MMA

What we believe

The way forward in MMA is elite striking and elite grappling. Not a bit of everything — two disciplines, both done properly.

MMA is not one martial art. It’s striking, wrestling and grappling, each with its own decades of technique behind it, and the fighters who do well are the ones whose individual pieces are genuinely good. You get better striking from a Muay Thai coach who does nothing but striking, and better ground work from a jiu-jitsu coach who does nothing but that.

That’s why there is no weekly class called “MMA” on our timetable, putting a little of each into an hour. The disciplines stay in their own classes, where there is time to teach them properly.

Until a fight is locked in

Then it changes.

Once you have a fight booked, the two come together. The camp is built around that fight and that opponent, and the work moves to where the disciplines meet: the takedown off a strike, getting back to your feet, what your guard is worth when punches are part of it, how a clinch ends.

That is the point at which “MMA training” is the honest description of what you’re doing. Before it, you are building the pieces that camp will draw on — and building them better than you would by splitting an hour four ways every week.

What that looks like in practice

You train Muay Thai for your stand-up — punches, elbows, knees, kicks and the clinch. You train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, No-Gi especially, for control on the ground and for submissions. Wrestling and takedowns sit between the two: getting the fight where you want it, and keeping it off the floor when you don’t.

You won’t find a wrestling class on our timetable, because it isn’t one. Takedowns are taught inside the other two — the entries, the level changes and the clinch work in Muay Thai, the scrambles, the getting back up and the finishes in jiu-jitsu. Turn up to either and you are already training it.

Nothing about that is unusual. It’s how most fighters are actually built, whatever the sign on the door says.

Members who compete

We have members who fight MMA, and coaches who have cornered them. If competing is where you’re headed, say so early — it doesn’t change how you start, but the coaches will know what they’re building toward and can point you at the right sessions as you progress.

If it isn’t, that’s just as fine. Most people training these disciplines never intend to compete, and none of it is wasted.