Bolinger KickBoxing: The Complete Training Manual

Scott Bolinger is the founder of the Warrior Rage Kickboxing Style which was later changed to Bolinger Kickboxing. I’ll start off this book with an introduction of myself, my experiences and hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of what it takes to be a successful fighter and/or coach whether it be for karate, tae kwon do , kickboxing, boxing, MMA or just to enhancing other sports by creating tone, flexibility and good hand/eye coordination. A lot of the explanations or examples in this book are structured as a coach talking to a student.

    While I was growing up, as a kid I did have many interests in different sports. My first sport was base ball, Jazz, Tap and gymnastics. My grandmother Marry Kate Morris was a dance instructor. She had masters in dance and she instructed myself and my sisters in tap and gymnastics. My mother always kept us kids business with sports. At About 7th grade I started weight lifting. My father who was the 1965 Mr. Nebraska taught me the proper way to lift weights. Then 8th and 9th grade I participated in wrestling. I started using martial arts weapons when I was 15. The main weapons that I practiced with were throwing stars and nunchakus. I didn’t get enrolled in a martial arts school until I was 16 years old. And martial arts came very natural to me. With the combination of weight lifting and martial arts, it made me a faster and more powerful fighter. I was able to see a punch beginning to happen and pop up a sidekick or roundhouse kick faster than most people can throw a punch. The first art I studied was Shotokan Karate. I studied that for about 7 months, then went to just training myself for quite a while. I also studied Tae-kwon-Do, Kenpo, Jukaido, Boxing and Chinese KickBoxing from various schools. But my primary art was always Shotokan.

    I started competing in point tournament fights after I received my orange belt in Shotokan. I did try a few tournaments competing with weapons, kata and kumite, but I just found that for myself, Kumite was my expertise. I was more comfortable with kumite (fighting), because I was able to be zoned out so the crowd never bothered me, but when I did weapons or form I was always a little nervous.

    One of the things that helped me in my fighting skills is that I had 5 buddies that I always trained and sparred with about every day. I believe in your development as a fighter, having one or more training partners would be a big help. That way you are not just doing the standard 2-day work out per week. To be better than the best, you have to go above and beyond your standard workout.

    In 1987 I won the Paha Sapa Championships out of Rapid City, SD. Which back then was a pretty big tournament. Also in 1987 I went on to win an open Tae Kwan Do tournament in Scottsbluff, then shortly after that I joined the Airforce and spent some time in Germany and competed in a few tournaments there. When I competed in Germany, that was the first time I ever lost a match. I lost 2 matches over there. But it was in 1988 that I eventually started writing this book. Jotting down what I learned, what extra training I did to make me such a good fighter. Basically going through my personal inventory of what I did to become a good fighter and what I was missing in my training then and worked on getting back on track. Creating this book gave me a reference guide to fall back on so I didn’t forget training techniques and make it easier to pass my knowledge to others. I was honorably discharged from the AirForce in 1990. Then I decide to do a try one in the Army National Guards. After that I got a job working at a manufacturing plant, which was pretty much a dead end job for about 9 years. In that time frame, I hardly ever trained.

    In the year of 2000 I had a change in jobs and started working for the YMCA. At that time I started back into training regularly as well as getting back to writing in my book. Working at the YMCA, I supervised basketball and volleyball. I started getting into shape again and eventually took on a couple of students to train in karate. With the extra time on my hands I also diversified some income investing into stocks and rental property. The rental property did all right for a couple of years. It created the extra income to support some of my training needs. The stocks, most of them did so bad I’d rather not talk about that..lol… But sometimes you gotta have a sense of humor about investments. The investment property did pretty well and it diversified into a property preservations. From the many years of doing that, I was able to write another book on property management.

    In 2002 I expanded my training and had my training sessions more open rather than just personal training. That kicked up my students to about 20 kids. And at that time we were training outdoors. So when it started getting into the winter months, I had to shut down. Having to do that, I started on my quest to learn how to start up a Boxing and Kickboxing school. I started raising money to buy a building. I went through a controversy on weather filing for for-profit or non-profit. I finally decided to go with the non-profit organization and got my non-profit status in Dec 2002 and reopened to start training in January 2003 and created the boxing and kickboxing school called the “Warrior Rage Civic Center,” with my style of fighting called “WarriorRage KickBoxing”. During that break time I also structured the katas to fit my own personal style of fighting. As a rule of thumb, practicing your katas on a daily bases will create better focus and enhance your fighting ability. Through a persistent effort I found someone to donate the use of their building and I also took on 2 volunteer coaches. We set up a training schedule for the boxers and kickboxers. At that time I found a pretty big interest in the boxing techniques and training and started incorporating that into my kickboxing style and it worked extremely well. I got a real kick out of seeing my fighters change, and grow into mature respectable fighters and athletes.  

    Looking back at the two losses in German, I guess I’m still a little pissed about that. But I also think, if I wouldn’t have had the loss, that maybe I wouldn’t have wrote this book and maybe I wouldn’t have grown into such a good coach.

    The school I ran on 1st in Box Butte in Alliance lasted for about 6 or 7 months, and then I closed it down do to the owner of the building wasn’t someone I’d have associate with the kids I train. She freeked out and yelled at my students. Later I found out that he and her son was dealing coke. So, for the safety of the kids I closed it down to look for another place. But, I continued training out of my home, then in January 2003, opened up a gym in Chadron with some help from Joe Simmons, who also ran the Native American Center in Chadron. I met him when I was on the board for a youth club and campaigning for a City Council spot. At close to the same time frame I expanded the school and started teaching at the Pine Ridge Job Corps. There was about 50 kids training with me all the time. I Ran that for about a year, then when the Job Corps changed the athletics coordinator position, they got rid of the boxing program. I then moved to 507 Niobrara in Alliance and from there, I was able to set up a better training program. The business started expanding well, I than set up a website at www.warriorrage.com to help with promotions and keep track of events for all martial arts styles which would include kickboxing, boxing, karate, tae kwon do …etc. MMA was growing quickly and I started getting requests to help fighters get ready to compete in that, so I jumped in on that and started training MMA athletes, mainly helping with their stand up game.

    In August 2006 I started up a KickBoxing federation called the “WarriorRage KickBoxing Federation” and had my first fight under the WRKF rules on February 2007 in McCook, NE. I did an exhibition match against Matt Golding out of McCook, NE , who later that year took 1st in the Cornhusker state games in Tae Kwon Do. That exhibition match put me a #1 in the WRKF black belt heavy weight divisions and put Matt as #1 in the mens green/purple belt division. The style of competition that I created for the WRKF was for continuous point sparring competition. This would be similar to international rules, but as a light contact point based system. I expanded another website that describes in details of my federation and it covers the rules and regulations at www.wrkf.us . I kicked off the introduction to this style of competition by working with a promoter out of Wyoming (Cory Williams). Cory ran several pro boxing events, MMA and Muay Thai matches. So I worked with him to do some exhibition and champion ship fights within his federation. As well as working with Josh Usera and putting on some exhibition matches in Rapid City South Dakota at his karate tournaments. This turned out to be a good addition to any event.

    The new place at 507 Niobrara in Alliance is a 8 bedroom home, which gives me enough space to devote rooms for a weight lifting room, bag room and sparring room as well as able to rent rooms out to athletes that want to live at my facility and training every day. This was good for people that want to step up their game and create a future in combat sports. I expanded on the WRKF products, having available, sparring equipment, weapons, shirts and hoodies. I then added an artist to the pay role to help with the designs and added the ability to help other coaches with creating their own training manual or book with the addition of a publishing company called WR Publishing. The WR Publishing Company was created so books could be published at a reasonable price. With the problems I had with the cost of publishing my first book, I figured a lot of coaches or athletes maybe having the same problem getting their books or training manuals published. The cost to publish my first book was going to going to be a general cost plus 15 dollars per picture to edit. I had over 800 pictures. So the price would have been way over budget. So instead of having someone else publish my books, I bought the equipment and started putting together books myself. In 2008 I changed the name of my fighting style from “WarriorRage KickBoxing” to Bolinger Kick-Boxing and Bolinger Boxing.

    In 2008 I started having request to sanction some pro-am fights for Muay Thai, boxing and MMA. So that gave me some incentive to creating a third book on rules and regulations and expand my officials training program. In the officials’ training program that I’m working on, we go over rules and regulations for whatever competition were doing, and then go through a self-defense course. I made it a requirement that both security personnel and officials take the course. The self-defense course I was teaching was to teach different defensive moves and restraints that didn’t consist of any strikes. So if someone got out of hand, everyone would be on the same page and would know what to do and how to help each other. But I had my training programs open to the law enforcement as well. This was a program that I also sent to the Associations of Boxing Commissions when they were getting ready to pass law to regulate MMA to help bring some professionalism to the sport. A lot of the self-defense moves I was teaching are widely taught in different human services programs. I started to do a free seminar 4 times a year that went over just the self-defense part of that book as a promotion for the business. That self-defense and restraint book is also a chapter in this book (ch. 17). I eventually modified that book so that it could be taught for many specialties. Such as to help school teachers defend themselves, or for social service, corrections facilities or law enforcement.

    In 2010 the Mayor of Alliance sold me an old historical building that was pretty worn down. He knew I worked with kids and taught boxing and kickboxing and he didn’t have the time to fix it up. So he sold that to me for a buck. Then I acquired two open lots right beside that was given to me by the “Keep Alliance Beautiful” organization. I had that building for about a year, and then traded that off on an old 24 unit school building on 2 acres with a gym. Unfortunately the guy I got that from failed to mention that there were over $110,000 in liens on the property so I eventually lost the place and went back to conducting private lessons out of the house and back to writing my books. In 2020 I dissolved the wrpublishing and wrkf business and went back to college to get a Bachler’s in Political Science and Criminology and working on a masters in Law.

    One thing my Granddad always said is that if you stay persistent and consistent in your efforts eventually things will come together and it’s the only way you’ll grow a successful business. That is a bit of advice I’ve always lived by. Things don’t grow over night. Stay persistent and consistent and eventually you’ll have a profitable business.