[This posts was originally written on the CARISMA website] In the modern era of combat sports, we’ve witnessed the rise of the “training camp”—an intense, multi-week sprint designed to peak an athlete for a specific date. While this works for the elite 1% of professional fighters, it has birthed a “gig culture” in local gyms and university clubs. This shift away from consistent, lifelong practice toward a “project-based” approach isn’t just a change in training style; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be a martial artist.

The “old school” blueprint: training for longevity

The “old school” philosophy isn’t about being soft; it’s about being sustainable. The goal is to train consistently and hard, but always with enough reserve that you aren’t “broken.” Take, for example, the legendary Bill “Superfoot” Wallace. Even in his 80s, Wallace remains incredibly fit, flexible, and capable of demonstrating while teaching, which he still does weekly. He didn’t achieve this through sporadic bursts of violence followed by months of sedentary living. He achieved it through a steady, rhythmic relationship with his craft. Your goal should be “ready to go” at any moment, rather than spending six weeks “getting ready” to start training.

The Cambridge trap: cramming for the canvas

A fascinating case study in this “gig culture” can be found in high-pressure academic environments, such as the University of Cambridge Kickboxing team. Students there are masters of the “academic sprint”—absorbing thousands of pages of complex information in a short window to pass gruelling exams. Naturally, many try to apply this same logic to fighting:

1. The approach: treat the fight like a final exam.
2. The method: train at 200% intensity for a few weeks, neglecting rest and foundational skill-building.
3. The results: a crash-and-burn cycle, inadequacy and defeat more often than not.

The fatal flaw here is that intellectual absorption and physical integration are two different beasts. While you can “cram” facts into your brain, you cannot “cram” neuromuscular pathways and emotional regulation into your body. Under the heavy emotional overload of a real fight, the “crammed” knowledge evaporates, leaving the fighter with no foundation to fall back on.

The “gig culture” vs. the body

In your twenties, the body is a forgiving machine. You can abuse it with brutal recoveries, survive weeks of inactivity, and then jump back into a high-intensity camp without immediate catastrophe. However, this is a loan with a high interest rate.

The risks of the sprint mentality:

• The injury cycle: tendons and ligaments don’t adapt as fast as muscles. “Gig” training often leads to acute injuries because the body isn’t conditioned for the sudden spike in load.
• Early retirement: when you treat every fight as a “survival project” rather than a “routine test” the psychological and physical burnout eventually outweighs the passion for the sport.
• Diminishing returns: without consistent training, you spend the first half of every “camp” just regaining the fitness you lost during your time off.

Being vs. doing:

The fundamental difference lies in your identity.

• The gig fighter is someone who does kickboxing when a date is set.
• The martial artist is someone who is a practitioner regardless of the calendar.

If you want to be a martial artist, you have to avoid the temptation of the “gig” routine. Consistency allows for a deeper level of skill acquisition—where techniques become second nature rather than something you have to remember.

Tips for Sustainable Training:

• Keep the “low” high: your baseline fitness during “off-times” should be high enough that a fight notice is a minor adjustment, not a lifestyle overhaul.
• Listen to the redlines: train hard enough to progress, but never so hard that you compromise the next day’s session.
• Focus on technical fluency: use your consistent time to develop the “quiet” skills—timing, breathing, and distance—that can’t be learned in a three-week blitz.

The bottom line: there is no doubt that training camps have their importance and they help you to focus, while training with like minded individuals. However if you want to be kicking as high and as fast as Bill Wallace when you’re eighty, you have to stop treating your training like a series of one-night stands. Marry the process.

There are moments in a martial artist’s journey that transcend simple training; they become pilgrimages. Last weekend, in the quiet town of Pomezia, near Rome, I finally checked a box that has been on my bucket list for years. I attended the NPIAMA Europe JKD Kali Silat seminar series to learn from the man, the myth, and the living bridge to martial arts history: Guro Dan Inosanto. At nearly 90 years of age, Inosanto isn’t just “still active”—he is a force of nature. Watching him lead multiple 3.5-hour seminars with the energy of a man half his age was a masterclass in longevity and passion, something to aim at.

A living link to 1964

To understand the weight of this meeting, you have to look back to 1964. That was the year Dan Inosanto began training with Bruce Lee. While many have attempted to preserve Lee’s legacy in amber, Inosanto has spent the last six decades evolving it. He is widely considered one of the “grandfathers” of modern martial arts, not because he stopped learning at JKD, but because he never stopped seeking. Being in the room with him feels like standing next to a library that can still throw a lightning-fast entry.

The seminar: a multidimensional flow

The atmosphere in Pomezia was electric. The seminars weren’t just a series of drills; they were a seamless blend of cultures and combat philosophies. We dove deep into a curriculum that only someone with Inosanto’s breadth of knowledge could orchestrate:

• The structure: blending the efficiency of wing chun and boxing.
• The flow: transitioning into the rhythmic, devastating stick and blade work of kali.
• The complexity: exploring the low-line entries and tactile sensitivity of silat.
• The power: incorporating the clinical striking of muay thai.

What struck me most wasn’t just Guro Dan’s technique, but the experts he brought with him. The floor was filled with seasoned practitioners, all moving with a level of expertise that speaks to the high standard Inosanto demands of his lineage.

More than just techniques

Between the drills, we were treated to “The Stories.” There is something profound about hearing firsthand accounts of the early days of Jeet Kune Do—not as myths, but as lessons in human potential. Guro Dan speaks with a humility that belies his status; he remains, at his core, a student. “The teacher is the one who should be learning the most.” This philosophy was evident in every minute of those 3.5-hour sessions. He didn’t just teach us how to move; he taught us how to remain curious.

A goal achieved

I have wanted to attend an Inosanto seminar for at least 25 years. To finally see him in action—to witness that level of precision and grace in person—was everything I hoped it would be. Leaving Pomezia, I didn’t just walk away with new drills; I walked away with a renewed perspective on what it means to dedicate one’s life to a craft.

At nearly 90, Dan Inosanto is still the fastest person in the room—not just with his hands, but with his mind. It was a privilege to be a part of it.

The math of mastery: spreading too thin

Mastering a single combat discipline, such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) or Muay Thai, takes years of dedicated and consistent hard work.  When an amateur attempts to learn MMA, they aren’t just learning one sport; they are attempting to learn four:

• Striking: Boxing and Kickboxing.

• Clinch Work: Muay Thai and Greco-Roman wrestling.

• Takedowns: Freestyle Wrestling or Judo.²

• Groundwork: BJJ and Ground-and-Pound.

If an amateur trains two-three hours a week and splits that time equally, they are effectively spending 45 minutes per week on each discipline. At that rate, it would take decades to achieve even basic proficiency; by the time you are good you are too old to compete anyway. In a sport where “good enough” can still result in a concussion or a broken limb, 45 minutes of weekly practice is a dangerously low threshold.

The blending paradox

The most difficult aspect of MMA isn’t just knowing how to punch or how to shoot a double-leg takedown—it’s the transition between them. Professional fighters spend thousands of hours learning how to mask a shot with a jab or how to use the cage to stand back up. For the amateur training twice a week, these “seams” between disciplines remain wide open. Instead of a fluid, “mixed” martial art, the amateur ends up with a disjointed toolkit. They tend to become a “Jack of all trades, master of none,” often failing to develop the defensive muscle memory required to protect themselves in any single area.

The safety gap

In a specialized sport like Boxing, you know where the danger is coming from: the hands. In BJJ, you know the danger is on the ground. In MMA, attacks can come toward 100% of your body at all times. For a hobbyist with limited training, the cognitive load is too high. When an amateur gets tired or overwhelmed—which happens quickly on 2-3 hours of cardio a week—technique is the first thing to go. What remains is ego-driven brawling. This is where the highest risk of injury occurs: awkward falls during botched takedowns, or taking unnecessary strikes because the fighter forgot to switch from grappling back to striking.

The specialist advantage

History shows that the most successful fighters usually start as specialists. They master wrestling or striking before spending years integrating other styles. For the amateur, the reverse approach—trying to learn everything at once—rarely leads to a competent fighter. It leads to a practitioner who lacks the footwork of a boxer, the hips of a wrestler, and the guard of a grappler.

Conclusion

If you have 2-3 hours a week to give to a sport, give it to one discipline. You will become more skilled, remain much safer, and actually develop a “superpower” rather than a collection of mediocre habits. Practicing MMA should be considered when the ambition and determination to become a professional within a few years is supported by relentless discipline and genetics which will support the strenuous work required even to start training MMA.

Training kickboxing at 60 has its inconveniences:

• injuries at muscles and tendons happen more frequently, kind of regularly
• recovery takes a long time and annoying little aches and pains are always there
• even if fully warmed up when I try a technique which I have not practiced in a while I might wake up the next day with a new pain which will  last a few days

But what are the alternatives? Stop training and:

• getting fat, slow and sluggish
• experience natural pains of getting older
• accepting that age forces to slow you down…

I don’t think so! My policy is to keep training, ignoring the niggles and aches and keep practicing as regularly as possible. I can gently increase and decrease the level of pressure on my body following my natural feedback.  Do I feel great today? I’ll go for it and train hard with big and fit guys. Do I fell a bit less ok? Great I can still run a class and train with less fit people but keep moving.  Having experienced a couple of major traumas since I turned 50 I learnt to listen to my body and slow down a bit from time to time but trying to catch up as soon as physically possible.

Unfortunately this fight will be not be famous because of the excellent performance of the two athletes, which was great.  This will be forever an infamous event because of the unjustifiable brawl which started immediately after Khabib won the fight by submission.

This event by itself should be enough to rename MMA into MMB: from Mixed Martial Arts to Mix Manly Brawls.

I have been supporting the UFC and MMA as a place where fights happen within the cage, in a well-regulated fashion.  When boxing press conferences broke into brawls I was pleased to be a martial artist, a distance apart from boxing, and I was hoping that the reputation built in many years meant something to the organisers.

It’s obvious that Dana White’s agenda is mostly regulated by money, pay-per-views, ticket sales and so on; he is running a multi-billion dollar company.  It’s also true that trash talk and personal agendas create the hype which sells more tickets.  In my opinion, and I know I am not alone on this, Dana should have been stricter when Conor was involved in the mini bus accident back in April this year.  White could have suspended McGregor just to make a point and send out a strong message; he didn’t so it’s ok to break rules if you are a champion and a money making machine.

This time Khabib decided to start his own brawl immediately after his victory, risking of losing his belt, his purse and perhaps his career as a professional fighter.  I believe that a person who cannot control himself should not be allowed to fight, in UFC or in any other organisation.  Khabib’s technique was amazing on Saturday and he truly deserved to win this fight.  He said he’d win and he did it.  That doesn’t put him about law, regulations or the code of honour to be a martial artist.  He should be banned or at least suspended.  If he gets away with it I can just see this happening more and more in the future.

UFC is a multi-billion dollar organisation and fights like this are worth many millions. While I hope Khabib will be punished for what he did, the entity or rigour of such a punishment will be negligible compared to the negative message he was allowed to send out.

In my long experience in training and teaching martial arts I repeatedly noticed a standardised outcome from all of my training sessions; I decided to call this the “reset effect”.  My way of describing it is: “it doesn’t matter in what mood I enter a class, I will always come out feeling good, physically slightly tired, with a well-being feeling of having completed a great and complete workout”.

In fact I end up in a good, positive and relaxed mood which helps me to look forward to the activities which will follow in that evening: dinner, relax, family time or eventually going out and meet other people.  I have been training martial arts 2-4 times per week for 30+ years, which is a very long time.

As training is usually after work or, on Sunday, after a relaxed day, it’s quite usually to arrive at training in a variety of moods:

• Happy or euphoric because I just closed a good deal or achieved something good
• Irritated because of an argument with a client, supplier or the boss
• Stressed because of a dead line
• Shocked (just once but I still remember it) because I was told my company was going into liquidation
• Anxious about an upcoming important event like a university exam or a job interview
• Sleepy because of lack of sleep or just woken up from an afternoon nap

Usually the fact itself I am entering the training room is already partially smoothing down the previously described feelings.  Then I warm up for about half hour and the fact that I have to concentrate on the exercises it helps me detaching even more from these feelings.  Then the 60-90 minutes training, which requires full concentration, truly helps resetting my whole mood.  So the next few times you train martial arts try paying attention at how you feel at the end of each training session and check whether it has for the same “reset effect” on you.

Here are a few key points which are the pillars on which I base my teaching:

Learning martial arts takes time and dedication

If you had the illusion of becoming proficient in martial arts within a few weeks or months you took up the wrong activity.  Nowadays most people train martial arts as an alternative to other sports or hobbies and they want fast results.  Learning martial arts should however be seen as a medium to long time project, where some results can be seen within months but decent proficiency comes after a few years of regular and frequent attendance (e.g. 2+ 60-120 minutes lessons per week).  My responsibility in this case is about creating an environment which fosters dedicated training and cooperation among all members of the club and continuously challenges everybody’s skills and performance, including mine.

Learning martial arts helps you to rationalise the irrational

In its most essential form fighting is about survival; when our ancestors got involved in a fight it was about defending their homes and families from invaders or from fierce animals or perhaps about invading other people’s territories; it was no game and it was about life and death.  Most people react irrationally to a fighting situation because when adrenaline is released, even in a controlled environment like a martial arts gym, it causes some people to lose control.  Training martial arts helps to cope with this irrational feeling and channel the energy toward better physical and mental performance.  My responsibility in this case is about encouraging everybody to challenge themselves and understand where their threshold and comfort zone are and push them further.

Tough training helps to cope with tough situations

Whether you are training for sports fights or for self-defence it’s essential to test yourself toward a range of tough situations.  In a sports fight your opponents will try their best to beat you within the rules of the fight, sometimes trying to bend such rules for their advantage.  If you find yourself on the street and need to use your self-defence skills you better be used to tough attacks, the most unpredictable ones; your street opponents will probably have no rules about fighting and potentially go for the nastiest attacks.  Here is where my responsibility is about reminding people about their limits and potential pitfalls in their skills and techniques.  I am trying to help them to train in a way that pushes their skills beyond their current limits and make them better fighters.

Martial arts can be for everyone but they are not

Training martial arts is in my opinion one of the most satisfying and complete form of exercise for body and mind.  Many people start and nearly as many give up with days, weeks or months.  Many novices cannot cope with the learning, complexity of movements, fitness requirements and so on.  It takes time, consistency and dedication which most people simply don’t have.  I encourage most people to try and, depending on a number of factors, I might push them more or less toward a tougher training, sooner or later.  In my experience of practicing martial arts for nearly 40 years and teaching for the good part of 30 years I met super talented people giving up at their first hurdle, which they never expected to happen.  I have also seen many not talented people becoming great martial artist and champions.  My responsibility in this case is about managing their expectations and feedback, in the most constructive and objective way, how they can improve and what they should do.

You can make a kickboxer in 12 months

I come from the traditional martial arts background where anybody with less than 5 years’ experience is considered a beginner.  Over the last couple of decades I learnt, from teaching some of my highly motivated students, that is possible to teach most of the techniques within a few months and these techniques can be perfected in the next half a year or so.  When I teach kickboxing to Cambridge University Kickboxing I often meet in October beginners  who want to fight the following March and, every year, at least a few of them, achieve amazing results and scores. “Idris Elba: Fighter” shows that a 44 years old actor with no previous martial arts experience can become a kickboxer in 12 months.

Never underestimate the underdog

His opponent was very full of himself; his fight plan was about finishing the fight within 30 seconds, maximum 1 minute.  He assumed Idris would not be a decent kickboxer because he is an actor. In fighting sports KO do happen and this one was one of them.  In all honesty, I am not too impressed of a kickboxer with 16 years’ experience who loses against a guy who did not know kickboxing a year ago.

The coach has a main role

A good coach knows what to teach you, how to get you fight ready, how to maximise your strengths and to avoid exposing your weaknesses. With a good coach Idris went from total beginner to a professional training proficiency within a year.  He had the right support in terms of training, recovering, therapy and nutrition over a year of very intense training.

Money helps, always

Coaching and gym cost money, supplements and the right food cost money, therapists cost money.  Training cost money because while you are training you are not working. So having money in the form of savings or a sponsor helps your dream to become true, faster than if you have to support your dream while working a full time job.

It’s all about determination

Training is hard; preparing for a professional fight, however just 3x2mins rounds, is draining for the expected fitness level, the technical skills required and the mental attitude.  These three components are essential but determination, together and the right coach support in the dark moments, is what pushes you forward, when it hurts, when you are tired or you feel you cannot continue.

At the end of a full year preparation the fight lasted a relatively short time; Idris was surely loosing badly for the first minute or so.  He got hit everywhere by punches, kicks and knee strikes; then he managed to hit back a few times.  His opponent was not prepared to this retaliation and got scored badly by a few punches then a knee strike in the stomach put him down.  The referee counted to 10 and gave to Idris the victory by KO.

Did Idris move with the smoothness of a jungle cat?  No he did not; his positions, foot work and guard looked similar to many beginners I coach.  In one of his last training session when he was training with an American champion it was very visible the difference of many years of experience between the two guys in the ring.  However Idris set himself an ambitious goal, he worked hard for it and, by all means: well done Idris Elba.

I immediately reassured him that with time and careful teaching all necessary defence and attack skills will develop like natural instincts; I also added that “you can just fight what you have seen before”. To prove this simple concept I stepped a couple of metres away from him, removed my belt, folded it 4 times and threw it toward his chest saying ”catch!”.  He caught it without hesitation and smiled.  I then carried on explaining; you naturally catch an object thrown at you because that’s what you have been taught since you were a kid, by playing ball games and so on.

If you train just specific techniques you will be vulnerable to attacks which you are not used to.  You will be able to block and avoid kicks and punches once you have seen them coming your way, many times, and being taught how to block and avoid them from different positions and angles.

To develop good fighting skills it’s essential to train in a variety of ways, with people of different sizes and shapes.  In that way each possible combination of techniques can be tested and natural reactions get developed at subconscious level, generating instinctive moves.

Years later, when I started teaching, I realised that people from all walks of life were approaching martial arts and, as it happens, some of them were terrific, some hopeless and the majority in the middle.  By teaching martial arts to people who are not naturally talented and/or fit and/or coordinated I realised that many of them require much more explanation than showing the technique a few times and hoping they learn it.  Many people need the technique to be deconstructed and explained; in same cases a clear description of the muscles involved is necessary to fully achieve the expected result.  By analysing each technique in detail, including what muscle groups are working how and when, I forced my mind to grasp every single aspect of each movement and by improving my awareness about them it has greatly improved my technique.