They get to their knees, hide their neck, peel your hands, and turn into you. Suddenly, the “best position in grappling” becomes a scramble, and the person escapes. This was the focus of hour nine in my client’s first personal training course.

My 66 year-old client embarked on his sixth hour with me. This is a martial arts cross-training personal training course used to improve his movement in taekwondo and to improve his balance for the turning kick. Despite not being involved with Korean martial arts since the 1990s, I am working with a lot of taekwodoins who wish to use other martial arts, such as boxing to improve their overall game. This afternoon, being so close to his grading, I decided to totally work on

The kimura grip looks simple until somebody refuses to give you their arm. That was the theme of this private lesson. My couple client continued their submission grappling work with the same bigger goal we’ve been chasing for a while: better hip control. This time, we used that goal to build something more specific, getting to the kimura grip from three common places: North South, guard, and turtle.

One of my teacher clients from Hostlebro Taekwondo Klub in Denmark continued his regular online training with me and asked for a special session on knees and elbow strikes. The idea came after he had seen my recent work with Cotswold Karate School through social media. It was a good request, but for a single lesson I decided to narrow the brief. Rather than try to cover every knee and elbow option, we focused on straight knees on the heavy bag.

You can show a tidy elbow application from the kata. You can drill it compliantly. You can hit pads with it. All of that helps. But if the other person is gripping, framing, blocking, turning, and trying to hit you back, the elbow has to earn its place. That’s where cross-training becomes useful. Muay Thai gives us a living model for elbow striking under pressure. Wrestling gives us gripping, posture breaking, and body control. Put those together carefully and you can buil

A good teep is not just a kick. It is a brake, a range finder, a balance check, and a reset button. Today’s private lesson was built around that idea. The client has trained with me since 2014, so the class could move past basic pad rounds and into controlled sparring problems. The aim was simple: make the teep work when the other person is trying to stop it.

Body shots change the whole feel of a boxing session. The stance drops. The legs work harder. The core has to brace. The punch has to travel from the floor, not just from the shoulder. That makes them a great fit for a non-sparring class built around skill, movement, and conditioning.

Lesson eight showed clear progress. The client’s top control is becoming smoother. His transitions between pins are less forced. His escapes are also improving because he is starting to recognise pressure, frames, and timing earlier. That matters. In grappling, control comes before submission. A choke or lock is hard to apply if the position is loose. This session kept that order: hold the position, move between pins, isolate the back, then attack the choke.