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Muay Thai Personal Training Combinations fail when they are memorised too neatly. Real opponents do not feed perfect targets. They move, cover, counter, and change the range. This lesson continued my veteran client’s Muay Thai work in our private one-to-one classes. He has trained with me since 2014, so the aim was not to run him through basic combinations. He already knows how to jab, cross, hook, kick, knee, elbow, cover, and move. The aim was to make his combinations ad

Good boxing fitness does more than make someone tired. It gives the body a job to solve under fatigue. Hour four of my client’s second Triple C Boxing Fitness course continued this principle. These courses are built for people who want the fitness benefits of boxing without sparring or partner-contact work. The training still uses real boxing mechanics. It still demands timing, balance, footwork, co-ordination and power. It just removes the fighting element.

Cage control is where tidy technique meets pressure. Footwork, wrestling, striking and ground work all change when one fighter has nowhere to move. Hour five of my advanced client’s course in mixed martial arts focused on that problem. We used six games across twelve rounds. Each game isolated a different range. Each round changed the role. One fighter attacked. One defended. Then they swapped. This is how good MMA Personal Training should feel. The lesson does not beco

Tonight my couple clients returned for the first lesson in a new 10-hour course on submission grappling. They have trained with me since 2019 across a wide range of disciplines. The current focus is guard work, split into three ranges. Tonight we worked on mid-range guard passing.

Kata application fails when distance, resistance, and recovery are left out. Knee strikes expose all three fast. This morning my teacher client from Cotswold Karate School returned for a refresher on Muay Thai knee strikes. We have covered this material before. The point today was not novelty. It was revision with a clear end use.

Some children cannot be trained through contact, impact, or pressure-testing. That does not mean they cannot learn self-protection. Hour three with my child client forced a useful problem onto the mat. He has a medical condition that prevents him from taking part in activities where collision is a risk. That removes a large part of how I usually test self-defence. It does not remove the subject.

Tonight’s 1.5-hour Muay Thai lesson focused on strategy under pressure. No long combinations for their own sake. No bag work to hide behind. Every round had a rule that forced a decision. That is where good training starts to look like fighting. A student can have a clean round kick and still freeze when the distance changes. They can punch well on pads and still fail to exit after a clinch. Strategy fills that gap.

Shadow boxing is often treated as a warm-up. That wastes it. Done well, it is one of the best ways to build footwork, rhythm, punch mechanics, defence and conditioning without needing a bag, pads or a partner. It also exposes weak habits quickly. If the feet stop, the boxing stops. If the guard drops, there is no bag to hide it.

Hour four of my advanced client’s Mixed Martial Arts and Cross Training course continued our exploration of various different ecological dynamics games. These games were created by various coaches to emphasise transitioning:

"Explore effective closed guard techniques in submission grappling with lessons on scissor sweeps, Kimura traps, and the guillotine chase at Clubb Chimera." Submission Grappling Closed guard can become a trap for the person on the bottom if they only learn it as a list of moves. Close the legs. Pull the arms. Try a sweep. Try a submission. Reset when it fails. That is not how I want a beginner to understand it. Hour three of my private client’s second Submission Grappling cou

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.

Understanding the Complexity of the Clinch A knee from the clinch seems simple, right? But it becomes a different story when someone is trying to stand tall, jam the hip, fight the grip, and turn out all at once. That was the theme of tonight’s private lesson. My Muay Thai client put in a tremendous effort. They could knee a pad and replicate the shape. However, the real question was whether they could find the knee when the other person was solving the opposite problem. This

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