Why Kombat Clinic?

KombatClinic.com was born out of a side project I used to run alongside my regular job as a martial arts instructor and personal trainer at my own gym/dojo the Tokon Academy. Each month I would suspend the timetable of classes for one night and hold the “Kombat Clinic”, these specialised sessions were dedicated to a pre-determined topic and were meant as a chance for me as a coach to share some of the other ideas and training methodologies I had picked up whilst studying other styles and sports. Think of the clinics as a specific attempt to introduce a double leg takedown to a group of Karateka, the low kick to a class of Judoka or to spend the evening working through a specific groundwork flow.

The clinics went down a storm. People really began to enjoy the work I was delivering and the specialized sessions went on to spawn more regular timetabled classes. Rather soon the subject matter we had covered extended greatly and we needed some way of documenting and recording all aspects of the sessions for future reference. Originally a section was set-aside on my academy’s website as a resource for the material we had covered but all too soon this became hard work to maintain. Thus, KombatClinic.com was born.

The original KombatClinic.com site had sections for striking, vertical grappling (clinch), takedowns & throws and horizontal grappling (groundwork) as well as sections detailing conditioning, nutrition, sport physiology and sports psychology. However, like most side projects, the issue of devoting time to it meant that other more meaningful things had suffered and never the sort of individual to do things half-heartedly I decided KombatClinic.com could no longer continue.

In September 2009 I decided to revamp the site but on a lesser scale. The site needed to be more streamlined and not so general in its approach to content. At this point the magazines I subscribed to were all very good but tended to be carbon copies of each other. The articles, reviews and interviews contained within their pages were all brilliant and well written but they were not with athletes that I really wanted to hear about.

Fast forward to today and KombatClinic.com is really my selfish endeavour or platform to interview some of the worlds most talented exponents of my two passions: Judo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Apart from my chance to interview people I want to hear about and ask the questions that I want answers to I have also struck up some great friendships with world-class athletes and conditioning experts that I can call upon for advice to help me through my own journey into combat athletics.