Coach Jeff Burger

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.

Jeff Burger is as legit as it gets when in comes to martial arts. He has trained around the world for pretty much his whole life as a student and fighter. Knowing martial arts is one thing but mastering the art of teaching is an entirly different skill. Jeff is a black belt in the teaching department as well as a highly skilled fighter. He is also outstanding with kids I’m proud to have trained Muay Thai with him.