I WANT TO HELP YOU STAY
A MARTIAL ARTIST.
I am Shaan, an online strength and performance coach for martial artists over 30. I am a Judo black belt, and I have rebuilt my own body after ankle reconstruction and shoulder surgery.
I started martial arts when I was seven years old.
I began with Shotokan Karate, moved into Taekwondo and then discovered Judo at school when I was eleven.
I became obsessed.
I competed.
I earned my black belt.
And I cross-trained across gymnastics, parkour, skateboarding, cycling and different martial arts.
For a long time, I thought being athletic meant being able to push my body harder.
Then my body started teaching me otherwise.
WHEN YOUR BODY FORCES YOU TO SLOW DOWN
I've had my share of injuries.
One of the biggest happened when I was around 19 or 20.
My ankle had become completely unstable. I had torn all of the ligaments and eventually needed reconstructive surgery.
I went from being active to barely being able to move.
I became depressed during the period of immobility and had to relearn how to walk.
I spent time working with physiotherapists and sports therapists and began paying much closer attention to how my body actually worked.
Eventually, I returned to Judo.
But the experience changed the way I looked at training.
THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN.
Later, I dislocated my shoulder during Judo.
This time I needed surgery with six anchors and had a slight tear to my biceps tendon.
That experience pushed me even further into understanding movement, strength, mobility and how the body responds to different types of loading.
I became much more interested in training the joints and movement capabilities, not simply chasing bigger muscles.
I started experimenting with resistance through different ranges, isometrics, time under tension and developing strength in positions that actually mattered to movement.
I STOPPED TRAINING FOR TODAY.
Eventually I realised something.
I could spend the next decade trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of my body...
Or I could train in a way that gave me a much better chance of still being capable decades from now.
I chose the second.
I want my body to be ready for whatever life or sport asks of it.
That became the foundation of how I train, and how I coach.
I DON'T FEAR GETTING OLDER.
I FEAR SLOWING DOWN.
MARTIAL ARTS ISN'T THE ONLY THING IN YOUR LIFE.
Neither is training.
I've experienced the career ladder, demanding work, business, coaching, training and everything else that comes with being an adult with competing priorities.
That's important because I don't believe your training should require you to reorganise your entire life around it.
Your programme needs to fit into your life.
Not the other way around.
My background in service design has also shaped the way I coach. I naturally think in terms of:
Assess → Understand → Prioritise → Test → Review → Improve.
That means your programme isn't something I write once and leave alone. We continually look at what's happening and decide what needs to change.
Today, I train 2–3 times a week in martial arts, rotating between Kickboxing, Judo, BJJ and MMA, alongside 2–3 gym sessions.
I'm not interested in pretending that everyone needs to train like a professional athlete.
I train the way I coach:
Purposefully.
Strategically.
For the long term.
MY BACKGROUND
Judo black belt
Competitive Judo experience
Kickboxing coaching
Grappling coaching
Wushu / Kung Fu training
Study of martial arts in China
Cross-training across multiple movement disciplines
BA Product Design
Focus on medical design
Service Design experience within healthcare
Experience researching and designing around complex human needs
My coaching approach has been developed through years of martial arts practice, competition, injury, rehabilitation experience, coaching, physical training and studying how people actually move and adapt.
I DON'T WANT MY CLIENTS TO NEED ME FOREVER.
I want them to understand their body better.
I want them to understand why we're doing what we're doing.
I want them to become more capable.
And ideally, at the end of the process, I want them to look back and think:
“Wow. I didn't know how capable I truly was.”
That's the outcome I'm interested in.
Not just a bigger squat.
Not just a lower body-fat percentage.
Not just another training plan.
Capability.
GUIDES FROM THE MAT & THE GYM
YOUR BODY IS PART
OF YOUR MARTIAL ARTS.
So train it accordingly. You don't need to chase every physical quality at once. You need a strategy.