Martial Arts and Self-Defence
My first martial art was Judo, starting in 1984 or so. I didn’t realize how great Judo was until later… but this isn’t the place for my ‘everyone should do Judo’ rant. What I got from Judo was the idea that martial arts should be hands-on. You learn Judo by throwing people about and by getting ragged around, and you can tell right away if someone is any good. If you can do a technique against a resisting opponent, you’re good. If you can’t, you’re not. That wasn’t the ‘everyone should do Judo’ rant, but it comes dangerously close. So, moving along….
I did.
Move along that is, for reasons that made sense at the time. To Shotokan Karate, which really did not suit me at all. It was pretty much the opposite approach to Judo – air punching just didn’t seem right to me, even as a kid, and I was right about that. You can’t learn to deliver force by hitting air; you have to hit something solid. And since the purpose of hitting is to deliver force, it follows that you can’t learn to hit by hitting air. That, and general disaffection at the way everyone who paid their fees got their grades no matter how appallingly bad they were, put me off. I departed.
I’m told that there is plenty of good Shotokan out there. I can only comment on the place where I trained. It was the epitome of what I came to call ‘community centre karate’. A worthy physical endeavor maybe – it was certainly hard work at times – but the whole business of stand in lines, punch and kick the air, shout a lot and for a change of pace perform katas where you do the same, only moving around… sorry, not for me.
But enough negativity.
I moved on to JKD/Kickboxing, which was eminently practical. Hitting pads, heavy bags, body-armoured trainers, other students… that was better. I trained there for about four years, after which I had some time out with (not martial arts associated) injury and only dabbled in martial arts other than fencing for a while. I do still use a lot of the JKD stuff. The kickboxing-striking material still works fine for me, and somewhere along the way I’ve learned to use the Wing Chun trapping (which I couldn’t make head nor tail of at the time) when fighting for grips.
I did.
Move along that is, for reasons that made sense at the time. To Shotokan Karate, which really did not suit me at all. It was pretty much the opposite approach to Judo – air punching just didn’t seem right to me, even as a kid, and I was right about that. You can’t learn to deliver force by hitting air; you have to hit something solid. And since the purpose of hitting is to deliver force, it follows that you can’t learn to hit by hitting air. That, and general disaffection at the way everyone who paid their fees got their grades no matter how appallingly bad they were, put me off. I departed.
I’m told that there is plenty of good Shotokan out there. I can only comment on the place where I trained. It was the epitome of what I came to call ‘community centre karate’. A worthy physical endeavor maybe – it was certainly hard work at times – but the whole business of stand in lines, punch and kick the air, shout a lot and for a change of pace perform katas where you do the same, only moving around… sorry, not for me.
But enough negativity.
I moved on to JKD/Kickboxing, which was eminently practical. Hitting pads, heavy bags, body-armoured trainers, other students… that was better. I trained there for about four years, after which I had some time out with (not martial arts associated) injury and only dabbled in martial arts other than fencing for a while. I do still use a lot of the JKD stuff. The kickboxing-striking material still works fine for me, and somewhere along the way I’ve learned to use the Wing Chun trapping (which I couldn’t make head nor tail of at the time) when fighting for grips.
This is Dave Birdsall's Nihon Tai-Jitsu class sometime in early 2003, I think. Early on the emphasis was on application and effectiveness, but by this time the wind was changing. By the end, bowing and tying your belt correctly had displaced the things that attracted most of the original students.
The old university sports centre ('the gym over the pool') is gone now - it's a car park outside the new sports centre.
The old university sports centre ('the gym over the pool') is gone now - it's a car park outside the new sports centre.
Anyway, in 2000, at the same time as we were relaunching the fencing club, an encounter with an old friend led me back to martial arts. I’d never entirely left, but for a long time I’d been doing the odd seminar and just bashing the bags when I wasn’t too broken.
In 2000, I joined the University Ju-Jitsu club, which I found suited me well. All that Judo gave me a big headstart, though much of the grappling stuff was new. I was pretty much a pure striker when I started and I got a lot out of that class. In January 2001 the class was taken over by Dave Birdsall, who began teaching something called Nihon Tai-Jitsu. I'm told it means 'new hand to hand combat system' or something similar.
NTJ (as taught by Dave) was basically a Ju-Jitsu system with more emphasis on Tai Sabaki (Body Management or Body Movement) than much of what is taught as Ju-Jitsu in the UK. The class as it was in 2001 really suited me and I got a lot out of it, though the style and tone changed over time. In 2001 the most important thing was ensuring that the opponent’s attack was dealt with before (or while) trying to counter it, otherwise stated as: ‘getting punched in the face while you’re doing something will make it much more difficult, and is best avoided’.
Things changed over time, and by 2005 the most important thing, according to the instructor, was 'the bow'. We’d gone from an emphasis on practical applications to a much more ‘martial-arty’ class, and there were various other issues too. Underneath the internal politics and the shifted emphasis was a good, solid martial art, and those of us willing to train properly still got a lot out of it. My long-time training partner Rachel Zettle and I were awarded our black belts in March 2005, by which time things in the class had improved a lot.
The improvement was due to the departure of certain people and, ironically, a reduced presence from the instructor. Dave (Birdsall) was at the time gravely ill and heavily medicated, which might explain the general drift in class emphasis. All I know is that the class had been going in a direction which did not suit some of the ‘Faithful’, i.e. those of us who had been involved and had supported Dave since the early days. With him out of the picture, there was really no direction to the class. That suited us; we could just get on with doing what we do without having to deal with politics. Eventually Dave became too ill to even come to the class. He moved to Spain to live with his brother.
There were at the time two NTJ classes, which were quite different from one another. The Billingham class had always been beset by internal politics and sort of wandered along for a good while after Dave left. It was still going, kinda, when Rachel and I left in the summer of 2005. It folded some time later and has been resurrected twice since (once by Ian Earl and once by myself), without lasting success.
In 2000, I joined the University Ju-Jitsu club, which I found suited me well. All that Judo gave me a big headstart, though much of the grappling stuff was new. I was pretty much a pure striker when I started and I got a lot out of that class. In January 2001 the class was taken over by Dave Birdsall, who began teaching something called Nihon Tai-Jitsu. I'm told it means 'new hand to hand combat system' or something similar.
NTJ (as taught by Dave) was basically a Ju-Jitsu system with more emphasis on Tai Sabaki (Body Management or Body Movement) than much of what is taught as Ju-Jitsu in the UK. The class as it was in 2001 really suited me and I got a lot out of it, though the style and tone changed over time. In 2001 the most important thing was ensuring that the opponent’s attack was dealt with before (or while) trying to counter it, otherwise stated as: ‘getting punched in the face while you’re doing something will make it much more difficult, and is best avoided’.
Things changed over time, and by 2005 the most important thing, according to the instructor, was 'the bow'. We’d gone from an emphasis on practical applications to a much more ‘martial-arty’ class, and there were various other issues too. Underneath the internal politics and the shifted emphasis was a good, solid martial art, and those of us willing to train properly still got a lot out of it. My long-time training partner Rachel Zettle and I were awarded our black belts in March 2005, by which time things in the class had improved a lot.
The improvement was due to the departure of certain people and, ironically, a reduced presence from the instructor. Dave (Birdsall) was at the time gravely ill and heavily medicated, which might explain the general drift in class emphasis. All I know is that the class had been going in a direction which did not suit some of the ‘Faithful’, i.e. those of us who had been involved and had supported Dave since the early days. With him out of the picture, there was really no direction to the class. That suited us; we could just get on with doing what we do without having to deal with politics. Eventually Dave became too ill to even come to the class. He moved to Spain to live with his brother.
There were at the time two NTJ classes, which were quite different from one another. The Billingham class had always been beset by internal politics and sort of wandered along for a good while after Dave left. It was still going, kinda, when Rachel and I left in the summer of 2005. It folded some time later and has been resurrected twice since (once by Ian Earl and once by myself), without lasting success.
Later, in the same venue. This is probably around 2008 or so. by then we'd abandoned wearing gi-and-belt, and the system had evolved beyond what Dave Birdsall was teaching.
We were still using the same techniques (there are, after all, only so many ways to make someone fall on his head) but the training ethos had changed to a more realistic approach than NTJ had used in later years. Not getting punched in the face was, once again, more important than 'the bow'.
We were still using the same techniques (there are, after all, only so many ways to make someone fall on his head) but the training ethos had changed to a more realistic approach than NTJ had used in later years. Not getting punched in the face was, once again, more important than 'the bow'.
Dave Turton awarded my 3rd Dan in Combat Ju-Jitsu in 2013.
The Sunderland class had a different character to the Billingham one, and ran more the way Dave had wanted at the start. This was mainly due to the personalities involved; we were outsiders at Billingham but in Sunderland the class ran the way we wanted, i.e. we trained properly and what little of the politics affected us came in from outside. Not long after Dave Birdsall became too ill to teach and I inherited the University Tai-Jitsu class. This then passed through a series of incarnations as a Self-Defence class, a Ju-Jitsu class and finally merged with the Kickboxing class in 2009 or 2010.
Dave’s departure left us with something of a problem. Although we graded properly (and we have the video to prove it), myself and Rachel Zettle, the other ‘survivor’ of the Tai-Jitsu class, were never given certificates for our Tai-Jitsu black belts by Dave Birdsall, and in any case our qualifications came from a small organization that had essentially disintegrated.
Fortunately, an answer was readily available. Back in Easter 2001 I joined the Self-Defence Federation and began training in Stu Cutty’s class. I gained 1st Dan in SDF Modern Street Combat in August 2005, and was also a Level 1 Self-Defence Instructor by the time I inherited the Sunderland class. That permitted me to teach ‘self defence and related arts’ which included the very practical version of Nihon Tai-Jitsu (NTJ) that we had developed.
All the same, it didn’t feel right. Apart from anything else, I couldn’t explain where NTJ came from. It’s nothing to do with the taijitsu taught by the Bujinkan, I know that much. All I knew is that Dave Birdsall taught it to me and it seemed to work well enough. On one level that was enough, but I wanted to ensure a more concrete setup for the benefit of anyone we graded in the future.
What we did was to present our art and how we performed it to Dave Turton of the SDF (and later ASMAA). Dave ratified us as 1st Dans in NTJ (and actually awarded certificates!) but by that time I was teaching something that was a fusion of NTJ and SDF Modern Street Combat. The latter is very heavily Ju-Jitsu based and uses a lot of the same Tai Sabaki, but basically what I was teaching was a fusion of two systems that I held black belts in rather than a clearly defined single system. It was also in danger of drifting so far from NTJ as I was taught it that it wasn’t the same thing any more.
Largely out of respect to Dave Birdsall, who taught us a great deal despite his illness, I decided to stop mangling his NTJ any further and essentially hang it up as it was at that time. Rachel and I re-graded in Combat Ju-Jitsu, a freestyle JJ system that looks a lot like a fusion of NTJ and SDF Modern Street Combat; funny that. We were awarded 1st Dan. I forget the exact date at this moment, but I think it was May 2007. I have since been promoted to 2nd Dan in Combat Ju-Jitsu by Dave Turton, and more recently to 3rd Dan.
Along the way I also helped launch the university Kickboxing class and after the initial coach lost interest I helped keep it running. It made sense to roll the classes into one, which worked for a time, but in 2011 I decided to stand down. Having taught several times a week for literally decades, I decided to get some training time in and handed off the class to one of the assistant instructors.
A while ago the SDF (Self-Defence Federation) expanded to become ASMAA (All-Styles Martial Arts Association) and I was heavily involved with this. I always described myself as 'old-school SDF' however. I was with the SDF more or less from its inception; the ethos and general mentality suited me well. The emphasis on practicality and application struck a chord, and although I’ve never been very excited by grades I ended up collecting a few, along with instructorships, along the way.
I became an SDF Level 1 Self-Defence Instructor in 2004, and worked my way through the specialist programmes – adverse situations, womens’ self defence, children/young people, street weapons and so forth – to become a Master Level Instructor, then an Assessor, then Senior Assessor. Basically that means I was qualified to appoint the people who appoint top-level coaches. There were only about five Senior Assessors in the whole SDF.
My use of the past tense here is deliberate. I am no longer associated with the SDF.
With 20+ years of coaching and other teaching experience, a B.Ed and instructorships in fencing and martial arts, plus multiple black belts, I was the logical choice to develop ASMAA’s coaching programme. The programme seemed promising but eventually stalled after trials. I did run some courses and certified a few coaches under the system,and later I revised the materials as the basis for the BFHS IL2-3 programme.
My involvement with the SDF came to an end in January 2017. As far as I am aware this does not affect qualifications I hold under ASMAA, such as my Dan grades, but I will no longer be running SDF diploma courses. I can and do run BFHS courses however; the BFHS is a completely different organisation with its own area of interest.
