How it all started

My journey into Combat sport and started as a youngster at Secondary school and a local boys. At school I found I had a natural affinity to sport, I found myself playing for the school or my ‘house’ for most sports, which included Football, Cricket, Basketball, and many sports in the athletics season.

The combat element started club when introduced to Judo, which remained a schoolboy level sport for me. A few years later I was re-introduced to combat sport in the form of training in Karate just after leaving secondary school.

Kickboxing

At college myself and a few of the boys were lead into one of the fastest growing sports at the time the Americanised version of martial arts “Kickboxing”. This is where I would meet the person who I still to date think of as my Sensei, Chris McNeish 4 x WAKO World Kickboxing Champion. I also started to attend a locally run boxing club “Johns Gym” in Bounds Green to help me rapidly improve my hand skills in order that my skills rapidly evolved.

After what felt like a long Apprenticeship I started to enter “semi contact” competitions, when my confidence grew I entered the more competitive “light continuous” competitions. I found that my punching power was too heavy, which often found my opponent floored and me disqualified. This was despite my numerous attempts to limit the impact.

Frustrated by the vast quantity of disqualifications due to my heavy hands I then turned to Full contact kickboxing. I fought at British and European Levels at WAKO Kickboxing championships. I ended my career after joining Shen Chi Do and fighting in their Championships for 3 years and remained unbeaten within those Championships.

Boxing

Taking my sport very seriously, I started to train in different styles of combat, anything that would compliment and quickly improve my skill. That included different martial arts Thai Boxing, Shen Chi do as well as boxing at the then renowned ‘Peacock Gym’ in Canning Town, East London.

This took my training to 6 days a week at least 2 – 4 hours a day. This is where I fully honed my boxing skills. As quite often the professional boxing coaches would look for sparring partners, I was always looking to have a good tear up and most often coming on top.

Those coaches would thank me by giving me technical tips tips to improve my boxing style. As I am a very quick learner this served unwittingly as a boxing coaching apprenticeship combined with my own fight experience.

Personal Training

As my career as a Personal Trainer began, my experience within combat was used as one of my USP’s to differentiate myself and help me sell my services to potential clients.

I found that K1/kickboxing on the decline when selling my services I then started to concentrate on selling my boxing skills as a coach. Boxing had declined over the years but was now on the ascendency with the careers of Mayweather, Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao, Roy Jones, Mikel Kessler, At that time the Heavyweight scene was dominated by the Klitchsko brothers with, David Haye dominating the Cruiserweight scene.

As less people were now interested in Kickboxing as a combat art-form to learn, and there was already an established Thai Boxing coach at my gym, I decided to concentrate on boxing as a coach.

I found that the clients that I trained with a combination of fitness and boxing were the most dedicated, focused. It was their bodies which visually changed the most and whose fitness levels notably increased. The merger of fitness and boxing created a fun learning programme which increased my client retention.

White Collar Boxing

I started to work boxing in to the programmes of a high % of my Personal Training clients, I started offering small group boxing sessions which culminated with me starting a morning boxing class at the gym where I worked.

I trained many clients who had never ever boxed before. Many got good enough that I started to enter them into competitive bouts, many of who won. I averaged a 70% win record. Many of the people I put into bouts were not expected to win, this quickly established me as one of the go to boxing coaches, and cemented my reputation with the other coaches.

I slowly realised that I had enough clientele to put my own Boxing events on. I put on various events which had a mixture of Boxing, Thai Boxing and Kickboxing. This brought about my contacts throughout London and beyond.

Professional Boxing

Through my promoting of events, I came into contact with ex-heavyweight boxer Julius Francis (who fought against “Iron Mike” Tyson) who fought on my biggest event held at the Coronet in Elephant and Castle. I also made link with Don Charles who currently trains Derek Chisora. I did a long stint with Ian Lewison as his strength and conditioning coach. Which ended within him winning an international belt.

My links within professional boxing continue to grow.

Boxing Fit

My overall aim is to get anyone that enters the Ultimate Boxing Fitness Family, to be the fittest that they have ever been and look the best that they possibly can. The side effects of this journey will be looking fitter, being stronger, greater confidence and you’ll also pick up a new friend or two.

Not forgetting, you’ll also be a better boxer!!