I visited Coach Jeff Burger using a groupon after moving to the area. I've trained in muay thai for the last 6 years and needed a new gym.
When I got there for the first class, I realized that i'd already been to a couple of seminars he'd put on in Everett.
Coach Jeff Burger is quite an interesting guy. He's trained extensively in a number of martial arts and has been a coach/martial arts trainer for most of his life.
So, I had a groupon for 10 classes. Despite having trained for years, he wanted me to start in his level 1 classes. I could appreciate this. He had a system and I felt like it was respectful to his system and the other students. And it also helped me to get a feel for how he teaches and both level 1 and 2.
My prior experience was in a muay thai school that was focused on traditional muay thai, as a sport. The classes included good teaching as well as were good workouts - cardio-wise.
With CJB, he believes in "burn and learn", where you start with jump roping and a few rounds of pad work with each other, then learn different themes. So to start with, you learn how to do pad work - both hitting and holding. Which is good.
Then the teaching. CJB is well-versed in numerous martial arts. When he teaches muay thai, he teaches only muay thai. He focuses on muay thai as it pertains to the sport, as well as self-defense, in police work, and in military work. So it's cool to learn ways of using muay thai for true self defense in addition to as a sport.
And he has a systematic way of looking at martial arts and teaching it. He is also really good at explaining the origins of moves as well as the reasoning behind them - which I found helpful, a thorough understanding of why always helps me to really learn how to use something.
His classes are small and he teaches all of them. So you get a lot of attention from him directly, which is really cool. As opposed to other places with big classes where the main teacher is a high-ranking student, you have the direct teaching from CJB himself. Which is great.
It's definitely not a cardio-based class. The focus is on teaching and CJB is a great teacher. The other students are all nice and it's very comfortable. read more