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On with the Show

“Roll up, Roll up” he cried, waving his top hat as a crowd of curious villagers gathered around the green. “Come one, come all…” he bellowed, his gypsy eyes wild. His nose was as red as his Ringmaster’s coat. His hair as black as his boots, despite his advancing years. He was of average height but stout and thick set. The Ringmaster had spent his entire life travelling with the Circus. His father was a Ringmaster, as was his grandfather before that. Ordinarily Padfield village green was empty, save for a handful of boys playing football or the locals walking their dogs. Rarely does anything exciting happen. But today was different. Today the green was taken up by a large red and white circus tent, encircled by bowtop wagons and horse drawn carriages. Wooden trailers with bright coloured livery reading ‘Sequins Travelling Circus' stood by stocky, piebald horses with feathered feet. The air was filled with organ music, magic and mystique. “Step right up and see the amazing flying tra...
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Be a bush if you can't be a tree.

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Hello, and greetings to you all. I hope you have been well? It's been over a year since my last blog post, and for that I apologise. I said from the outset that I wouldn't write out of obligation; I would only write when I had something I consider to be of value to share. I have had a very difficult year in terms of my personal, work and family life, and I kind of lost my Dojo-Mojo somewhat.  Laat year (2024) was an amazing year for my martial arts development. I started the year having recently passing my black belt in Karate, I was training twice weekly in Karate and doing a Kickboxing class once weekly. I had some personal training sessions under Raushan Sandhu at IMA in Leeds, and fought in my first Karate competition. I attended a few seminars, started writing a martial arts blog and finished the year by getting first place in a club points sparring tournament. At 48 years old, I felt unstoppable.  This year (2025) started off much the same, and, additionally,...
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The benefits of external training courses

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 I was going to call this entry "The importance of external training courses" but after some deliberation, I decided to replace the word 'importance' with the word 'benefits'. The reason being, if I emphasise that external training courses are important, this implies that if you are not taking part in external training courses/seminars, then you are missing an important part of your martial arts training. This is not necessarily the case. As I have said in previous blog posts, everyone has different reasons for training, everyone has different expectations and different desirable outcomes. If you are happy and content training in one style, at one club, and that satisfies your craving for knowledge, provides you with the training that suits your individual needs, and you have no desire to seek out any further learning, then external training courses/seminars are not important to you. If you have a wider interest in learning different skills, taught...
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The bumpy road to competition training

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For many years I have trained in martial arts, across different styles and disciplines. I've always been drawn to the traditional side of things, the self defence side. Competition has never been of interest to me. Even during the short stint I had at a Kickboxing club in 2013 a small group of us would spar for the last part of the session, but I had no desire to ever compete, at any level, be it a small interclub or regional competition. The only person I've ever been in competition with has been myself. As a cyclist, my long rides have never been about speed, always about taking in the scenery and enjoying the ride. As a runner, running 10km organized runs with my wife, who has a naturally slower pace than me, I prefer to run alongside her for company than to run ahead and get a better time. When taking on the Yorkshire Three Peaks, I waited for the slower members of our group, even though that meant missing our target time of 12 hours. Even when I took part in a ...
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