I hope that you have all had a very good Christmas and that this year turns out to be a very happy and prosperous one. Thank you all for the many Christmas presents we received, we really appreciated it.

Hasn’t the weather been good this break? I have been fried to a crisp on more that one occasion and on a couple of nights I have even had to sleep standing…..not enough factor 35 I’m afraid.

Back to business though and firstly, I would like to apologise to everyone that there have been occasions that we have not had access to the hall and I have not known about it. I have to pay for the hall in advance at the beginning of each term and I always make a point to find out which days we can’t have.

Over the past year, some have progressed faster than others and that is quite normal. It all depends on how hard you practice, how old you are and how easy you find it to learn new things.

Remember this is not a competition to see who gets to black belt first, you are only there to improve yourselves and to enjoy yourselves. Through our years of training, Helena and I have often remarked upon the fact that those people that have the most difficulty learning, but stick with it, often become the best. God only knows how many times my instructor nearly gave up on me! (“Guss!! Just shut up and do it ok!?”..was the most commonly heard expression at our club).

But we also do have our stars and last term’s perfect attendance badges go to William Crump, Leon Van Berkel and Elye Parata and the outstanding student award for last term goes to Elye Parata. Very well done all of you, your badges can be collected at the beginning of next term.

We have purposely taken on as few new members as possible during the last 3 terms but we will be having a limited intake of new junior members this term. If you know of anyone that is keen to try it out, bring them along. But remember, there will not be many places, so it will be first come first serve. Also, please remember that the minimum age is 7 and we will not be making any exceptions.

We do have plans in the more distant future to open a peewee class for children between 5 and  7 years and we also plan to open an Intermediate class for older kids between 12 and 16 years but that is at least 2 years away.

I want to thank you all for your hard work an support over the last year. Most have you have been here the full year now and I think that, without exception, your progress has been phenomenal.

Congratulations go to Lisa, Jocelyn, Bisha, Natalie, Tony and Walter for getting your orange belts. Also to Claire and Adrian for getting your green belts. Superb work all of you!!

It gets tough from here on in, but also very interesting and you will need to meet up with each other and practice outside of the training sessions. I know that most of you have started doing this but to help you, I am going to distribute a list of Telephone numbers and addresses of all senior members. But I won’t do this without your express permission, so if you want to be included in this list, you have to tell me at the beginning of this term.

Also as Orange belts and above, we will be sparring on occasions. Injuries are not common, but to further minimise the risks, we must insist on mouth guards and karate mitts (absolutely not boxing gloves as these force the thumb into the wrong position). Mouth guards and sparring mitts can be purchased at the Auckland Martial Arts Supplies and nobody will be allowed to spar without them. Also, keep fingernails and toes nails short and please nag me if I forget to do this myself.

As we are taking on new junior members, we are going to have to further split this class in to smaller groups. By having small junior groups, we can keep the discipline safe and maximise the quality of the tuition that they get. I consider any orange belt senior in our club to be sufficiently qualified to teach. I would appreciate volunteers from this group to make a regular commitment to assist in instructing the juniors. When you get to green belt, I regard it as compulsory as I consider teaching to be a very important part of the learning process. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are willing to help.

We will be having a senior barbecue at some stage before the end of the summer. We can discuss a suitable date at the beginning of next term.

Most of you know that I was asked to grade some people from another club to black belt. Part of their grading involved a written test as well as an essay. (we do not have written tests or essays in our syllabus). When I was marking these tests, it became clear to me that they had really gotten the wrong end of the stick as far as my interpretation of Karate philosophy is concerned. I wrote them all a letter that expressed my point of view and I thought that I would end this newsletter by publishing it here. I hope you find it interesting and I welcome any alternative points of view and discussion. See if you can work out what they wrote from my reply;

Karate as a Martial Art (should be called Martial Skill) is not an art. It is about being good at fighting (in order to survive an attack) and absolutely nothing else! Any form of training that does not directly improve a fighting ability has no place in Martial Skills Training.

The “side effects” of becoming good at fighting skills are fitness (and therefore good health) and increased self-confidence. An increased self-confidence leads to an increased self-esteem and therefore an increased sense of contented-ness, often called inner-peace. This is often called spirituality as contented people are less stressed and are usually benevolent.

Those students that train specifically for the spiritual and the health sides of martial arts (without the main focus on fighting) often get very lost and will never achieve their objectives. This can be seen a lot in modern Tai Chi. (Tai Chi is also a fighting skill).

The phrase “Mind, body & spirit work as one” is a cliché that actually has very little meaning. There is nothing intrinsically mystical about Karate (although many many people will tell you differently). Chasing this avenue will also lead you to a dead end and a lot of disappointment. Therefore the concept of Chi or Ki must be taken with a massive pinch of salt. In the course of a journey in martial arts, a student will hear many fantastic claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!!!! No proof (for whatever reason) = bullshit.

For me, the fighting techniques should be taught first and then the Kata should be taught as a means of remembering all these techniques and providing the opportunity to train them on those occasions a training partner is not available.

·         Learning the Katas.

There is nothing intrinsically magical about Kata, they are merely a tool for practise. Most of them were developed by some very un-extraordinary people and have been re-interpreted so many times that most of the original meanings have been lost anyway. This is not important as Martial Arts (skills) is a process and not a product.

Lastly, my 3 golden rules for Martial Arts training are:

·         If you can’t explain it – don’t do it.

·         If you can’t make it work for you – don’t do it.

·         If it doesn’t directly help your fighting – don’t do it.

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I hope you enjoyed reading that and I look forward to seeing you all again next term.

We will also be having a limited intake of new senior members, so if you know of anyone that might be interested, bring them along.

Lots of love,