The latest updates from NWCKB!

EXCITING UPDATE – 24/3/25 👇

From 19th June 2025, we’ll be adding a second night of training to our syllabus. We’ll still train Mondays – 6:30-7:15pm kids class & 7:30-8:30pm adults class – but we’ll also be opening on Thursdays. Sessions will be at Flint Town Hall – 6:45-7:30pm for kids & 7:45-8:45pm for adults – and prices will remain pay as you go for all sessions with no contracts or commitments.

With the increase in size and space, we’re also looking at moving Monday nights to Flint Town Hall too from 23rd June. We will confirm this change in due time 👊

SO, YOU WANT TO TRAIN LIKE A FIGHTER? 👇

It’s widely accepted that competitive martial artists are some of the fittest people on the planet. Whether it’s Kickboxing, Boxing, Muay Thai, MMA or any of the other countless martial arts styles out there, the fitness levels that are required from those preparing for fights or competitions are intense and demanding.

While some turn to gyms to throw the weights around or slip their trainers on to get their miles of running in, many people are still reverting to the tried and true basics which are bodyweight exercises to help them cut weight, improve power output and strength & increase cardiovascular fitness and muscle mass. Bodyweight exercises are best, not just because of how accessible they are to all, but because they allow us to learn how to control our body weight and build a bulletproof foundation for supporting other elements of training.

In this article, we’ll tell you three of the best bodyweight exercises that are staples of our training at North Wales Chinese Kickboxing; exercises that’ll help you look and feel like a martial artist.

Press Ups

Press ups really are the king of bodyweight exercises, and help build muscle and endurance in the chest, shoulders, triceps and core; all areas required for throwing and blocking strikes in kickboxing.

We could write an entire article on the benefit of press ups, but we’ll focus on what we consider to be their best feature; variability! There’s tens or even hundreds of variations of press ups that can be done to focus on particular upper body muscle groups or different areas of fitness such as explosiveness or strength.

At North Wales Chinese Kickboxing, we regularly complete sets of press ups with the hands underneath the shoulders and elbows tucked in, to primarily target the triceps, as well as pumped press ups to build power, down and hold press ups to improve isometric strength, clap press ups to make our students more explosive…you get the picture! Press ups are a phenomenally adaptive exercise and a great tool for improving all areas of fitness.

Squat Thrusts

Squat thrusts are a full body exercise that may feel horrible to do, but the temporary pain is well worth it! Starting with your hands under your shoulders in a squat position, you’ll kick your feet back to a press up plank and then launch them back to the squat you started in. That’s one…

You can choose to complete multiple sets and repetitions or set a timer and do as many repetitions as possible in that time. The possibilities are endless, but the facts are that squat thrusts will make you more explosive and have a huge positive impact on your muscular and cardiovascular endurance. And just like press ups, you can drop down to the ground and do them anytime, anywhere, with no equipment required.

One of the most impressive benefits of completing sets of squat thrusts regularly is the effect it’ll have on your metabolism. Because of the amount of oxygen needed to repeatedly perform squat thrusts at an efficient level, your body will go through a process called excess post-exercise consumption, or EPOC. To put it simply, your body will work extremely hard for at least 16-24 hours after you finish exercising to restore the levels of oxygen that have been used, which means the amount of calories your body burns for that period of time will be much greater. So if you come to a Monday night session at North Wales Chinese Kickboxing and finish the multiple squat thrusts we throw at you, your calorie expenditure will be soaring until Tuesday night at the very least. Bang for your buck!

Tuck Jumps

Tuck jumps are a vertical jumps where your knees are raised to chest level, before landing on the balls of the feet with control. Like squat thrusts, tuck jumps are an explosive exercise which are performed in sets of repetitions or timed sets.

There’s a whole lot to like about the mighty tuck jump; they work pretty much every muscle in the body, from the calves to your core, and help to build a level of power which can be translated across to kickboxing extremely well. If you want to punch faster and kick harder, you can do a lot worse than practicing tuck jumps regularly!

We love a tuck jump (or 10!) at North Wales Chinese Kickboxing, and regularly incorporate them into our warm ups and conditioning drills at our sessions. They work all of the muscles required to improve our striking, blocking and evasion drills, they help provide massive gains in core strength which is hugely important for a martial artist, and they put cardiovascular fitness to the test by massively increasing your heart and respiration rates.

So How Do I Include These In My Sessions?

Give the below routine a try, using the three exercises listed above. For beginners, this is a solid session which you can do 2-3 times a week and will take around 10-15 minutes to finish. For those who are experienced with their training, the below can be used as a warm up for weight training sessions, or as a stand-alone program to complement your training at North Wales Chinese Kickboxing on a Monday night!

5 Tuck Jumps. 5 Press Ups (hands under shoulders, elbows tight in). Squat Thrusts for 30 seconds.

Complete the set as quickly as possible and then rest for 45 seconds. Repeat for 5-10 sets, depending on your fitness level and whether you have other training sessions before or after this routine.