How We Get Through to the Kids Nobody Else Can Reach
Where it came from
Training Cave started in 2017 as an amateur boxing club. I'd been an electrician, then a labourer, then a personal trainer. I wasn't trying to build a youth organisation. I just loved boxing and wanted a gym.
But the kids who came through the door changed that. Kids who'd been suspended. Kids who wouldn't make eye contact. Kids who'd been told "no" so many times they'd stopped asking.
Around five or six years ago, boxing was the reason some schools and councils said no to us. Today we work with more than 20 schools, colleges and PRUs, deliver quality-assured alternative provision, and teach accredited courses, all built around a boxing gym.
That turnaround didn't happen by accident. Over the years, we built a way of working with young people. We just never gave it a name.
Why give it a name
For a long time, the way we work lived in my head and in the heads of a few coaches who'd been with me from the start.
That's a risk. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, would Training Cave keep doing what it does? Would a new coach know why we don't shout at a kid who walks in angry? Would a new school partner understand why we don't expect perfect behaviour in week one?
I want what we've learned to belong to Training Cave, not just to me. Something our staff can learn, our partners can understand, and other people can see working.
So we've called it the Strong for Life Method.
It's about better preparing young people for life through boxing, fitness and alternative education.
Boxing is the tool. It's not the outcome. The outcome is a young person who's strong for life: strong in their body, but also in their confidence, their character and their standards.
The method has five stages.
1. Engage
Every young person who walks into our gym gets the same thing first. Not a rule. Not a warning. A hello.
We call it Connect Before You Correct. A lot of the young people we work with have been corrected their whole lives.
Very few have had an adult take the time to learn their name, find out what they're into, and actually show them how.
With some, there are years of undoing to do before anything else can happen. So we start with trust.
A few things make that possible. A positive atmosphere. Other young people in the room who are doing well, because kids believe other kids more than they'll ever believe adults. And a door that's always open. Not every kid stays. Some drift off for weeks or months.
We never close the door, because if we did, they'd have nowhere to come back to.
2. Develop
Once there's trust, the standards go up. And they're high, because life is.
Boundaries. Structure. Discipline. Turning up on time. Shaking hands. Looking someone in the eye. Respecting your training partner.
We don't expect anyone to meet those standards on day one. They'll get there in time. What matters is that they're moving forward. And if today goes badly, tomorrow's a new day.
Most of this isn't taught on a whiteboard. It's taught in teachable moments: hundreds of small moments in every session where something happens and we use it while it's real.
We also believe in the deep end. Not throwing kids in to sink, but putting them just past where they're comfortable, with someone right next to them. I used to tell one quiet lad to "speak louder" every single session. He hated it. Years later he told me he finally understood why I did it.
3. Lead
You don't become a leader by being told you are one. You become one by doing small things, again and again.
We call them leadership moments. Setting out the kit. Leading the warm-up. Doing a demonstration in front of the group. Helping a younger kid with their stance. Being asked "what do you think?" and having your answer taken seriously.
For a young person who's only ever been told what they're doing wrong, being trusted with something matters more than you'd think.
Over time, this becomes our mentoring loop: Member, Volunteer, Coach, Staff. A young person joins, starts helping with the younger ones, qualifies as a coach, and some end up working for us. Several of our team today started as members.
The kids coming through now see someone who once sat exactly where they're sitting.
4. Educate
You can't be what you've never seen.
A big part of education at Training Cave isn't in a classroom.
It's showing young people what a positive role model looks like up close, every week. Coaches who keep their word. Older members who train hard and treat people right. Business owners who come into the gym and talk about their jobs.
When a young person sees a different life up close, they start to believe it could be theirs.
Alongside that, we deliver accredited courses, and we're now approved to teach maths and English, which we deliver through boxing and fitness. For a young person who's felt like they fail in a classroom, learning somewhere they actually want to be changes everything.
5. Progression
The last stage is the one that matters most: where they go next.
Over the years, young people from our gym have gone into the Navy, into trades like electrical work, air conditioning, bricklaying and mechanics, to college, and through university.
One young person who was once too scared to get on a bus now works in IT. Others have joined our own team and now coach the next lot coming through.
Some of those jobs didn't come from a job centre. They came from our sponsors and gym members, people who'd already seen a young person's character: turning up, working hard, taking a knock and getting back up.
Not every story is a straight line. Some kids wobble, drift and come back. But every one of them leaves stronger than they arrived.
What happens next
Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing each part of the method in more detail, along with the stories behind it.
Every piece of the Strong for Life Method came from a real young person who taught us something, often the hard way.
We'll also be building it into how we train our coaches, how we work with schools and councils, and how we bring business partners into the gym.
If you work with young people and any of this sounds familiar, I'd love to hear from you. If you're a school, a council or a business wondering how to reach the young people who've fallen through the gaps, let's talk.
And if you've ever wondered what happens inside a boxing gym that makes such a difference, come and see for yourself. The door's always open.
This is Training Cave's Strong for Life Method.