This generally does not present a problem as theoretically launching a full power technique to, say, the groin or the knees but pulling it back to skin touch should be no different from doing the same at the face for an experienced karateka.

The year must have been about 1990 or 1991 and we were visiting the UK from our home in Sweden – these visits always included visiting all our old clubs in the UK to keep in touch, to keep up to date with developments in technique and also to share our own developments with our old friends.

I think that we were at the club that Helena and I founded in the UK. It was located in a school hall at a town called Rowner in Hampshire – Kevin had taken over the running of the club when we returned home to Sweden in 1989.

The mats were out and we were spending most of the session practising sparring – focussing more on tactics than technique. I found it great and I really enjoyed catching up with my old sparring buddies and also having ago against people that we hadn’t met before – it was a very stimulating session.

But Helena was having trouble. She was partnered against Kevin who is over 180 cm tall and has a very long reach. Helena is only 154 cm tall and although she has the most powerful kicks I have ever come across in anybody, male or female, she was having great trouble getting inside Kevin’s guard. Kevin is an expert at keeping people inside his own range but holding them outside their own range.

Needless to say, Helena was getting very frustrated at being leisurely picked off by Kevin’s well placed shots. They both started analysing the situation and looking at options from Helena’s angle. In fact, they spent the whole session partnered up and working out tactical entry techniques for a small person opposing a larger person.

The last twenty minutes of the session was devoted to each set of partners having a sparring match while everybody else sat around the edge of the mat and watched – Kevin was refereeing.

After each pair had had their turn, there only remained Helena and Kevin. So up they came and squared off – nobody was refereeing.

To begin with, the match looked the way it normally did with Kevin keeping Helena at a distance and picking her off with well placed shots and as usual Helena was getting frustrated.

But Helena’s head was full of new ideas from a couple of hours of tactical development and she set a trap for him by leaving open a very tempting target. Kevin took the bait and Helena used Kevin’s attack as an opportunity to launch herself inside his own guard and released a lightening fast kick aimed at Kevin’s groin.

Kicks of that speed, coming from a shorter person, are very hard to see especially if you are being distracted by a cleverly set trap and Kevin missed the kick entirely and made no attempt at evasion or blocking.

Helena must have pulled the technique but not quite enough as it made contact – everybody saw it and winced. Kevin managed to remain on his feet for a second or two despite the fact that his eyes looked as though they were poking out on stalks. Everyone held their breaths as Kevin finally sank to his knees.

Then one of the spectators from the edge of the mat (yes it was you Chris GaineyJ) suddenly shouted out in his best Wimbledon umpire’s voice: “New balls please!”