Hi guys! We thought we’d put together a little newsletter this month as we have quite a lot going on at the moment in terms of events and timetable/staff tweaks.

First off, we have a lot of events coming up, including our big Christmas Do, Battle Arena, Club Night, Grapplefest, Dawn Boot Camp, Allstars BJJ tournament and plenty more in the works for the new year! All of the info should be on our website but if you have any questions then feel free to rack our brains on reception.

Staff

If you haven’t heard already (word travels fast!), we are having a bit of a change of staff as we have swapped out a couple of coaches, have a couple of coaches leaving and are taking a couple of new ones on!

This is a big change for Kraken as it is always sad to loose a familiar face from the classes that you’re used to but it also creates an opportunity for change and to reinvigorate! Although it’s a shame, we truly believe that from a martial arts/fighting perspective there are many positives. Not only for those doing the martial arts classes but particularly our active fighters and strikers! That being said we are super excited to introduce two of our new coaches!

First of all we have Tommy Faulkner joining the team! Some of you may already know him as he’s been training for donkey’s years in both boxing and MMA. He has been coaching professional boxers in Luton for a long time and has cornered at a high level. Some of these big name fighters have won titles and medaled in the Olympics! Most recently he was supposed to be cornering on the Chris Eubank Jr. vs Conor Benn show! Check out his biography on the website. We believe Tommy will be a huge asset to the team and will improve our level of striking all around. He’s obviously had years of experience with fight camps, weight cuts and what fighters go through leading up to the big day.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’re excited to introduce Rick Selvarajar to the team! Again, many of you may know Rick already as he’s been training for years. Rick is a professional MMA fighter (and undefeated as an amateur) with an exceptional striking and grappling game! He’s fought many high caliber fighters including UFC star Marc “Bonecrusher” Diakiese.

He’s a 4th degree black belt in kickboxing, high level brown belt in BJJ and has won multiple MMA titles including Fury MMA British Champion and TKMMA British Champion!

Both of these guys are huge additions to the team taking us from strength to strength.

We have had to tweak the timetable to accommodate some of these changes and to also push the MMA side of things harder including a change in the striking emphasis focusing on “striking for MMA”. We have added four additional adult MMA classes to help with this!

Alongside our other established coaches, Tommy and Rick – our long time coach, Rob Masters, is stepping up to take more adult MMA classes and to take a bigger role in leading our fighters. Rob needs no introduction, but just to blow a bit more smoke up his 🙈 , if you don’t already know him. He’s one of our most experienced coaches with loads of high level fighting experience, multiple belts and a BIG personality that ups the energy (and noise) of any class!

We are super-proud of the team of high level coaches that we have managed to build here at Kraken and we hope that you are as excited as us about things to come! 2023 will be a big year!

Timetable & Open Mats

Open mats are back! Get some extra training in for free! These will all be put on GymSync and announced on our Telegram channel so please check and book in.

As mentioned above, we’re also tweaking the timetable once again. A few classes have been tweaked. Four additional MMA classes have been added. We’ve listened to feedback and have moved the Saturday MMA class to first thing in the morning. The new one starts on 12th December!

Christmas Opening Times

We will be closed as usual for Christmas from the 24th December – 2nd January. However, we’re still putting on a few classes so that you all don’t get too fat or board! The following reduced timetable will be in place week commencing 26th December. There’ll also be some open mats – keep your eye on our Telegram channel and Gym Sync!

Misc.

Just a few things to mention on a side note:

• Please make sure you keep booking in on GymSync and swiping in with your key-fob each and every time. We use this for multiple reasons including monitoring student’s training frequency for consideration with grading and putting forward for fights. Junior and Adult students that have been warned multiple times will not be able to train without doing so. An idea for scanning in is to take a decent quality picture of your QR code on your phone – you can scan that if you forget you fob.
• If you aren’t already, then please make sure that you are familiar with our Etiquette Policy. Parents, you too please.
• We have a new, better coffee machine. Try it! 😋