Well…. Its been an exciting year for Chokdee.

We have put out 14-fighters this year across a wide spectrum of shows, from local feeder shows through to the elite level of national competition. We have come up with a record of 11w 2l and 1 NC, which boosts our winning ratio to 85%.
The winning momentum just keeps us getting better and better.

Chokdee welcomed in our first Champion in Danny Harrison-Little, winning the Northern Area WRSA Welterweight Title in fine style against the illustrious Carl Tankard. This was on the Cage Confrontation 3 show half way through the year. Its astounding to hear that Danny had only been training with us for 6-months before winning that title. There are plans forming at the moment for him to train in Thailand and fight for an English Title at the start of 2012.

But its not only about the fighting side of things. I would say that competition is only a small part of what we offer…..

Over the course of the past 12-months one of our students has shed over 22kgs, merely as a by-product of the functional training that we do….AND also learning a new skill at the same time. This then has had a knock-on effect with confidence, self-esteem and communication skills.
This is only one of the 143 clients we have helped this year for weight-loss, through the MBN Programme.

Not only have we done all this, but we have moved in to the new academy!!!!!

The kids classes are going well ……and I have to tell you about Little Tom (7yrs old).
He is an absolute star! He came to the first ever kids class at Chokdee Academy and has battled colds and flu to make his way to as many classes as he can. After only 3 weeks training he is hitting the pads like a seasoned professional. He is doing so well, blocking every kick, he is even getting his own little ‘thaiboxing swagger’ going on.
I can see a great future ahead for him.

The thaiboxing classes are going from strength to strength with new people starting all the time. Its also great to see the York University guys pursuing additional training in readiness for their inter-University MMA Competition next year.

The all new Kettle-bell classes are going well, with all the guys picking up the new techniques so efficiently and discovering new muscles all the time! LOL

The Brazilian Ju-Jitsu classes are developing and we are attracting people from as far away as Hull and Scarborough to come to these growing classes. I want to say thank you to the instructors Danny Mitchell, James Stafford and John Webb. I think its time we take this to the next stage of development, so watch out for some exciting news early in 2012 (…..if not before).

We are hardly closing over the Christmas period, so keep an eye out for the classes which we will be hosting over this festive period.
Closing dates – 24/25/26/27th December …..and the 1st January.
All other days we will be open at some time.

Many thanks for all your support this year and keep an eye out for some of the exciting and fun prospects we have in 2012…..

Let me whet your appetite with:
• Strength n Conditioning improvements
• Diet n Nutrition /Weight-loss programmes
• Competitions
• Seminars
• Special guests from Thaiboxiing/MMA/BJJ
• Fitness Events
• New Classes

Hi guys,
Sorry for the delay in not being able to blog for so long.
As the facebook-followers will already know, since my last blog I have opened up my new academy and I am just catching up with the software side of things. Pictures of the build and opening night will be going up very shortly.

So let me now, tell you the story.
As you may or may not know, Chokdee Muay Thai used to run out of Fitness First on Clifton Moor. We had full use of all of the equipment, state of the art treadmills, cardio-vascular machines, weights, personal training, as well as all the classes we were delivering. But since being made redundant from the railway, just over 2 years ago, I have been looking around for the perfect place to set up my new academy. It just seemed like there was never anything quite right.
A few different options came along the way.
I was invited to join forces with the local MMA Gym (Multi Masters) based down Layerthorpe. I even saw ex-students of mine set up their own gyms….. But for me, it was never quite right. I wanted my own place, but whatever I seemed to do, I was either dodging corrupt estate agents or was avoiding stepping on other instructors toes by setting up within their catchment area.
I mean, if you are going to set up your own martial arts academy then you have to embody the ethics that go along with it (Respect, Honest, Humility, Confidence, Commitment etc).
I must have looked at over 200 properties!!!!!!

And then I came across this real gem of an industrial unit on Rose Avenue, on York Business Park in Poppleton.
It fit the bill perfectly.
It was a new build (3 or 4yrs old), totally blank canvas, bare breezeblock walls, toilet and just under 2500sq ft. The artist in me could now go to work. I worked out what we needed, took dimensions and revisited the unit several times just to make sure everything was going to fit perfectly. I even took down some masking tape and marked-out the areas on the floor so I could take people down and walk through the design with them.
All was going perfectly,….until……

When we looked at all the planning permission certification, the unit was listed as an industrial unit so we had to go through a ‘Change of Use’ at the council. This was a painstakingly slow process, and was essentially the lynch-pin of EVERYTHING.
If we didn’t get the planning permission, it would be back to square one, so needless to say this was probably the most stressful experience I have ever had…..but through this stress I rationalised and learnt some great lessons, not only about the bureaucratic systems that council run but more importantly about myself.
I was investing my life-savings, my hopes and dreams, putting everything on the line to make this happen. But to the Planning Officer at the council, this was just another day at the office, stamping another piece of paper. There was no emotional investment, and as such was no even remotely passionate about what we were striving to achieve.
D-day came, the date when we were supposed to be getting our decision from the planning people.
We were told that we would be getting an e-mail, so I was up at the crack of dawn. 7:30am. No e-mail had arrived. Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh every 10-mins….. My patience wore thin by 2pm, so I phoned them.
“I am sorry. I am on annual leave until next Thursday. Please call back then!”
After another call to the central office, I finally got through to someone who could help. The head of York City Planning, and he said the 3rd-most beautiful sentence I have ever heard “Yes, I can confirm that planning permission has been granted on Unit 24 Rose Avenue!!!!!” ***
BOOM!!!!! Get in there!!!!!!

It was all systems go.
Check list:
• Rental agents
• Bank Manager
• Equipment suppliers
• Matting
• Joiners
• Plasterers
• Electricians
• Industrial Paint Sprayers
• Carpets

I am not saying there weren’t any other stumbles along the way, there were, but everything else just seemed to happen in an instant. From signing the lease to construction work to fitting it out to running the first class was only 14-days!!!!!!!

I will tell you a little bit more about the quality of the equipment and a few other things in the next blog.

Chokdee Academy

PS ***The 2nd and 1st most beautiful sentences are when my wife said that she would marry me, and when she told me that she was pregnant with our child (in case you were wondering)

As we are expanding the scope of disaplines we offer at Chokdee, I have asked one of the guys to write a blog post about how he has found this experience.

GI VS NOGI for MMA.
Hi I’m John, I’m 36 years old and I’ve been doing some form of martial arts since I was 7 years old.
I think as people we find ourselves drawn to specific areas or ways of doing things that are more natural to our physical and or mental makeup and although I’d studied mainly striking arts for many years I first caught the grappling bug when I was in my first year in the army (1991).
I agreed to spar with an army PTI (physical training instructor), who I later learned was half English half Russian, and had spent 3 years in the Russian military sports program and gained the grade “master of sports”( a very high grade) in something called Sambo Wrestling. This is a combo of judo, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling and submission wrestling.
So we sparred, after a short period of fairly even stand up sparring he suggested allowing ground work …I agreed after all I did Japanese Jiu Jitsu right? …Wrong! I was taken down at will and totally dominated on the ground, I couldn’t even get a punch or kick off. And when I did, he would catch it and use it to take me down. From then on I needed to learn grappling. A few years past and I had trained Sambo (without the GI top that is traditional) with him and Thai/kick boxing elsewhere.
By the time I left the army in 2003 I had been training MMA for some time, I even ran my own MMA classes from 2008-2010 in which we had some good success at amateur competition level, it’s fair to say I thought my grappling level was of high calibre.
After I decided to close down my classes I dropped off martial arts training due to Injury and time constraints and in my head I had all but resigned myself to never grappling again.
I have the pleasure of being a friend and former student of 2 time world Muay Thai champion Richard Cadden, and it was during a period of adjustment in my life that I called upon Rich`s skills as a mind coach from his business Star performance mind coaching. and it was after this session that I got talking to Rich about grappling. He mentioned that he had recently started training with a Blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (with the GI),and he invited me to join them in training, which I declined stating for MMA gi work has little or no benefit compared to nogi.
Rich and I proceeded to have an in depth discussion about the differences between nogi and gi Jiu Jitsu and their relevance to the MMA fighters and practitioners, it’s fair to say the discussion was divided with Rich explaining how good it was for the MMA fighter to learn BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) and with me staying firmly on Team No-Gi fence, explaining that “why train with a gi when in the cage or in normal training in MMA gyms no one would be wearing them! So the techniques would not carry over”….
It’s fair to say I thought I had all the answers to this conversation…but I like to think I am an individual that is open to new ideas and a positive free thinker so I thought this would be a good way to try out BJJ and get myself back into what I loved doing…GRAPPLING!
I arrived for my first BJJ session one Saturday afternoon and I wasn’t sure what I would find on arrival, I wore MMA shorts and a rash guard as the last gi I owned was when I was 15.
I arrived at fitness first gym in York at midday and the class started the area was small and unimpressive it had a few mats pushed together to roll (slang for grapple) on.
After a short warm up we went through a few techniques starting with the correct way to transition from mount all the way around the body back to mount. We also went through getting the arm bar from mount (a technique a thought I knew well) we also did a few techniques I recognised from my traditional Japanese Jiu Jitsu days.
I was extremely impressed with the teaching and the attention to detail in which every technique was taught with, every technique was practiced 20-30 times in succession alternating with a partner, and every rep was scrutinise by our resident blue belt instructor for mistakes in the technique of which (to my surprise ) there was many.
I was shocked at the level of my own sloppy technique.
As the weeks passed I continued to train BJJ at Chokdee Muay Thai and MMA eventually purchasing my own gi…and restarting my martial arts education from white belt again, and it is fair to say that I have learned more in the last 6 months in these sessions than in the last 29 years of training, my game has ultimately gotten better and this I believe this is due to a few factors. My willingness to engage in something different without fear or prejudice and good coaching and good team mates.
The main difference in the grappling styles is this …in nogi there are opportunities for escapes if you have made mistakes, in gi there is nowhere near as many opportunities to escape from bad positions this then carries over into MMA. So instead of banking on you being able to slip out of a bad position you put yourself in you learn how not to get caught in the bad position in the first place, it forces you to think a few moves ahead because the chance of rectifying any mistakes made in BJJ is a lot slimmer.
Also what I have noticed is that in any position gi work is harder to escape because of the handholds that are available for your opponent to lock onto, for instance if you are being set up for an arm bar you can’t just pull that arm out of there because your opponent has a fist full of gi stopping your escape, again …this teaches you not to get caught in that position in the first place.
Rolling in a gi is also good for your conditioning as it is very restricting sometimes to be wearing this heavy suit that is also used to by your opponent to pull you around and strangle you with.
BJJ also teaches you to be very tight with your submission attempts as you have this thick material in place to squeeze through as well as your opponent resisting you.
For me techniques that I thought I was good at have got better, tighter and sharper, techniques I thought I was bad at have got better and have become my new go to moves.
I agree for MMA fighters and practitioners you need to mix it up with striking and grappling but what I’m saying is give the gi a go even if only once or twice a week as a change from your nogi routine it WILL ONLY HELP and it breaks the monotony of everyday training.
It’s fair to say I’m sold on the gi….do it take the red pill!
JL Webb.

Dont just take our word for it…… Heres what Carlson Gracie has to say:

http://thefightingphotographer.blogspot.com/2011/09/to-gi-or-not-to-gi.html

Thanks to Carl Fisher from Combat Base for directing this to us