street boxing by Rodney chico king video review

Every few years the martial arts community is turned on its head by a new idea or training method. The nineties saw the growing acceptance of cross training across the MA scene, possibly the largest upheaval in recent years. While events like the UFC forced martial artists to question the validity of their arts, there was the beginning of a corresponding rise in practitioners questioning the validity of their training methods. As mixed martial arts has evolved it has become clear that combat effectiveness is based less on what you train and more on how you train it.

The martial arts scene has long since dismissed 'sports' like wrestling and boxing as shallow and uncultured. These sports are alike in that they train hard and, most importantly, they train against non-compliant opponents. This non-compliance is the key to combat effectiveness - hard training makes for easy fights.

One group has stood out as the standard-bearers for training realistically - the Straight Blast Gyms, headed up by Matt Thornton, have tried hard to spread the message of 'Alive' training. Straight Blast Gym International's Africa Director Rodney 'Chico' King has been instrumental in the development of the stand up tools taught at Straight Blast Gyms around the world. Hailed by the highly experienced Matt Thornton as the best stand up coach he has ever met, King has developed a system of boxing, called the Crazy Monkey (CM), that is a direct result of the forge that is alive training.

Based around the observation that many students struggle with the defensive aspects of boxing much more than the offensive ones, Crazy Monkey offers students and trainers a simple but stunningly effective structure to overcome this hurdle. Street Boxing 1 and its companion tape, Clinch Boxing 1, cover the basics of the CM as both a defensive and offensive structure.

The tapes themselves.

From the opening sequence on the tapes, in which you see Chico working in a gym setting and sparring with his students, it is obvious that he possesses extremely high level skills in stand up. This adds credibility to all the techniques he offers on the tapes, he knows this area in real depth and is able to recognise the problems people have and has worked to develop a solution that addresses them.

The format for both tapes is almost fly-on-the-wall, showing King teaching classes with his students. These aren't tapes showing flash, esoteric moves to look good, this is the same solid coaching on which Chico bases his class teaching. The techniques shown are fundamentals in the truest sense, simple techniques that have been tested and work very, very quickly. Mixed in with interview footage with Matt Thornton explaining the development of the ideas here and with sparring footage, the tapes offer a great insight into Chico's methods.

The first tape covers Phase 1 of the CM system, the basics of the defence, looking at straight line, hook line, uppercuts and body shots individually and then putting them all together. The main principle of the system is a guard which works even under pressure, easily absorbing and rerouting the force of incoming blows. This allows people new to boxing to keep in range to make their attacks work without taking punishment. It also looks at a series of strikes that work well out of the structure and blend with more widely known boxing techniques. Even as an introduction to CM this tape is an eye opener.

The second tape, covers clinchwork. How to use CM to safely crash in to clinch range and how to control clinch when you get there. Chico breaks this down looking at details of what you should do to tie up effectively and also what you should do to deal with the different reactions of your opponent. A lot of the techniques taught are based on MMA thinking, with attention paid to entries into grappling etc, the thing that stands out though is that Chico likes to hit. This in itself is a refreshing change, a tape that covers techniques that work for MMA that doesn't look for the ground straight away.

Across both tapes Chico teaches principles and details with equal adeptness. The tapes give enough information to make you re-evaluate what you have been doing in your training. Some of it may be details, some of it may be paradigm-shifting new principles, whatever you take from these tapes I'm sure you'll be eager to learn more.

Using it at the gym.

I've been drilling the techniques on these tapes with two groups of students for a couple of weeks and the consensus from everyone has been that these techniques REALLY work. Students who have struggled with stand up are getting new confidence. We are working round after round, drilling the techniques individually, using corner drills (covered on Street Boxing) and working the techniques in sparring - doing this it is very easy to see how quickly people are taking to it as a system. The more we drill it the more I want to know, Chico is producing a more in-depth tape series to be released later this year, I for one will be snapping them up as soon as possible.

Customer Service

Two thumbs up!! I initially contacted Chico having seen a preview of the tapes on the Underground. Chico himself contacted me and we've been chatting since. The tapes arrived within 4 days of me ordering them and are well worth every penny I spent on them.

Would I recommend these tapes? In a heartbeat, whether you are new to the game, come from a grappling heavy background or have a lot of standup experience I'm sure you will get a lot from these tapes. Well thought out, well executed, well taught - they make me wish I was in South Africa.

You can get these by emailing Rodney.

Review by sfukprof 14 September 2003