What happens in my first session?

I show up with the gear. Before anything else we talk for a few minutes, standing in your garage or your yard, and it is not small talk. What do you want out of this. What has your body been through. What hurts. What are you actually scared of. That conversation shapes the whole hour, because there is nobody else in the session to build the hour around.

People undersell themselves here and it costs them. If your shoulder has been bad since 2019, say so in minute two, not in week five when it lights up. If the real reason you called is that something happened and you do not want to feel like that again, you can say that too, and you do not have to explain any more than that.

Then you warm up. Not a class warm-up built for twenty people. Yours. Moving, breathing, getting loose enough to work without my having to guess whether you are ready.

Then you learn. Two or three things, not twenty. A stance and one honest punch into the pads. How to get up off the ground without turning your back. A grip break. You drill them, I watch every rep, and I fix it while you are doing it instead of telling you about it in the car park afterwards. That is the part a class cannot give you. In a room of twenty you get looked at twice. Here you get looked at the whole time, which is uncomfortable for about ten minutes and then it is the reason you get good.

Expect to be out of breath sooner than you think, and expect that to be fine. I work in short rounds with real rest. If you need to sit down, sit down. Nobody is watching but the coach you called.

Nobody spars on day one. Nobody spars until they are ready and they want to.

Sessions run about an hour, and how long a session is covers what to do if you want something different. Bring water and clothes you can move in. That really is the whole list, because the gloves, the pads and the mats come out of the truck with me. What to wear and bring has the detail if you want it.

Being nervous beforehand is normal. It usually wears off somewhere in the first ten minutes, about the time you work out that nobody is judging you and there is no line of people waiting for their turn. If that is the part sitting on your chest, nerves before a first session is worth two minutes.

You can have somebody there. Partners watch, parents watch, kids sit on the step and watch. Most people forget they are there by the second round. See who else can be around.

At the end I tell you what I saw. Not a grade. The honest read: what your body already does well, what is going to take work, and the one or two things to practise before I come back. Some people hear that and book another one on the spot. Some go away and think about it. Both are fine. You will leave knowing more than you did, either way.