Ninjutsu Uncovered

Christmas is coming… So this is Christmas, what have you done, another year over……. Just as the song goes we reflect on what has happened to the year, to me it has been a helter skelter ride for the AFC and me. The year started off at a good pace head down and running into the year getting the scrap pack fighting fit, mixed fortunes for some of the members were Micky “3rd Degree “Burns lost the European title to the great Mark Weir and Paul “The Pit Bull” Gibbs won his fight against a tough oppent trying out the Nsac rules he said he is never going back to semi when you can hit them in the head on the ground! True Pit Bull style! Next up was helping to organise the first trip for Eddie Bravo, Famed leader of 10th Planet Ju-jitsu to Newcastle. The course went amazingly well and of the 60 or so people I was so proud that the AFC made up half of the numbers on the mat! The down side to the seminar, due to being a little kid in the present

New path! Hi there good you found me this is to be my new home for my blog, it is all exciting and new (in other words I have had a few problems sorting this out!) Firstly I would like to thank Sue Warton (Blog editor for Martial News) for helping me stay on the web as she said it would be a shame to stop a good thing! I agree I love doing these blogs and ranting about one thing or another it is like a form of therapy (the other form is punching people!) wait I do both!! Speaking of the latter, no I have not stopped training or given up martial arts (I am not in a cave meditating) as some people think, I just have to teach in a way that does not require me to be in so much pain and discomfort. It will take a while to stop joining in the fun and at the moment some thinks that I love the most I can’t do (like sit ups and groundwork) much to my frustration, but I will work round it and eventually get back to doing everything I like to do but with more of a measure of restraint. People

Sometimes I feel like I am an old cowboy out of the eagles song “Desperado”, a song by Tim Healy I first heard at a Sunday for Sammy gig at the city hall Newcastle ( sing for the Toon!) His heart felt tune brought him and the crowd to tears… (I cried a little); the words are about an old cowboy that should change his ways but is a little reluctant … I really am that cowboy. I have always prided myself on my teaching , I would give 100% to all my classes, masking the pain and the aches and let people kick me , punch me ,wristlock , throw and choke me. I have been my own uchideshi (live in student) for the past 20 years full time teaching and I have trained for over 30 years. The AFC (formally the BBD) started so that we had a place to train that was ours, no one to tell you that you had to leave or we were closed for the holidays or there was badminton on. I wanted a place so that martial arts groups could train under the same roof and not bitch about which art is better than the other!

Sometimes sorry seems to be the hardest word as the song goes but I have a word that seems even harder to say... I AM WRONG. No one wants to be wrong I hate being wrong but on the road to recovery you have to be honest with yourself first... Then you can start to get better…. I will explain, in my mind when I am having a “discussing” with my lovely wife Kerry and I have done something wrong I feel I have to justify the reasons I did the thing we are discussing but in doing that I seem to blame everything and everyone but myself (I find this hard to say!) yet when I am training and someone comes up to me and tells me I could do it this way to make it better I except it with open arms,  go figure. I find at times no matter what you show to people they will ignore it and do what they want to do anyway because they want to ( I think everyone  has that stubborn  side to their character…. God knows I do!)  Sometimes it is hard to be in the wrong, it frustrates me beyond belief. It’s a bit li

The body beautiful has always been high on most people’s list of things they would change about themselves. The Fitness and nutrition industry have made millions of pounds with diets, fitness books , DVDS  and anything they can think of to ‘help ‘ you get the body you want to see in the mirror. Back in the 1950’s a body builder called Reg Parks, a mountain of a man, said that the supplement industry was being looked into by the IRS (taxman of America) due to the amount of money that the industry was yielding at that time; he would have a fit if he saw the industry today.  Mr Parks always trained well, rested well and ate good wholesome food to gain his amazing healthy body , with a mix of protein , carbs and fat. The Fitness Industry is like Disney World compared to a swing set and a slide in the 50’s , and it is easy to get suckered into the easy route of steroids and every supplement  in the world plus tanning injections to finish off that boy band look (girls go for the Barbie on sm

When I was younger ( yes I was ) when ever I looked for a job you had to be qualified and have x amount of years experience but sometimes how do you get the experience if no-one would give you a start? In martial arts I have found you nearly always start at the bottom, white belt, and work your way up through the grades to the coveted black belt, passing through years of training to gain this lofty title. What I have found in some areas is that a black belt seems to be given out like sweets at the end of a grading (after a certain amount of cash has changed hands) but after maybe 2 years do they have the experience that goes with the belt or are they truly going back to the Japanese saying of 1 st dan is the beginning of the journey not the end? I started Ninjutsu in my early teens, never thinking I would become a blackbelt , or do it as my full time ( proper job) because some people always wait for me to finish my sentence as if teaching martial arts  for over 40 hours each week is n

What do you feel like when the theme tune to Rocky is played….I can see you throwing punches out into the air and skipping on your toes, everyone’s mood changes when you hear rocky!  I sometimes sense when the kickboxing class is dropping and feeling tired I will put the rocky theme on and hey presto the class lights up and finishes the session on a high with no signs of stopping; that’s the power of music. Ever since I started training I have used music to help me along; in my solo training as a kid growing up in the 70’s and 80’s I used whatever songs that inspired me. I used to tape things off the TV or radio (top 40, Sunday nights, trying to cut it off before anyone spoke) and if I could find a soundtrack in Woolworths or HMV I would pick songs and so a tape to tape copy (I was a posh kid that had a double cassette, one that would play and the other play and record). My mega mix would then be taken outside and plugged into an extension cable from my shed so that I could put my cass

Come and fight in my back garden for my home made world championship belt! Bring your friends and charge them £30 per ticket! Every e-mail I open and every text I get sent wants fighters to fill a card up!! There are more shows than Fighters; is it a fight show Gold rush, the chance to make it big because there is gold in them there hills? Every weekend there is a fight show or 2 or 7 in one weekend either MMA, K1 kickboxing or Boxing. (Unlicensed ….then you have to licence them before you fight or they take it out of your purse or handbag). Lads you know that can’t fight and have done little or no training apart from hitting the bag at the YMCA as hard as they can while their friends’ video it for 20secs and then upload it on Face book as if it was a UFC production. Promoters are coming out of the woodwork to get people with little or no training to have a fight and bring their clan with them to support their warrior so they can make a pot full of money! Ego is feeding this fire. Ever

Captains log from the sofa.........Day 5 Sitting with my leg on a cushion unable to bend, black and blue stiff and gutted! Life was not always this way..... Wed the 6 th of March I was having a great day teaching classes as normal, many of which used my left leg as a target to practise timing, distance and power kicks (ouch!) The life of a martial arts coach is at most times painful, letting people practise the fighting moves on your body like a cheap whore; only joking! Sometimes people go out of their way to kick you as hard as they can to prove to you they are tough and today was no exception (another day at the office). After teaching 5 classes in a row I quickly changed and made my way to Eldon Square recreation centre to help the smooth running of the Eddie Bravo seminar! The AFC Scrap pack set up the mats and made sure everyone was ok while Chris Mason and I went to find Eddie. The attendance was about 60 people, 27 of them from the AFC - so proud that they all came to learn fr

The UFC was once again coming to Manchester, England, great fights on GMT so a UFC night was on the plans for the Atkin household, but more importantly the UFC coming means Eddie Bravo was in the country! And he was holding a course before the show! Game on……. 10 th Planet Jiu-jitsu was really taking off all over the world; Bushido MMA was the place to be at 11am on Saturday 14 th of November, come hell or high water, I would make it there. After sorting out instructors to cover classes I had arranged to meet Neil Foggin and Paul Holmes in Byker the text said ‘the AFC to meet at the KFC at 7am to see the Twister!’ (Eddie’s nickname taken from one of his many great moves) 7am: BYKER KFC Paul and Neil got there on time and off we went, anyone that has been on a course can tell you the buzz you get from going on them, as Neil put it we were like kids - all excited, laughing and joking. We made good time down the A1 then across onto the M18 then onto the M1; the day was bright and the sky

Have you ever stood to watch a technique and saw the “ instructor” describe in detail how to do it in the real world and you thought to yourself, this is b**l s**t! Unfortunately I have attended many of these so-called self –defence courses when they have been nothing more than an ego boosting fantasy trip for the instructor. Who gives any person that wears a black belt the right to lie to the public about saving their lives? It would be like sending someone that has just played Call of Duty into a real war zone and making them believe they can fight! Over the years that I have trained I have been lucky enough to have been beaten up (in a good way) by the likes of Geoff Thompson, Keith Porter and John Dawson among others; all real fighters that teach real self-defence; like the dog brothers say: “higher conscious through harder contact,“ and take it from me - they did! Lol. There has been many a time I have woken up after a little nap due to this style of training. Some people would

Here we are in January, the month were you start again with the diet and the fitness and the healthy lifestyle. But as I sit here writing this I have an eye infection (that accounts for my bad spelling as I can’t see, lol) my back is sore from the classes I have done all week and I am tired but still need to do my blog - don’t you just love homework at 42! Everyone and their dog has been ill before Christmas, during Christmas or in the New Year so the body has spent most of the time battling infection or the flu or the norovirus  that has been turning young and old into the little possessed girl out of the exorcist; not the swearing just the vomiting!  After a few days of this your body is weak as a kitten and you feel less likely to overindulge in the festive spirit or food mountain. By the time you get yourself pulled around you are back at work as if you have never left and the feeling of Groundhog Day once again starts to play with your mind. It could be that for months the days h