Diary / Training Notes

This week my couple client completed their latest 10-hour course in submission grappling. The theme was passing mid-range guards. That means dealing with the awkward space where the bottom person still has useful legs, frames, grips, and angles, but the top person is close enough to apply pressure and start breaking those defences down.

The turning kick was the problem, but balance was the real subject of the course. My client, aged 66, came to me with a very clear brief. He wanted to improve his turning kick so he could pass his yellow belt grading in taekwondo. It sounds simple. Lift the knee, pivot the supporting foot, turn the hip, extend the leg, recover, land. Anyone who has trained striking arts knows it is rarely that tidy once the body starts moving under pressure.

Hour three of my child client’s self-protection course focused on that difference. We balanced the soft skill of fear management with the hard skill of getting up from the ground under pressure. This is where children’s self-defence must be clear. It cannot be built on slogans. It needs simple thinking, honest language, and physical actions the child can repeat.

Elbows do not appear by magic. They appear when range, posture, timing, and pressure line up for a split second. That was the theme of this lesson. Rather than drilling elbows from a static position, we built games that forced both partners to earn the elbow range. Each round had clear limits. Those limits made the lesson safer, cleaner, and more honest. In Muay Thai, the elbow is a short-range weapon. It works best when the opponent is entering, covering, kicking, posting

The closed guard can become a holding position. That is useful for slowing a fight down, but it is not enough. A good guard should threaten reversals. It should make the person on top defend their posture, hands, knees, and hips.

This client suffered a head injury years ago. He later took up Taekwondo to help improve his condition. He came to me for wider conditioning. I have trained in Korean martial arts for decades, but this booking has been a clear reminder of the value of looking outside one system.

Hour nine of my couple client’s Submission Grappling course returned to a familiar position with a more demanding lens. We were not chasing the pass itself. We were revising the preconditions that make passing possible.

This week’s private lesson with my 62 year-old client was hour five of his current kickboxing course. It was also hour six of his overall kickboxing training with me, as we had attached one hour to the end of his previous boxing course. That earlier boxing work is now paying dividends. His guard, punching mechanics, foot positioning and basic ringcraft have given us a strong base. The challenge now is to add kicks without letting the boxing fall apart.

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.

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.