Hi all, Have been browsing your forums most of the week and decided to throw myself in there. I'll try and keep this short and sweet. Born and raised on the south coast here in Portsmouth, aged 29, fast approaching 30. I work in the UK Gravure Printing industry though prior to this i served with the British Army, joined in 97 right out of school and left in 2007, probably (aside from meeting the wife and then having kids of course) some of the best times of my life were had during my time in. Sporting wise my interest always stood with Boxing. I started at an reasonable age, 8 years old and carried on with it, training and competing all the way up until 4 years ago when i stumbled upon powerlifting. This was most definately bad news for me as i developed a belly and became hideously slow, i lost a large proportion of the explosive power i gained through years of boxing. About a year ago i made the U turn, ditched the powerlifting and started easing back into a bodyweight (albeit with added weight vests and iron woody bands) strength routine and conditioning programme. I dropped around 4 stone and , THANKFULLY, am in good shape again, back looking like an "athlete" instead of an "all-you-can-eat". I initially was going to return to boxing, however im lusting after something new,a fresh direction as it were. Hence my being here. Hoping you can all help point me in the right direction and offer a little guidance gentle or otherwise. Thats me in a rather tidy little nutshell. Morti
Welcome to MAP. The best advice is to go along and try out a few different styles. Most classes offer the first lesson free, so take that offer and see what suits you. If the class has a website then post it here, someone will know someone who has trained there and therefore will be able to advise further.
Have a word with Southpaw, a member here. He's from you're neck of the woods and knows of pretty much every martial arts class in the area. Best advice would come from him I think
Welcome to MAP my advice is to try and visit all the classes that are LOCAL to you and see which one suits you best - I always stress local as it is SO much easier to train regularly when you can get there within say 15 minutes or so. Whatever you decide on - have fun
Welcome to MAP mate Have you got any ideas what other directions you might want to go or what you're looking to achieve? Without knowing that I'll just give you a quick list of all the places I know. Also going to assume you're a complete noob sorry Boxing I don't know where you boxed before but St Luke's run a decent ABA gym. Never been there but it looks alright and has won a few awards. http://www.boxingawards.co.uk/hop/news.php?showarticle=portsmouthboxingcamp Phoneix boxing by Crookhorn is a white collar club and although they only have one official adult lesson a week they've turned out a couple of respectable fighters. Starting there tomorrow so I'll be able to give you a better rundown of the place if you're interested. http://www.phoenixboxingclub.co.uk/ Muay Thai If you want to stick with something similiar to boxing but a bit more exotic then this is probably what I reccomend your boxing experiance will still be useful and you're clearly used to a hard conditioning focus but thai boxing makes use of pretty much every part of the body except the head and I'm sure some places probably use that too. Big focus on knees from the clinch but all round one of the best stand up styles in my opinion. http://www.portsmouththaiboxing.co.uk/ Kickboxing If you want to fight competitively kickboxing might be a better bet than thai boxing but other than that kickboxing has a lot of merit as a stand up art. The local instructor Luke Carter is a friend of my bjj teacher and has trained him along with a few other guys at my club. One of his black belts has started doing privates and he is scary to watch do padwork, a few high kicks and some flashy moves but all seem to be useful and they help you develop that flexibility very well. Luke also organises fight cards so you can be sure he can get you around the fight circuit down here. In fact he has an event coming up very soon at Mountbatten that you might be able to get tickets for if you want to see the art and the quality of his guys. http://www.southernkickboxing.com/instructors/luke/ Judo Moving away frm striking but sticking with competitive sport arts judo has a solid reputation for being one of the best base arts you can have. The throws are excellent and the focus on balance whether its keeping your own or disrupting your opponents is a great skill to have for numerous arts. The ground fighting part of judo isn't as good as it could be for joint lock sand chokes as a way to win is by pinning which is what most people focus on but by all acounts they are bloody good at it. There are a few clubs in Pompey and I'm struggling to pin down a site I know to be from a good one. I'll edit it in if I find it but its at Priory tennis centre. BJJ OK confession, I love bjj with a passion so this bit will be biased Brazilian jujitsu in a nutshell is ground grappling essentially what we do is either get the oppenent on their back or fight from our own with the focus being on tapping them through a joint lock or choke hold. Or just breaking the limb but whatever. BJJ to my knowledge is unique in being the only art that gives you the skills to be literally deadly from your back and to be able to put up a fight on the ground whatever position you end up in. Its another sport art so competiiton is a big drive and because of the nature of the sport, as with judo, all your techniques will be practiced with a partner from the start meaning its pretty much impossible to fed a BS technique. I know of two good clubs in the area one is a gracie barra school under Kevin Chan who is also a well respected wing chun instructer http://www.kamonbjj.com/ The other is the club I train at which is part of the Vitor Shaolin fight team. The instructor is only a purple belt but being completely honest I found his instruction to be superb and I have improved a lot in the last few months under him. Other than that its a good crowd with a lot of helpful guys including one dude who normally helps out the newbies so you've got no worry of being left lost. Much smaller club that Kevin's which is a blessing or a curse depending on your preferences personally I prefer it as it allows a better atosphere and allows a much closer scrutiny by the better fighters since the size means the class isn't split into belt categorys and we all work together. Colin Howells the instructor is also fighting on Luke Carter's card if you do get a chance to go see it and has won a few pro mma fights. Its a good club if you have a future mma focus. http://shaolinbjj.com/index.php http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11464722157- much more up to date MMA South Coast Submissions is the only way forward if you want mma the club is solid as is the instruction and they boast the only full sized mma cage in South England. I started martial arts there but a **** poor work ethic meant I picked up little, no fault of the club, but they put you through your paces and help you out. http://www.southcoastsubmissions.co.uk/ BTW it is worth noting that South coast submissions, Vitor Shaolin BJJ and I think Luke Carters kickboxing are close to finalising a deal to combine their classes under one roof and form a martial arts academy within the next couple of months. This would make it beyond the best club in Portsmouth and if it works out well should make it a major centre for mma in south england. Its still not completely definite but a heads up in case you're interested in one of those three clubs but combined they should all improve anyway. Wrestling There's no link for this one so its at Mountbatten at 6-7:30 on Friday evenings. Started a couple months ago and is a freestlye olympic form of wrestling. Has already improved my stand up no end. I'm late for college so I need to stop there but in no particualr order the other options for more traditional and less competition based arts are: Karate, TKD, Wing Chun and ninjutsu. Any questions about those ask around
Cheers all, feeling very welcome already. I can already tell there are some very knowledgeable people here, i plan on taking full advantage of that knowledge. Morti
Brilliant stuff Mate, Very much appreciated. I do indeed know the Heart of Portsmouth Boxing academy. I know Quinton "Q" Shillingford very well, he's the head coach there, have boxed against some of the Navy teams lads he trained back when i was stil boxing for the Army. If your going to give the Phoenix a pop you'll most likely come into contact with a short bald muscular guy by the name of Daz Dugan, he's from the same Battalion that i was in and was our coach, great guy. Im not sure if he coaches for Phoenix as i havent spoken to him since shortly after i left the service however, i know he does a bit for them. I took a look at South Coast Submissions and Portsmouth Muay Thai Boxing/Sitnarong Camp..both really good establishments. Agree 110% on the Muay Thai Boxing, i think my grounding in boxing would get me off on the right foot there. Still theres time, i dont plan on buying all the kit until i've been attending for a month or so and have got my feet under the table. Cheers for the reply mate. Morti
No problem mate its nice being able to plug my club I'll look Daz up tomorrow I'm partway thruogh posting my app for the service myself so could be a good guy to talk to all round. South Coast is brilliant and if this merger happens it'll only improve. From what I hear its set to be in one of the big old industrial units by fratton park, 50m square mats and two full size mma cages for starters. Absolutely nothing like that in South England. Can't remember the muay thai dude's name but I liked him and he was a good instructor ran a beast of a conditioning session once a week too I wouldn't worry about equipment both places have gear you can borrow, the only thing I would say is SCS is a lot cheaper and with pretty much unlimited training time. Obviously the downside is how much tie you have spare and getting up to Gosport everytime. If you go the mma route though I've got some old sparring gear I don't mind selling cheap or just giving away Athough I'm still going to whore myself out to bjj and still say look our club up Good luck with it man
Hello again mate, Thanks for that. Again brilliant info. I went along and took up Kru Matt Scotts offer of a free training session at Portsmouth Muay Thai. Had an absolutely great session. Have read a couple of suspect comments about his, well Master Skens place at least, of which Portsmouth sitnarong is an affiliate...so im digging about to check im going to progress well there..if not then, im already intending to get some combined mma/bjj practice in at South Coast Submissions on your advice and so, depending on what i can find out in detail about Portsmouth Muay Thai i'll just up and train full time MMA with south coast submissions. Ive heard the same as you, spoke to Brian from SCS and he spoke about them moving to a 7,000sq/ft premises near fratton park...that would be quite a thing. Plus he said when they do move there they will be holding both evening sessions and day sessions...6 days a week and 6 nights a week. Ideal for me as im on shifts. Your signing up yeah? What are you joining mate? Im former 29 Commando RA, so if you ever want any pointers, advice just give me a shout and i'll be more than happy to help. Morti
I heard the same thing about Sken when I trained there but I couldn't tell you how much of it is true, it could just be that because Sken was the first in the UK he's going to get criticised. Same as the Gracies I guess. I've been following your other thread and I'd agree with them that if you're enjoying Matt's class and learning thne that's the main thing. His guys do fight though so that's a good sign. Good to hear Bri said that I've been trying not to get my hopes up too much but 7,000 sq with all day sessions? Guess I can kiss college goodbye next year! Thanks for offering the help man, I don't know if I'm going to send the form off I've got bad eyes and was planning on eye surgery first but found out last week I'm just inside the regs so I thought I'd go for it now but I'm not convinced they're good enough for anything other than paper pushing. Career wise its a toss up between mortars and trying to get on the extra medic course or just signing up as a medical technician, I like the medic idea but I'm not sure I'd be satisfied in anything where I'm not getting stuck in 29's the green berets ain't it? Mates with an ex para down airsoft and there seems to be a bit of a ****ing contest between you'll
Yes mate, green ferret wearers haha. Had some fantastic times while i was in. Best boys social club you'll ever belong to haha. I'd take my hat off to you whichever arm/corps you choose but even more so if you joined up as a medic with the Medical Corps....those men/women have got balls of solid granite to treat battlefield wounds an nearly always in the line of fire. Brilliantly dedicated every last one of them. Same goes for the men/women and dogs of the Vetrinary corps....impressive watching them at work. haha and yeah there is a massive rivalry between the para's and other airborne badge units and the units trained in the Commando role. All good fun though and just banter haha.
