Ninjutsu Uncovered

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...