The first time in the ring is the defining moment for a high percentage of fighters as this is the one that can make or break them, turn them away for good or turn them into fighting machines, for me to let a fighter into the ring is a bit of a long drawn out process, if done right will work well to give the fighter the confidence, and fitness to do a good job.

First of all the student has to do the required amount of training to get too the fitness required to fight, I used to ask the students if they wanted to fight or rather tell them its “time” to have a go but I realized this backed them into a bit of a corner and sometimes I lost good students who deep down were not fighters, so now I wait until they ask me if I think they are ready to fight so its their choice not mine and this works,

If the students have completed their gradings they would have already wrote down on paper their version of how they should get ready for a fight so they have gone over it properly in their head and put it on paper, things like goals, why do I want to fight? How do I prepare for the fight? This helps them conquer a lot of bad feelings in their mind and that’s part of the battle to overcome the pre fight nerves and everyone’s different and they all tackle it in different ways.

All this goes along way to improve the students fight prep ie: going over the fight in his head, sparring, going onto “live sparring” using 10 oz gloves so he’s getting close to the feeling of a real fight, also going to other gyms to spar unknown students and attending semi contact or sparring days which are getting very popular now when a gym hosts a day of sparring inviting others to their gym to compete for trophies and using judges etc

Utilizing most of these techniques work well on today’s students who with the proper training and prep and nutrition advise go on to a lasting injury free fight career.

The guvnor. Nick Stone