This year saw some of the best Martial Art instructors from all over the north of England coming together in aid of a very good cause at the Leeds Metropolitan University state of the art sports complex Carnegie.
This was the tenth multi style Martial Art seminar organised by Sensei Sean McHale of Tai Jutsu Leeds, who has the amazing knack of bringing together some the regions finest Martial art instructors from all almost every imaginable style and associations.
I suppose it does help when these seminars are always been held in aid of good causes like this years one which is the Blue bell wood children Hospice in South Yorkshire, this incredible charity , that not only looks after terminally ill children, but who also takes great car of their family members ,which are left behind.
These seminars are always a pleasure to take part in and as a testament to this, as this most recent one will be my seventh such seminar.
The reason I enjoy these so much is that there is always so many different styles on show with forms coming from as far away as Korea, China and Japan, which makes sure that there always is something new to learn.
The instructors at this years seminar not only taught their chosen styles with the greatest of passion and style, but also taught to an incredibly high standard.
I was also surprised at just how open most of the instructors were willing to share their insight and philosophy of how their chosen style of fighting works.
One such instructor Andy Murray of Taekwondo , who taught brilliantly with some of the most extremely practical and powerful punching and kicking techniques, I have ever seen and it also impressed me that he was so open philosophy of how to fight. I thought it was refreshing for an instructor of his calibre to be so forthright. Andy is someone I will definitely be training with again in the future.
Next I trained with Mark Danford of White Rose Aikido, a gentleman who was so good that he has now made me rethink my opinion ,as a practical martial art rather than a sport. Marks approach to Aikido made it highly practical where from one punch he had me flying across the floor in to a untidy mess on more than one occasion. This was totally different from the Aikido I had done before, where I had to offer an arm to my opponent before they could do a technique ! at the time this made it lose its realism to me, but Mark has now changed my mind about practicality of Aikido.
I then moved to ground fighting with Sensei Ian Reynolds a 5th Dan from Taekwondo who for the last seven years has training with Sensei Sean McHale of Tai Jutsu Leeds. I was surprised how much passion Ian had on the ground for a ex Taekwondo guy, who shown some very impressive fast techniques and also some really evil techniques, which he blamed on his friend and instructor Sean McHale.
We then moved mat areas to learn Judo from Gary Don the Television and Radio auction program guy, who turned out to be a excellent Judo practiser. His throws were fast and very smooth ,that had you on the floor before you realised it. Many of the throws came from grapples which he sharply finished off with some highly polished ground techniques.
Next was shotokan Karate with Basil Leesue, a giant of a man, who is the coach to the British JKS squad, his kicks and punches were so powerful that they would have knocked down the side of a house. He was a gentleman who built like a mountain, but moved with great grace, it was a seer pleasure to train with him, I can still remember the pain from his many strikes.
We then moved on to Tai Jutsu with Sensei Sean McHale, a gentleman we were warned of earlier, not because he’s a bad bloke, but because he’s Mr Martial Arts a veteran of many styles, who lives and breathes Martial Art 24 hours a day. He is notorious for his no nonsense style of fighting, which scares the living day lights of most bystanders. We were told that you can always tell when Sean is about to do one of his stints on the mats, as all the other instructors gather together to watch the entertainment, as Sean puts his ukie for the day, which was poor Lewis Steir, who went though hell with some down right evil and painful techniques on numerous occasions. On one such occasion was where Lewis threw a really meaty punch, only to have it blocked with a even meatier double block, which would have been enough for most but not for Sean. He span around in to a very low horse stance and kick Lewis in the stomach with a haft turning kick ,which was just the right amount of power to fold him in half and then within a fraction of a second span round again, this time dispatching Lewis to the ground with a Elbow strike to the shoulder blade, which dropped like a log, to cheers from on looking instructors. It was surprising how many techniques Sean taught us in a mere thirty five minutes and all these techniques turned out to be so simple, but highly effective and deadly.
Later on in the day we had the pleasure of training with sensei Sean again, this time teaching Kobudo. Sean Had brought a mountain of weapons with him and we were given a choice, to pick what weapons we wanted to learn ! We where like children in a sweet shop. Sean explained that we had a choice of what me could learn kata or weapon techniques ! It was obvious , we chose techniques, little did we realise we were picking weapons for our own destruction. Our first choice of weapons was the Yawar Bo/ Kubotan, never did we realise that such a small stick could hurt so much, as it was pushed into parts of my body than I never knew I had and this was the same with the Jo Staff, Bo and Nunchakus. And just as time was about to called to change mats again, Sean had started to showing Ho Ho Jitsu, which is trying up techniques, were the more you resist the more you strangle yourself, which looked highly painful, perhaps even more than the techniques we had done , if that could have been possible ( but lucky we move mats).
During the day there were so many other brilliant instructors teaching such styles as Praying Mantis, Kick Boxing Parkour and many more.