The CPT Method: Train Like a Fighter, Move for Life
Combat and Performance Training is Sotir Kichukov's approach to building complete athletes who hit hard, move well and stay healthy long enough to keep improving.
Most people who step onto the mats want two things at once. They want to get genuinely good at something, and they want their body to hold up while they chase it. Sotir Kichukov built Combat and Performance Training, known simply as CPT, around that exact balance.
CPT is the coaching practice Kichukov founded after almost two decades of competing and teaching across three continents. Its promise is refreshingly plain: enhancing performance, prehab, rehab and coaching practical martial arts. Behind that simple line sits a way of training that treats the everyday professional and the serious fighter as the same kind of athlete, just at different points on the same road.
A record that shapes the method
Kichukov, known in the cage as The Trouble, started in martial arts in 2006 at Warrior MMA in his home town of Pomorie on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. By 2008 he was a Bulgarian kickboxing champion, reportedly at only his second competition. He turned professional in mixed martial arts in 2009, won the Max Fight bantamweight title, and became recognised as the first Bulgarian to compete in ONE Championship. He has fought and coached in Bulgaria, in Vietnam at Saigon Sports Club, and now in Melbourne, where he coaches at Immersion Mixed Martial Arts.
By his own framing that adds up to 31 professional fights across three continents and more than 19 years of coaching experience. He also points to the Tapology rankings, where he lists himself as the flyweight with the highest record in Australia and New Zealand. Those miles matter here, because the CPT method is not theory. It is the distilled version of what kept him competing at a high level for so long.
The pieces that work together
CPT follows the same promise that guides everything Kichukov teaches: performance, prehab, rehab and practical martial arts. In the gym that shows up as a handful of priorities, each one meant to support the others rather than stand alone.
Movement mechanics
Good technique starts with how a body actually moves. Kichukov coaches movement mechanics first, the footwork, the hip rotation, the way force travels from the floor through a strike or a takedown. Clean mechanics make everything else more efficient, and they take load off the joints that tend to complain later.
Fight IQ
Skill without decision making is just choreography. A large part of CPT is fight IQ, learning to read a situation, choose the right response and stay composed when the pressure climbs. It is the difference between knowing a technique and knowing when to use it, and it carries over to any tense moment, in sport or out of it.
Prehab and rehab
This is where CPT separates itself from a standard fight gym. Prehab is the work you do before anything breaks, building the strength and mobility that make injuries less likely. Rehab is the careful road back when something has already gone wrong. Kichukov treats staying in the game as a skill of its own, so training builds resilience rather than quietly wearing people down.
Built for everyday people, not only fighters
Plenty of coaches can push a professional. Fewer can take a busy Melbourne parent, a desk worker or a weekend athlete and give them a genuinely complete skill set, striking and grappling, without breaking them in the process. That is the part Kichukov is proud of. He coaches fighters, athletes and everyday professionals with the same care for mechanics, the same attention to fight IQ, and the same insistence on nutrition and recovery.
The values underneath it stay consistent: readiness and always being prepared, resilience through setbacks, and a complete, balanced game rather than one flashy weapon. Whether someone wants to compete or simply move well and feel capable, the framework does not change. Only the intensity does.
A certified and considered coach
Kichukov is a certified ACE personal trainer and is studying to become a Corrective Exercise Specialist, which is the formal side of the prehab and rehab work he already lives by. Across CPT he coaches MMA, kickboxing, boxing, wrestling and grappling. The thread that ties it together is practical martial arts, skills that hold up under real pressure, taught by someone who has tested them under real pressure himself.
He runs classes in Melbourne, including an evening session at 6pm, and offers trial sessions for anyone who wants to feel the method rather than read about it. If you have been looking for a coach who cares as much about keeping you healthy as making you dangerous, CPT is worth a visit.
