30 Year Overnight Success

30 Year Overnight Success

This month marks 30 years of me being a full-time martial arts coach….. Let that sink in.

30 years. I find that hard to believe myself.

When I started training I never wanted to teach but the universe has always had other plans for me, and sometimes very reluctantly I have have had to listen and do it.

Growing up I had confidence in certain areas and none in others. I have a stutter and that is difficult to teach with, so my confidence in public speaking wasn’t great but having to teach from the age of 18 did a lot to help and working on the doors helped me gain my voice. Now I can even go through the Mcdonalds drive through without stuttering.

Yes, I have taught classes since the age of 18 as there was very few Ninjutsu clubs around and I was asked to open a club in my home town of North shields. The next year I also took over the Newcastle club as the coach had to leave due to work commitments. I was teaching these 2 clubs even though I was not even a blackbelt (what was known then as a group leader). This also meant I had to take on more responsibility as it was up to me to go on training courses to learn new things, then work on them so I could teach them. These were mostly Ninjutsu seminars, as there were so little available black belts then (when I started training in 1983 there was only 4 black belts in Europe). 

After getting my black belt in 1990, my classes were going well but sometimes we could not train in the places we hired because they were messing us around. One was on a collage campus, it was closed at certain times of the year due to terms or other events so I naively looked into renting a space and found a former boxing gym on Gallowgate row in the centre of Newcastle. I signed a lease and started to teach part time while I had a full-time job. 

I would juggle work life balance… who am I kidding I raced around at 100 miles per hour running from work to open the gym, to teach. My weekends were full of teaching, training or going on seminars with sometimes up to 30 members on a bus. Just to add more excitement into the mix, I also started to work on the doors for free technical training and feedback lol.

I am not going into the ins and outs of my 30 years being a full-time coach (as my proper job) but I will give you some observations.

It is hard work and it takes 100% commitment. 

You fall in and out of love with teaching, but the key is to keep going.

Over the years I have clearly seen the difference between a fighter and a martial artist. Fighters only care about the goal of a fight, and their training revolves around this. A martial artist trains to learn and develop, therefore making them more consistent in their training. The most important thing about marital arts is the journey, I understand the thrill of the fight but the training is what it is truly about.

I find it amazing to watch people improve from white to black belt and beyond, to see their confidence going from zero to hero. Watching people develop not just as martial artists but as good humans is the best bit about teaching.

Teaching has taken me around the world, both training and teaching. I have taught all walks of life from multi-millionaires to rehabbing drug offenders that just want to put the bad times behind them. 

I have been bought at one end of the street and sold at the other end, as one of my best friends, and amazing martial artist, Garry says. 

I speak to my idols through martial arts, people who I looked up to in magazines I now get to chat to on courses and help them teach.

Teaching is sometimes lonely as even with your family and friends around you, times are sometimes very hard and you would like to stop the ride. But so many people rely on you for so many different things, you always seem to put others needs in front of your own; so it can be a lonely place. 

You can become a victim of your own success. Even when you have developed a great training team of blackbelts, people will not train if you are not taking the class; it feels like you’re the only bus driver in the bus company.

I have done things that I never thought I would ever do, like write blogs and books, and earn money from it. Martial arts has given me the voice that I didn’t have when I was the little skinny kid with the stutter. 

I have a good presence on social media so I can influence more people hopefully in a good way, not just within martial arts but in life.

I have made my passion my job and created my own career; luckily my wife and daughters are involved with me and I love that (apart from the family meetings about the gym 24/7).

It is true what they say, become self-employed so instead of working 9-5 you can work 24/7.

Myself and Kerry have not only bought our own home (and paid it off), we have extended it and changed it over the years to an amazing home. We have went on amazing life changing holidays. We have given our daughters the best possible life with the money we have worked so hard for, and are so proud of.

We still strive to improve the gym everyday and to offer the best we can to the people that make that hardest step, the one that gets them through the door. 

Kerry and myself have not had the best of health while doing this but our determination and mental toughness has shown us that we can get through most things, and also shown our girls an amazing work ethic when it is so much easier to give up!

I have learned I am a fighter and warrior with a strong moral code, and also a compassion for people. 

I have met and taught thousands of people and hopefully influenced them in a positive fashion, and hopefully made the world better.

There is always more to do at the AFC. 

I will finish with my 2 favourite quotes; 

‘I would rather be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war’

And

‘Big love from the AFC’