All Posts

In the second hour of an online martial arts training course with a teacher from Drum Martial Arts and Fitness in the Republic of Ireland and his son, the lesson returned to the scarf hold. The son is preparing for an upcoming grading, with a focus on ground-fighting. The previous lesson explored attacking and defending from the position. This session shifted more clearly towards defence, especially the hip escape onto the back and the transition into an arm bar.

My client from Cotswold Karate School has been taking several months of Muay Thai cross-training lessons. The aim has not been to replace karate with kickboxing. The aim has been to use kickboxing and Muay Thai as attribute training, so certain ideas already present in karate can become more alive under pressure.

This report outlines the details of a 1.5-hour Muay Thai personal training class conducted for a long-term client who has been training with me since 2014. The client has completed all my courses, including boxing and MMA, and has focused on Muay Thai for the past year.

The final session of a training block should show what has been built, not just what has been done. This lesson did exactly that. It brought together conditioning, technical drilling, footwork, range awareness, punching, head movement and heavy bag work into one clear progression.

A good wrestling round often turns on a small piece of information. Who wants the head? Who is hunting the single leg? Who is trying to get behind to the waist? Once that intention becomes obvious, the opponent can start taking it away. That is why the secret dice game works so well.

A good kids’ session needs structure, but it also needs play. If the children forget they are “working” because the drill feels like a game, the learning tends to stick much faster. This was the third boxing session for my two young clients, and the focus stayed on movement, balance, reactions, and simple punches done well. We carried on building their footwork through games, stepped into some light-touch partner drills with foot tag and shoulder tag, introduced the cross,

In previous sessions, we worked on balance, stance, chambering mechanics and the lead leg turning kick. His lead leg kick is improving, mainly because we have been stripping the movement down and removing unnecessary complications. In this fourth hour, the attention moved more fully to the rear leg turning kick, with the v-step used as a practical set-up.

A good second lesson should feel familiar enough to build confidence, but fresh enough to expose gaps. This session does exactly that. It revisits the teep, adds pressure through body punches and low round kicks, then finishes with pad-work that links boxing combinations to both rear and lead leg low kicks.

Some sessions need more movement, not more techniques. That was the theme for a recent remote online submission grappling personal training session with Drum Fitness and Martial Arts in the Republic of Ireland. The lesson changed pace with a father and son pairing working on the traditional scarf-hold, also known in many grappling rooms as kesa gatame. Rather than treating it as a static pin, we used it as a live attacking position. The focus was simple: control the body,

Crowding changes everything for a taekwondo fighter. Range disappears, kicks get smothered, the opponent’s pressure feels constant, and the clean, linear exits that work well at long distance suddenly become harder to find. That was the central problem in a late afternoon martial arts cross training personal training session with a teenage taekwondo competitor preparing for the British Championships.

By the penultimate lesson of a boxing course, the hardest work is often no longer the loudest work. The early sessions may leave the room full of heavy breathing, fast combinations, and that familiar burn in the legs and shoulders. This stage feels different. The pace becomes more deliberate. The details matter more. That is exactly where the Triple C Fitness boxing course arrives in this lesson.

A grappling dummy will never replace a live training partner, but it can still teach useful habits if the session has structure. Tonight’s remote lesson with a teacher client from Hostlebro Taekwondon Klub in Denmark was meant to be boxing-based. We changed direction and moved into submission grappling instead. With no training partner available, the dummy became the training body, and the goal became clear: make the positions feel connected rather than treating each choke

Good Muay Thai sparring should not feel like a choreographed exchange. It should ask questions the fighter has to solve in real time. Tonight’s 1.5-hour class with my client was built around that idea. The goal was not to collect rounds for the sake of fitness. It was to teach better strategy, better ring generalship, and better decision-making under pressure.

For the eighth hour of this Triple C Fitness boxing course, the session had one clear aim: conditioning through boxing. The work was built around 12 x 3-minute rounds, using shadow boxing, focus mitts, heavy bag drills, and active rest with callisthenics. The technical theme was handling a h

The teep, often called the push kick, is a fundamental tool in stand-up fighting. It controls distance, disrupts an opponent’s rhythm, and sets up other strikes. In this session, I broke down the teep into manageable parts and explored how to teach it effectively to students. Here’s what I covered and how you can apply these insights in your own online martial arts training sessions.

When I first introduced my client to Submission Grappling, the focus was on building a solid foundation. By the seventh hour of his training, we zeroed in on two critical positions: the full mount and the arm-bar submission. These techniques are essential for controlling an opponent and finishing a match, but mastering them requires understanding not just the holds themselves but the transitions and escapes that come with them.

Training in Muay Thai often demands focus on technique, timing, and strategy. But what if you could sharpen these skills while adding an element of surprise and challenge? In my client’s eighth lesson, we continued our secret dice game theme, which has been a creative way to explore the composite martial arts that make up MMA. After working through Submission Grappling, Boxing, and Kickboxing, it was time to dive into Muay Thai. This approach not only keeps training fresh but

When it comes to Submission Grappling Personal Training, one of the most overlooked yet crucial elements is hip activation. In my recent session with a couple of clients, we focused on developing hip strength and movement to a level that feels instinctive, almost primal. This lesson was part of their fifth martial arts cross-training class, where the theme centered on making hip movement the foundation of their ground game. The hips are essentially the footwork of grappling o

When a 66-year-old client returned for his fourth lesson focused on improving his Taekwondo turning kick, I knew this session would be both challenging and rewarding. Despite not training in Korean martial arts since the 1990s, I have worked with Taekwondo practitioners because of the clear benefits martial arts cross-training offers.

When most people think of boxing for fitness, they imagine punching heavy bags or sparring in the ring. But after seven sessions with my client, I realized it was time to shift focus. We dedicated an entire hour to movement work—no heavy bags, no pads, just footwork and shadow boxing. This approach gave us a chance to assess his dynamic positioning and coordination, essential skills that often get overlooked in fitness-focused martial arts training.