Thursday, January 22, 2009
Ushers
Ushers dojo.
Well I have jumped forward a few years, I had not trained with Frank for a while, the last time I saw him was on a Tuesday night at a club in a school in Hull. At this point in my life I was married with two children. On the 7TH July 1992 my 34th birthday that night I received a call from one of the clubs black belts.
They told me that Frank had collapsed and died whilst at work that day. I was shocked, Frank was so fit and healthy always looked after himself. I could not believe it. After the funeral we held a meeting to discuss the future. I took on one of Franks clubs in Beverley, it was at a fitness gym called Ushers fitness centre. The gym was run by Ivan and Hilary Usher, Ivan was an amazingly fit man who took most of the fitness classes himself despite his age. A real nice gentleman.
The club had about 6 students at the time, and this was my first commitment to teaching karate in a club. They got a bit of a shock that night put them through the whole system in one night! The following week about 4 turned up so I put together some posters to advertise the club. The advert was put up around the local district and eventually I built up a good number of students mostly children. One day two lads came to the club and asked if they could join, they were about 17 years old. (Shaun and Martin) This was quite rare to get two 17 year olds join a karate club, well it did not happen very often and if it did they usually only came once because the training was quite hard for adults, the kids just got on with it, they were real keen and loved it! After a few months or so Shaun and Martin were getting well in to it and had asked a few of their friends to join in. I also had some students come from one of our other clubs for extra training, so eventually I had a good number of students. At around this time my training and karate was changing quite a lot thanks to meeting Vince Morris. Vince was from Nottingham and ran seminars on Karate kata bunkai and Kyusho jutsu. I use to go over to his dojo once a month with a few students to learn some great karate techniques. I put most of what Vince taught into my Karate teaching and it really took me up to a different level.
We had built up a great club (I say we because the club was a family and the students all had a part to play), with a blend of seriousness and humour in my way of teaching and some great characters in the club the atmosphere was great and we all learned together, I don’t see myself as just a karate teacher, I like to get involved with as much of the class as possible. I must mention the annual Three Peaks walk! Great times taking the club over them small hills. One of the famous comments from a young teenager (James) was that he could **** further! Well who was the one struggling along on the first hill mate!! ? And if you read this James, if you look at the pics i am still going up there at nearly 50!
My thanks go to all those people who trained at Ushers I hope you all are having good times in your lives. Too many names to mention here! but I remember you all.
I could write a book on this club but i have kept it short for now.
Well I have jumped forward a few years, I had not trained with Frank for a while, the last time I saw him was on a Tuesday night at a club in a school in Hull. At this point in my life I was married with two children. On the 7TH July 1992 my 34th birthday that night I received a call from one of the clubs black belts.
They told me that Frank had collapsed and died whilst at work that day. I was shocked, Frank was so fit and healthy always looked after himself. I could not believe it. After the funeral we held a meeting to discuss the future. I took on one of Franks clubs in Beverley, it was at a fitness gym called Ushers fitness centre. The gym was run by Ivan and Hilary Usher, Ivan was an amazingly fit man who took most of the fitness classes himself despite his age. A real nice gentleman.
The club had about 6 students at the time, and this was my first commitment to teaching karate in a club. They got a bit of a shock that night put them through the whole system in one night! The following week about 4 turned up so I put together some posters to advertise the club. The advert was put up around the local district and eventually I built up a good number of students mostly children. One day two lads came to the club and asked if they could join, they were about 17 years old. (Shaun and Martin) This was quite rare to get two 17 year olds join a karate club, well it did not happen very often and if it did they usually only came once because the training was quite hard for adults, the kids just got on with it, they were real keen and loved it! After a few months or so Shaun and Martin were getting well in to it and had asked a few of their friends to join in. I also had some students come from one of our other clubs for extra training, so eventually I had a good number of students. At around this time my training and karate was changing quite a lot thanks to meeting Vince Morris. Vince was from Nottingham and ran seminars on Karate kata bunkai and Kyusho jutsu. I use to go over to his dojo once a month with a few students to learn some great karate techniques. I put most of what Vince taught into my Karate teaching and it really took me up to a different level.
We had built up a great club (I say we because the club was a family and the students all had a part to play), with a blend of seriousness and humour in my way of teaching and some great characters in the club the atmosphere was great and we all learned together, I don’t see myself as just a karate teacher, I like to get involved with as much of the class as possible. I must mention the annual Three Peaks walk! Great times taking the club over them small hills. One of the famous comments from a young teenager (James) was that he could **** further! Well who was the one struggling along on the first hill mate!! ? And if you read this James, if you look at the pics i am still going up there at nearly 50!
My thanks go to all those people who trained at Ushers I hope you all are having good times in your lives. Too many names to mention here! but I remember you all.
I could write a book on this club but i have kept it short for now.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Part three. The aftershock!
So I was now a Black belt in karate, it was a very strange feeling, one that I never expected. I had booked a couple of days off work after the grading so on the Monday morn I went out and bought my new belt from the local sports shop. The next night I stepped into the dojo I would be wearing that belt, the black belt. I did not actually celebrate passing my grade in any fashion, I just carried on with my normal life and did not tell many people that I had passed.
Tuesday night soon came and I was at the dojo early as usual. Some of the judo club were there and congratulated me on passing. Walking into the training area with a new belt on was very strange because after wearing the same brown one for nearly two years it felt very uncomfortable as the new belt was so stiff!! Everyone seemed to be staring at me. We lined up to take the bow I was not sure were to stand, I wanted to get in the line with the rest of the students but Frank told me to line up with him at the front of the class. Then we just got down to a normal training session, I got in line and blasted through everything. I mentioned earlier that it felt very strange being a black belt. It was a feeling of let down, as though it had all finished and it would never be the same. When all your focus has been on achieving one thing for so long when you finally get what you want. It all seems flat and deflated. I must admit it took some getting used to and for a long time I hated being asked to help out teaching. I must have been the worst instructor in the club I’m sure they all dreaded me taking the class for basics! All I wanted to do was train as before.
I started to get bored of the training; it all became a routine I was not learning any more. But one thing that I had a passion for was kata, I loved it. So I decided to get some kata books and start learning some more it took me some time but I managed to get three or four advanced Shotokan kata in my head. The only thing for me to do was to see if I had learned them correctly. One of our students had left us to go and train in Shotokan he was a good friend of mine so I went down to train with him at his club. The instructor was Mick Adams an absolutely top karate man. I thought I was quite good at karate until I met this man! Mick opened my eyes to my approach to karate he was so crisp and powerful in his kata I just had to add this to my karate. I went through the kata that I had picked up out of the books and found that I was not far away in how I had learned them so with a little more hard work I managed to switch my kata style to Shotokan. I relearned all my previous kata in the Shotokan way as well. This was a period of transition in my karate and my personal life. People move on and life changes. For me it would not be a bad thing.
Tuesday night soon came and I was at the dojo early as usual. Some of the judo club were there and congratulated me on passing. Walking into the training area with a new belt on was very strange because after wearing the same brown one for nearly two years it felt very uncomfortable as the new belt was so stiff!! Everyone seemed to be staring at me. We lined up to take the bow I was not sure were to stand, I wanted to get in the line with the rest of the students but Frank told me to line up with him at the front of the class. Then we just got down to a normal training session, I got in line and blasted through everything. I mentioned earlier that it felt very strange being a black belt. It was a feeling of let down, as though it had all finished and it would never be the same. When all your focus has been on achieving one thing for so long when you finally get what you want. It all seems flat and deflated. I must admit it took some getting used to and for a long time I hated being asked to help out teaching. I must have been the worst instructor in the club I’m sure they all dreaded me taking the class for basics! All I wanted to do was train as before.
I started to get bored of the training; it all became a routine I was not learning any more. But one thing that I had a passion for was kata, I loved it. So I decided to get some kata books and start learning some more it took me some time but I managed to get three or four advanced Shotokan kata in my head. The only thing for me to do was to see if I had learned them correctly. One of our students had left us to go and train in Shotokan he was a good friend of mine so I went down to train with him at his club. The instructor was Mick Adams an absolutely top karate man. I thought I was quite good at karate until I met this man! Mick opened my eyes to my approach to karate he was so crisp and powerful in his kata I just had to add this to my karate. I went through the kata that I had picked up out of the books and found that I was not far away in how I had learned them so with a little more hard work I managed to switch my kata style to Shotokan. I relearned all my previous kata in the Shotokan way as well. This was a period of transition in my karate and my personal life. People move on and life changes. For me it would not be a bad thing.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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