The beginning

Its been a year now since I left the fire service and what an adventure I have had. Giving up a good job with decent pay, good pension and health benefits was one of the hardest if not the hardest decision I have ever had to make. In my martial arts career and indeed as a fire fighter I have experienced lots of fear which as we all know is accompanied by our old friend adrenalin. Leading up to my departure date I experienced lots of adrenalin usually in the early hours of the morning, I would wake up heart pounding and drenched in sweat, a slow release of my old friend the dreaded A.

Like I say its been a year since then and much has happened, its with out doubt been very scary and I have experienced massive self doubt and fear but also massive personal growth. I started running Master classes with my old friend Matty Evans and they have exceeded my wildest expectations. The idea was to put a course together that would stretch people both physically and psychologically and boy have we succeeded. We hold the classes at the Red Corner gym in Coventry. The feedback has been fantastic, these courses are changing peoples life's. To see the change in some of the participants has been fantastic, Some people credit the course with saving their relationships some people have left bad relationships and jobs. We even had to run a level two course because the demand was so high from people completing level one. We have had students travel from all over the country to attend and I thank you all for your fantastic support. Our intention for this year is to make the master classes even better and get them out to more people. The next level one class starts on the 9th of February and we have two places left. To book a place go to paypal on my site or give me a call on 07708273376.

During the year I have done seminars all over the country including Scotland, Dublin, London and many more. In Dublin I met a fantastic guy Aidan Carrol who runs a KravMaga club this guy is going to be a big name. In Scotland I met and an old friend Vinncent Mcguire and Craig who run a fantastic club in a place called Denny again brilliant people. Its surreal to get on a plane fly to the other end of the country do what I love to do, which is teach lovely people, get paid and fly home again. I also met up with another great friend Tony Terranova who along with Alan Macdonald are running a club called Fighting Fit Martial Arts in Cheltanham. They invited me to do a two hour session at their club which once again went very well and I got some really nice feed back from those that attended. The great thing for me is that they have all invited me back!!! On February the 18th Glenn Smith who runs the amazing Red Corner gym and myself are doing a boxing class for Tony and Alan at their club in Cheltanham all the details can be found by following the links to the club on my Web site.

I have met some great people in the world of martial arts. As always I am fortunate enough to meet up with Geoff Thompson on a regular basis who I class as not only my mentor but close friend. I also met John B Will a Ju Jitsu legend in Australia and had a roll on the Matt with him and Matty Evans at the Red Corner. John did a seminar at my good friend Richard Yeomans Combat and exercise gym in Nuneaton and then stayed at my house what an amazing guy we talked about martial arts and life well into the early hours. I have met Jeff Monson a UFC heavy weight fighter, several times at the Red Corner. I have spent many hours with my old friend Bob Spour a remarkable guy talking about training and NLP, I even did a slot on Ker rang radio with Bob.

Ive also done a DVD with Matty Evans which we are both really pleased with, you can also order this of my Web site.

My one to one sessions at the Red Corner are going really well, I have been teaching grappling, striking and all round self defence. Due to time restraints I am now only teaching on a Friday and Monday. The Red Corner is a real credit to Glenn Smith it must be the friendliest gym in Britain with out doubt.

My counselling is also going very well and I am now doing one day a week at Coventry University which is great. The counselling team there are fantastic and I love working with the students they have great energy. I have also stumbled into the world of sports psychology using mainly my NLP skills. I have worked with professional boxers, speedway riders, rugby players and have got fantastic results. I will go more into this in future blogs, but I must mention Troy James, Jacob Vagg and Joe Sherriff all young boxers at the Red Corner. I have worked in the area of strengthening the mind with all of them and they are all brilliant and have great careers in front of them.

This week I got back on the matt with my old friend Justin Gray but I will talk more about my training in next weeks blogg watch this space. Take care warmest regards Tony.