Ninjutsu Uncovered

Most times in my weekly routine of work home life I had to fit in gardening while working around the British weather. You would have to cut your grass on a day off, when it was dry, and as fast as you can so you didn’t get rained on half way through; lockdown changed all that. When lockdown happened there was a frenzy of activity, doing DIY and all the odd jobs you were leaving until you had time and the garden seemed to be on this list. As we got further into the lockdown we realised that if we could not do the garden today due to rain you could do it tomorrow or the next day; it was very odd that we could do this as we were always scheduled in time for the grass cutting or weeding and if you couldn’t do it that day you would properly had to wait a week or so until you got the chance to do it again, so it could be up to two weeks or more for cutting the grass which made it a much harder task. I love being outside in the fresh air so myself and my little sidekick Nev would go for a w...

I loved school, but had some bad experiences in primary school. My worst memory of primary school was waking up on a seat in the yard in the rain after cutting my finger with a balsa knife and passing out! What made matters worse was, the ‘trained’ first aider thought it would be best to put me in a seat in the middle of the yard in the rain to get me to pull around! No wonder I’ve had a problem with needles and passing out ever since. The one that stays with me to this day was the barbaric Friday morning spelling test. It had been building up all week, I was and still am terrible at spellings and it all stems from this poorly organised and executed exercise in humiliation. I have a stutter, I have some degree of control on it now but I suffered badly when I was younger and whenever I had to do a reading exercise I would always be marked down because of this, the problem went hand in hand with my spellings. I love to read and have hundreds of books but it always looked like I couldn’...

Late last year, I was introduced to a lovely lady by the name of Theresa Cave. Sadly, Therea’s son Chris was killed due to knife crime, which prompted her to start a campaign to educate people about the dangers of knives and how we can help the communities of today. She asked me to be part of the First Youth Conference which was held in Redcar; I jumped at the chance to help. The day came and I woke up at 7.15am (damn bladder) sorted out my bag, got petrol and set off for Redcar. It was very windy on the drive down with a massive crosswind, I had just had my jeep fixed so I was crossing my fingers to make it in one piece. I made it down in good time despite the wind and arrived at 9.10am. Once I arrived, I grabbed some coffee, and decided to sit and watch all the people arrive. The conference was held within a community centre, each room dedicated to a workshop which would uniquely inspire and educate young adults. It began in the conference suite, with a panel of guests. The audie...

The best mask I have is what I look like , a lot of people can’t guess what I do for a living and are very surprised when I tell them I am a full-time Martial Arts Coach; they are even more surprised that I worked the doors of Tynemouth and Whitley Bay for over 13 years. When I started working the doors I was about 10 ½ stone so everyone wanted to fight me lol I fell into door work by accident because I was training and teaching. I was asked to work in Tynemouth by a fellow martial artist called Phil Toby, a monster of a grappler and a seasoned fighter. Before starting working the door I had worked some venues that had parties, but even when I was not working whenever I was at a party people would say “ John will sort it out if there is trouble” So I had done a lot of voluntary work stopping fights at weddings, birthday parties and nights out. I was out drinking one Sunday night and had just getting my first pint of Guinness when Phil came into the pub and said would I start working...

The Alarm goes off and little Nev licks my feet just in case I fall back to sleep, I get up put some clothes on and take him for his morning walk full of sniffing things, weeing and a poop bag full of last nights tea, then meet Kerry at the car so she can drive me to work with Nev on my knee. As I get dropped off with Nev wondering where I am going and why he is not allowed to come I go to Gregg’s for a sausage sandwich and a full fat coffee (naughty) and head to the gym. In the meantime Kerry drives home to wake the girls up, feed them breakfast and heads to the gym to work their magic behind the desk for the day. When I get to the gym I check the toilets and fill the water boiler so all the coaches can be kept hydrated with coffee and tea so they can teach effectively. I teach a couple of private classes which are like gold dust (as most of them are) some classes have trained at the same time on the same day for over 10-15 years and for this I am truly humbled and honoured that they...

“I still don’t feel great!” I kept saying a few weeks after I had what I thought was a viral infection. I need to get this sorted. A few weeks earlier on the Tuesday morning I was walking over the bridge coming from Manors car park like I had done a million times before, but this time it was different, I felt like I could not walk well my body just didn’t want to respond; I felt so ill. I made it to the gym and taught a couple of classes then my current class said I should go home. I looked that bad,I had to agree, so I made the call to Kerry. It is so hard to be self employed and not go to work, your body just seems like it goes into your trained response of I am fine, keep working until you fall over. Most times I have Christmas, Easter weekend and one holiday, the same thing year in year out, the only other time is when I injure myself so I can’t physically work or get the flu or viral infection. This is what I thought this was. I had been working hard and trying to hold out unti...

I am sitting here on a Tuesday afternoon after a week and a half of lockdown due to the Coronavirus that has swept from China across the world, and created a worldwide pandemic. Planes are grounded, travel is banned, you have to queue 2 metres apart when you go shopping, people are panic buying food like we are going to war! We are in a way. Some things are getting hard to get, we are restricted on our movements with the government telling us to stay indoors and stay safe. We can only go out for essential food and medication, only one walk per day. I have not seen this in my lifetime ( I am a half century now), people have to stay at home there is no work unless you work for the NHS or food supplies or environmental workers. Being a gym owner we closed on the Wednesday night after both Kerry and I discussed the health risks that would expose people coming to train. We had been washing everything at the gym for about 2 weeks before we closed, but we felt it was safer to close until we...

I love old films, I used to love coming in from school and watching old classics on a Friday, or on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when I was younger. There was nothing better than sitting with your pop, some crisps and sweets just working your way through them as you immersed in the movie. One of my favourite ones was called “Goodbye Mr Chips” it was a tale of a boarding school master that followed his teaching career through from a green as grass teacher right through to the end of his days, it showed generation after generation of children and the dark days of the first world war and the effect on the school. What struck me was as he was dying, he remembered his life and the faces, characters he had taught, and he said it had all gone in a blink of an eye! No truer word has been told. Recently I graded people who are the 4th Generation of black belts, so now I am feeling really old, but what happened? How did this come about when sometimes it feels like no time at all? I now al...

After a bad year health wise I didn’t know if I was going to make this Tai Kai, but my body was getting better and we all had been looking forward to seeing Nagato in action ..and it was slightly cheaper than going to Japan so when the 17th of October rolled around we were excited. Barcelona day 1 We all met at Newcastle airport, a four man team from the AFC consisting of myself , Dave Alan (or big Al for some reason lol) and Rufus. We checked in and went through to the departure lounge after Alan got frisked (he looked dodgy) and we headed for Burger king. We ate the first of many burger kings of the weekend and then boarded the plane and off we went. The flight was uneventful and we landed after two and a half hours to be greeted by wonderful sunshine. We collected our bags and hopped in a taxi to the apartment. On first impressions Barcelona is a beautiful old city with amazing buildings and architecture. When we got out of the taxi Dave phoned the landlady of the apartment we we...

I have taught children’s classes for the last 32 years and they are still some of the best classes to teach in my week, don’t get me wrong they are always challenging but are so rewarding. We take children from the age of 4 and teach them small bite size pieces of martial arts in a half hour class, so that they can take it in easier and retain it so they can show us at grading times. This 4-6 years of age class are called the Terrapins (or tiny terra’s if you forgive the play on words). I love to see them develop from children that won’t pay attention and twirl around when they should be doing a stance, to watch them sit at the head of the class and start and finish the class with perfect Geordie Japanese. As they are taught how to interact with others and in our anti-bullying term what to do if people are not nice to you. They also are taught basic Ninjutsu and groundwork, even breaking down armbars into easy to remember titles such as backpack, horsey and surfer. Then they move in...

Some time ago Kerry and I went on a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland to see John Edward (a spiritual medium) who we have watched for years, read all his books and were so excited to be seeing him in person. He was amazing, inspiring, but he was not the only thing that inspired us on the trip. We were walking around this lovely city of Edinburgh, when we came across Jenner’s, an amazing shop, which had been there for over 170 years. It was a very expensive shop with a lot of high-end items but as we walked around comparing high prices with even higher prices, we saw an hourglass that would be perfect for our living room and was even more shocked to see the £22 price tag; result. So, we bought it as a memento of our travels. It made me think as I watched the sand slip down from the top to the bottom, like a metaphor for life. You could watch the time slip away as everyone dies sooner or later! It might have made me think a lot after hearing the readings of John Edwards as he gave messages fr...

You must have heard this quietly under someone’s breathe “he’s loaded!” Is this remark supposed to impress me or make me act in a certain way? Respect to me has nothing to do with money, but so many of things in life seem to cater for money or money is used to gain respect from others. People seem to change their attitude towards others when they think they have money or don’t have it. This has been irritating me for a while know and I want to get it off my chest. I have watched people completely change the way they act around people if they think they have money, or if they don’t, I am going to use an example. One rainy day long before Kerry and I had the girls we would go for walks along the coast, so when Kerry’s walking got worse, I would push her in the wheelchair and for anyone that has had to do that, you get very hot very quickly. So, one day on are walk we stumbled on a military fair at the park hotel, so we went in. It had been raining so standing dripping with water pooli...

We have always taught our girls and all of the children at the AFC to not tolerate bullies, what are the signs to look out for when you think you are being bullied. So, we were very surprised when Erin came in complaining about girls in her year, this is a group of so-called IT girls that think they have some sort of rule over the other kids in the year. When you drift your mind back to your school days, you all knew who the girls were, and even now you will still put them in that category, times have not changed. I was a quiet lad that loved school, I would run straight across the field to get a quick game of tennis football before the bell, I enjoyed my classes, football again at break and loved school dinners. But because I was quiet I became the target of bullies, they would do the usual things, throw insults and other things at me, shove me and generally try to break my fun-loving spirit for their own enjoyment; It gave them a feeling of power over people. They tried to rule by ...

When do we lose our full range of motion? Watch a baby/toddler move, see how natural their movements are, they crawl, turnover, squat and are generally bendy little things. I love studying how they move, balance, and strengthen themselves via movement. As a child we take movement for granted when we run around skip and climb on things, we don’t notice that we start stiffing up and become less agile, we lose our range of motion. As an example, I can go through a stretch routine with my kickboxing class and I can hear them stretch, with lots of grunts, puffing and panting that go along with the movements like a commentary of stretching. I love it when people start encouraging themselves to stretch and talk themselves through the movement “Come on Julie you can do it!” it is like your inner coach coming out and spurring you on while you stretch. This inner coach gets annoyed at you if you can’t “What you can’t touch your toes?” then starts to guide you to the task in hand “Just a little ...

“My shoulder hurts, they hit hard, my fingers hurt, they hit me” all these statements and many more is what I hear as I walk around teaching martial arts. Pad work is a skill that a lot of people overlook they think of it as being put in goal when you were a kid when the two pots and in rule was applied. Meaning when you scored two goals you went into goal until someone scored two goals past you; funny how bad you get as a goal keeper when it is your turn in the nets. Then you are back out pretending to be Keegan or Shearer. Most people want to do the punching side of pad work but as you progress in your martial arts you will somehow end up holding pads. Pad work is used in many arts to develop technique, power, timing, rhythm and focus, sometimes pads are even referred to as focus mitts as that is what you must do, focus. The role as pad man is to make the puncher get better, smoother, and more accurate with their striking so that they can strike better when sparring and fighting. Th...

Bob Sykes and Paul Barnett of M.A.I magazine have run the Martial Arts show for the past 3 years, but this year was going to be the best ever, and I wanted to be there. Bill Wallace, Benny the Jet Urquidez and Brian Jacks were all going to be there along with a host of amazing martial artists at the Doncaster Dome. I was gearing up and getting myself excited, like a kid going to Disney world when disaster struck; my knee locked out. I have had a reoccurring injury where my knee sprains and locks out, so I can’t bend it, walk well and definitely not train well. I had tried to ignore the pain for a little while doing all my stretches and even put my knee brace on to try and keep my knee from locking, but one week before the show my knee locked out at the end of my Saturday classes to the point that I could not remove my brace. Sunday was no fun at all I had rest it, ice it, and then have a hot water bottle on it overnight along with pain killers, and anti-inflammatory tablets which I pr...

Standing in the gym was as surreal moment that was shattered by the 15/16 years old I was just about to teach boxing to! I had stood in that very same spot not knowing the path my life would take until I returned to this place, this school, and this gym. When I was 15 I had already begun my martial arts journey, travelling to Darlington every Thursday to train for 3 hours and then practice what I learned in this gym of St Anselms RC high school (now St. Thomas More) at the youth club every Monday and Wednesday evening. Myself and my friend Peter would get the mats out, roll, do wristlocks or try to remember Kamae No Kata and run around like real ninjas. My life was already planned, I was going in the Junior leader, I had passed the tests and was due to go in a week after finishing school. I did this, but during a particular hard assault course I tore my pectoral muscles; After being in hospital in Aldershot I was medically discharged due to my age but would be allowed to return at a l...

In the back of every comic book I read as a kid they had this slogan with a set of pictures showing a bully kicking sand in the face of a scrawny lad. Then the next picture he found the miracle chest expander and in no time at all he was a muscular hunk with two girls on his arm, with the bully gobsmacked in the background; as a teenager I fell for this completely. Few people know I was born six weeks premature and had to be fed every two hours (somethings never change), and I was always skinny as a rake, this was mainly due to me running everywhere playing football and riding my bike (for the younger readers please google these activities). As I got into my teens I was still very thin but wanted to put on muscle, even at school I used the multi gym that much that my teacher Mr Dowson asked to set up a new one. I had a pack run I would do every Sunday, once I got my pack on I would run about 3 -4 miles, and then have a bag work out, with every song on my cassette player going along wi...