Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Coach / Striking Coach

Gareth has been training martial arts for most of his life. He started out training in Goju-Ryu karate where he obtained the rank of black belt. During this time Gareth also competed in sport karate tournaments where he won numerous North Island and National titles. In this regard he was selected to represent New Zealand at the 1997 Oceania Games.

From there Gareth went on to train in kickboxing where he developed his skills as a fighter. He had a number of fights with all wins coming by way of knock out, earning him the name “Lights Out Lewis”. In just his third fight Gareth fought a former South Pacific Champ who was vastly more experienced having had over 20 fights. Gareth won the fight by KO in the second round. This trend continued with Gareth fighting either more experienced or heavier opponents, even giving away 25kg. In this fifth fight Gareth won the NZ super cruiser weight title.

Gareth has trained with the best in the business, he went to Las Vegas to train with the greats. On this trip he did wrestling drills and sparring with UFC legend Randy Couture, did one on one training with K1 legend Ray Sefo and also did some BJJ with current world champion Robert Drysdale. Including training with these guys he also trained with a number of UFC and IFL fighters (too many to mention). Gareth is also a BJJ purple belt and trains in Freestyle Wrestling.

As the head MMA Coach Gareth will teach you to combine the striking, wrestling and BJJ, creating a true mixed martial artist. He will work with you to develop a fight style to best suit your strengths.

Jonny Bares

Brazilian Ju Jitsu / Ground Coach
Jonny is a BJJ Purple Belt from GSW Wellington and is the Ground Coach for Lockdown MMA. Jonny is a highly successful Grappler having defeated many of the top BJJ and Grappling exponents NZ has to offer at his weight. Jonny has a very exciting style, as well as a very slick submission game. He is always on the offensive forcing his opponent to react and making his opponent play to his game plan.

He brought this same style of fighting in to his MMA debut recently where he won via submission in under a minute. When Jonny gets an opponent to the ground he is looking to either unleash his devastating ground and pound or to manipulate his opponent into submission. From Jonny you will learn submissions, submission defence and how to manipulate your opponent on the ground using body mechanics..

Dave Liow

Wrestling / Conditioning Coach
Dave is a freestyle wrestler at the Linden-Tawa Wrestling Club coached by Scott Laurenson. He has been wrestling for 7 years and is the current North Island 84 kg champion. Dave has also received the award for most scientific wrestler. He placed 3rd at the 2006 NZ Nationals. Dave trained in hapkido for most of his school years and started wrestling after finally figuring out that tackling was far more fun than chasing the rugby ball around the field.

He works as a high-performance sports trainer with a wide variety of athletes. Dave has competed in a number of sports to a high level. He has competed at a national level in soccer, badminton, volleyball, martial arts and was previously an international kayaker. Dave has an extremely high work rate and once he gets hold of someone he will keep working until they are on their back, (and with the calibre of Dave’s take downs it usually doesn’t take long). From Dave you will learn how to control people in the clinch and control people against the cage to work takedowns. Dave will also show you how to defend take downs and how to control people on the ground