The latest trend in martial arts is for fighters to hire “movement coaches”. They usually have long hair, look a lot like Jesus, and act like they juuuuust finished sucking back their third doobie of the day. Ido Portal has been around for a while, a lot of people have heard of him in various fitness communities, and he’s got a bit of a cult following. He’s trained some different celebrities, and opened up a somewhat more accessible online program where people can pay tons of money to “train” “with him”. We’ll explain why those are in quotes in a few minutes, but first…
Ido Portal approached Conor McGregor when Conor’s star started to rise. He convinced Conor to let him train him in movement. So, they’re doing all sorts of weird and wacky movement exercises together, and basically getting clowned by every other fighter. Conor goes on and on about his movement, and how it is what separates him from other fighters. Movement is obviously important in a fight, but Nate Diaz referred to what these guys do as:
“Playing touch-butt in the park.” – Nate Diaz, on Conor McGregor’s movement training.
Anyways, here’s the story of a guy online who decided to sign up for Ido Portal’s movement classes, and got completely screwed over (in our humble opinions, you can make up your own mind.)
The reddit user who originally posted the review (serveruswhite) has since taken it down, but here are the remnants from the thread along with all of his replies:
- Clients were expected to learn how to edit videos, and to record themselves doing different exercises, then to edit down the videos to much shorter versions, export them, then upload them for Ido. If your computer can’t handle video editing, tough luck.
- After years of being Ido’s student and paying thousands of dollars every few months, this student and never even met Ido or spoken to him.
- The course cost $1000 every 3 months, and this guy took it for years. That’s on him, if he wasn’t happy with it he should have stopped, but the value that clients got for that money was still very low in terms of actual quality and presentation.
- Ido has also taken heat for selling $700 seminars in America and not showing up to any of them, instead sending other teachers. Students felt mislead. (source)
- All of his videos were so poorly organized that one of his students took it upon himself to organize them better, and Ido got really upset at that.
- He bans people from his Facebook page for sharing any information that isn’t his, even if it’s great info.
“I sometimes did movements wrong for 5 weeks before I got corrected.” – Upset former student of Ido’s.
This student also made a website which he has since taken down, but here’s a screenshot:
LOL… that last point. “Nobody will care about you.” Bummer.
Ultimately the consensus seems to be that Ido Portal’s info and courses are decent, but his business practices, ego, and overall presentation leave a lot to be desired.
Disclaimer: We haven’t signed up for Ido’s training and any claims made about his program are coming from people that have tried it and we unsatisfied. There are also plenty of satisfied customers or he wouldn’t be in business anymore. We’re simply passing on the information we’ve come across, if you are interested in taking “movement classes” do your own due diligence before choosing a program.