Ninjutsu Uncovered

In every part of your life you feel different levels of frustration, from when you are a baby to adulthood the level goes up and down, but it is always there in the background. Watching a baby cry for everything it needs, parents then develop a 6 th sense of what the cry means, like decoding the Morse code. As the baby begins to turn over it firstly brings its knee up and flicks it out to create enough momentum to turn over then promptly cries; funny little things. Then once it has learned how to turn over, it starts to work out the mechanics of crawling and is often seen face down in the carpet, sobbing with a face full of snot and tears getting very frustrated with the lack of forward progress. Once crawling has been mastered clinging on to things, like a drunk leaving the pub, the little one makes it to an upright position only to fall over, and then repeat the process several hundred times; quite a work out. When you see your child walk for the first time, it is an amazing exper

How far does £5 go these days; I will answer for you, not far. So, when this comes in an enquiry, both myself and my lovely wife and head of admin Kerry we both point out what you are getting in the children’s clubs. Firstly, we recommend you pay as you go for the first four weeks to see if your little one enjoys it, if they do not join in at first and just watch then you get your money back until they join in the fun. We know children get excited about training and want to buy everything from a t-shirt to gloves in the first few classes, but we try to curb that enthusiasm so that the parents don’t buy everything only for the child to decide after four weeks they don’t want to train anymore; so, the cupboard in your house will be filled with lots of fail sporting endeavours. This might sound mad losing sales and making money off excited children, but we do this to help the parents to make it easier for the children to stay.  If they enjoy the class, we ask them to get an Gi and an

                                           A DATE WITH “THE DARK DESTROYER” When you get a text “Do you want Nigel Benn to teach at the gym? What do you text back? This was the text I got in July and it sent me into a spiral, thoughts of the ex-world boxing champion standing in the ring at the AFC, teaching how he became one of the most exciting fighters in the world was just too good to pass up so I said yes. The Day was to be split into 2 parts; 1.         A masterclass; teaching all the little details of movement of this skilful, powerhouse of a boxer. 2.         A question and answer session; answering all the questions you care to ask about his life and the fights he has had. After discussing the pros and cons of getting an event like this organised, along with the head of admin (my lovely wife Kerry), we started to ask people if they would like to be part of this unique event. We need a lot of money to pay for the day, but Kerry and I went ahead thinking that even

Nobody puts John in the corner? This statement is so true. Life as a cornerman is a massive learning curve just as learning to be a fighter is, but it is a massively underrated part of the martial arts sports scene. I never even thought of being a cornerman because when I was younger I was fighting.   As part of my ninjutsu training we regularly sparred both upright and on the ground so I never thought anything of it. In the olden days because there was not the abundance of interclub or fight shows where people could try out their skill against one another we fought on courses or special weekends and kicked the living shit out of each other thinking it was normal. It was just part of the training; with no gloves, sometimes no gumshield and no cornering help apart from the odd shout of “kill him” from well-meaning bystanders. Back in the day, you could only fight in sport by going to an aba approved boxing club, Thai- boxing club or judo to fight and they never would mix the ar

In this high-tech world of the internet, twitter, Facebook, among other leading ways for the world to communicate things can and do get taken out of context. As I have mentioned before in past blogs, that I do Movember, were this started as a negative and the Atkin family have changed it into a positive. I grow a beard in the month of November in memory of my father that died of cancer when I was 20 so to give back to Macmillan I started to do this. Every day I posted a photo of myself and my growing beard but then I started to get negative comments or remark. So, with the help of Kerry (project manager) Molly (makeup) and Erin (Props) we decided to take these negative comments and give them something to talk about and over by dressing up using famous people films and downright disturbing images to promote movember. Since then we have raised thousands of pounds for charity made people laugh cry or have scarred them for life and turned that negative energy to a positive outcome.

How many hours do you work in a week, is it 20, 30, 40 or more? What do we do with our time when we are not at work; some people come to learn martial arts. I see it as my duty to give 100% to each class I teach whether it is a private class or group. Firstly, I have a system set up in my brain that makes me remember the class I have previously done; It is my shoe shop. In my mind, I run a shoe shop where all my students have a shoe box full of the techniques, and things they have done and are currently doing. As the student comes in for their 1-hour private class my little shop owner pops into the back of the shop to retrieve the box for that student, and we carry on from the last class. I have no idea how my brain does this as I don’t even worry about it not being there when I need it (but I can’t remember what I go upstairs for). This one hour out of everyone’s busy life full of family work dramas and chaos becomes very important and It is my job to make it special. I t

Sitting waiting for a private class to come in and my mind drifts to how many times I have sat on the floor waiting for people to come and learn the arts I teach. My mind drifts back to all the people I have taught in my martial arts career, when I made the leap to teach fulltime, there were very few instructors making a living at doing that unlike today; martial arts have become so like the consumer culture of today;   A toyshop of Martial arts. I think back to when I started the arts, I had to travel all around the world from a very young age (gaining my black belt in Ninjutsu at the age of 20 years old) to gain the knowledge I have, and the 35 years of practise has helped to develop me as an artist and a human being. People nowadays seem to demand that you pamper them, and if you can’t give them (in their eyes) what they want you are thrown away like an old broken toy. I know the development of martial arts have grown, but has it grown into a “pot noodle “culture? Were it b

On April 1 st (no joke) I published my first book. “Ramblings of an AFC coach” and I was full of mixed emotions. For years, I have been writing and publishing blogs and this book is made up of just that, years of writing blogs; painstakingly put into order and tidied up to become a book. If I had told my 14-year-old self I would be good at writing (so modest), and that I would love writing, I would have thought my future self to have turned quite mad; But here I am with a book published by create space self-publishing. I was asked to write by a man involved in the media, to give a martial arts view to the martial arts community and mainstream audience. I was so naive about this, mostly because I had not even thought of myself as someone that could write, never mind gain a following for my blogs. I started off writing about things about Martial Arts, techniques, and fitness related subjects but as I grew with confidence, so did my topics. As I developed over the ye

How many times have you heard this or said this to yourself about life? Sometimes you would even say you went even further back than one step or on a good day your maybe just are treading water; Life is hard. I always try to look on the positive side of life but I am in no way perfect, far from it, I am grumpy, stubborn, sometimes arrogant and go into a huff like a 5-year-old (just ask Kerry). I am always my worst critic, if I feel I have not done a good job, for example D I Y, you read the instructions carefully then set everything out and go through each step trying to construct the item. If one thing is put in upside down or you end up with four screws extra you must start again or have the constant thought that it may fall apart at any time. This could be a metaphor for life, the feeling of starting again makes you feel like you have let yourself or others down in some way. This is you being hard on yourself, but I struggle with this in my life, just as I feel I am getti

What is important to you? What do you want to do? And how to get it! This is a bold statement for my early morning train journey to London but each statement above will affect your life in so many ways. Stephen Covey the author and motivational speaker (an amazing man) said you can order your life to free up space into these four sections. Important/urgent Important/unurgent Unimportant/urgent Unimportant/unurgent These take a little thought to get your head around but I will try to explain Important/urgent Your child gets something stuck in their throat and is choking! This is something that you must deal with straight away, your child’s life depends on it Important/unurgent Your tax return, it is important because you must do it but unless you leave it until the last day you  have time to do it. Unimportant/urgent A ringing phone, it may not be important but it wants you to pick it up. It may be just a PPI cold caller reading

This may mean nothing to you but my life changed with these numbers; my dad died then. This head ache has been following me around for a few weeks now and over the years I have come to expect it, my subconscious is fighting a battle with my conscious not to let me get upset and break down in floods of tears. My heart ache is repeated year after year since my dad’s passing, I try to push it to one side but it just slowly creeps back in like the cancer that killed him. My concentration is not good around the anniversary of his death but this year is special; I am going to be his age when he died. I don’t know if that has bothered anyone else who’s dad or mam died young but is has haunted me for a few years now as it has crept closer and closer to the day. When dad died, he had done so much in his life from being a teddy boy and good amateur boxer, he was so good he got asked to turn pro but became a marine engineer because he had to have a trade to fall back on, as it was not a

Standing waiting in a queue for a night club has to be one of the best times of your life (or is that just me?) I would waiver my doorman privileges unless Kerry made me due to the rain or in need of the loo. If you have ever been a doorman you had an unspoken rule that the nightclub door staff would let in other doorman as a sign of good will and statue in the pub and club social scene, this usually goes with the doorman hand shake, hug (manly one) and the usual mock fighting, things you are not taught on today’s S.I.A badge scheme. Sometimes on a lovely night or if I was with a large group of people, you would go to the back of the queue, because you can’t take the piss out of the door staff and get your 15 closes friends in because your breaking the doorman code. As you would wait in the queue everything would happen and the whole world would pass you by. Firstly, the dodgy fashion parade would take place featuring your select group being the judging panel of Americas nex