Sep 27 Martial Arts Illustrated Interview with Gavin King

How does one make that journey from nightclub doorman and MMA practitioner to healer, therapist and Tai Chi teacher?  Gavin King has made that journey and is about to open his own full time kwoon in Hockley Essex.  In this article he tells about his training, injuries and healing, how MAI’s ‘Beyond Technique’ Steve Rowe sat him on his backside with the power of Tai Chi and how he helped Steve recover after his surgery and became an ‘inside the door’ student and Holistic Martial Artist…

MAI            Hi Gavin, thanks for taking the time out to chat with us.  Our readers will probably know you from your ‘Martial Therapist’ articles, but could we start off by finding out where you grew up and a bit about yourself…

GK            I’m Essex born and bred and began my Martial Arts training when I was nine.  Throughout my childhood and into my early twenties I studied an art called Go So Kempo under my father Sensei John King and achieved my nidan when I was 23.  At 16 I also began studying kickboxing with Pat O’Keeffe.  In my early 20’s I started to work on the doors of the pubs and clubs in Southend on Sea, and moved away from the traditional arts to explore the ‘reality’ genre of Martial Arts training.  Eventually I ran a small club called ‘Combat Arena’ focussing on grappling, boxing and more mixed Martial Arts style training.

The training at Combat Arena was extremely physical and I began to accumulate numerous long-term injuries that led me to be recommended to a local Shiatsu practitioner.  At the time, like most people, I didn’t have a clue what Shiatsu was having been told it was ‘Japanese physiotherapy’, but I was in pain, so I booked a treatment.  After one session my pain disappeared.  The treatment was so effective that I rang the practitioner to get the number of a Shiatsu school to study with.  My treatment was on the Friday and by the Monday I had booked myself on the 3 and half-year course.

Shiatsu opened my eyes to the world of health and therapy and this coincided fairly closely with a private lesson with Sifu Steve Rowe of Shi Kon Martial Arts.  That one lesson with Steve was a catalyst that transformed my life to the point where I am now a Tai Chi and Kung Fu instructor just about to open my own full time kwoon (kung fu school)…

MAI            From doorwork and reality training to Shiatsu and Tai Chi seems a bit of a leap.  How did one lesson with Steve bring about that change?

GK            I’d been talking with Steve via email and the discussion forum on his website about some of the principles he uses in his teaching and was commenting how I thought that they were similar to the methods I taught in my own club.  As the conversation progressed I remained unconvinced of any difference and Steve suggested that I popped across for a lesson.  When I arrived Steve patiently listened to me waffle on about the stuff I taught and where I’d used it – thinking back on it he must have been bored to tears.  Eventually Steve said that it would probably be easier for him to show me rather than explain.  He asked me to throw a punch at him and he’d demonstrate.  I did and ended up skimming across the floor on my behind with a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ look on my face.  Picking myself up off the floor I asked directly, “How do I learn how to do that?” and was told that I needed to learn Tai Chi. So that’s exactly what I decided to do.

MAI            So your decision to study both Shiatsu and Tai Chi seem to be fairly spur of the moment choices?

GK            I think we all have points in our life when we are presented with opportunities that can totally transform our lives.  With both Shiatsu and Tai Chi I knew intuitively that they were what I was meant to do.  Neither came with a sales pitch but my initial experiences of both were so profoundly powerful that I couldn’t pass them up.

MAI            Did you continue to work the doors and run your club after this point?

GK            Of course.  It would be very easy to romanticise things and say that these powerful events immediately transformed me into some sort sage-like Tai Chi guru but real life doesn’t work like that.  My Shiatsu took me 3 and half years of study to become qualified to practice professionally and the deeper into Tai Chi I delve, the more I realise there is to understand.  But it is undeniable that they altered the direction of my life to the point where I’d eventually stop working the doors and close down my club.

MAI            Perhaps you could explain how you began to make the shift to the point where you are now?

GK            My club at the time was made up of doormen and experienced Martial Artists and the training was tough.  After a couple of Shiatsu treatments I’d reached the point of being virtually injury free and had no intentions of going back to the same type of training, so I began to look at the aspects of my training that were causing the problems.  This really was the start to of my ‘mindful’ training.  Through Shiatsu my knowledge of anatomy and physiology began to increase, as did my ability to engage therapeutically with the body.  Shiatsu showed me the relationship between the body and the mind.  The guys I was training with became my Shiatsu guinea pigs and we slowly but surely made our training more efficient and healthy.

MAI            How did your approach to training change?

GK            Firstly I realised that not being able to move for 3 days after a training session was a bad thing, as were broken noses and training to the point of vomiting.  My approach shifted from mindless ‘beasting’ sessions to focussing on a more therapeutic approach.  I began to look at yoga, conditioning and high intensity interval training and also dropped any exercises that didn’t directly correlate to combat.  This then lead to researching sports and athletic development and the concept of functional application specific training.

MAI            Functional application specific training?

GK            It’s the idea that your training should be appropriate for the application you wish to do.  For example some Martial Artists pride themselves on being able to 500 squats or a 1000 push-ups but are usually extremely vague about the application of the exercise – usually giving an ambiguous answer such as “they’ll make your arms and legs strong”.  I began to question ‘how’ and ‘why’ and found very few satisfactory answers.  This was the point I started to become interested in Mixed Martial Arts and the training methods fighters use to condition themselves.  An MMA fighter will look at the attributes they need and then plan routines and exercises to achieve set goals – in much the same way a weightlifter or athlete will.  Everything you do as a Martial Artist should develop you as a Martial Artist.  The concept of functional training is taken to another level entirely in Tai Chi.

MAI            Many would argue that there is a world of difference between MMA and Tai Chi. What impact did your Tai Chi have on the more MMA orientated training you were doing?

GK            I would admit that fighting in a cage on the surface appears to be a world away from Tai Chi, but now I would say that MMA, like any martial art, is purely an application of the human body.  What Tai Chi became for me was a blueprint for martial movement.  It is without a doubt the most comprehensive system for understanding biomechanics there is.  The emotional and psychological development taught within Tai Chi will train the mind for Martial Arts far more precisely than anything I’ve seen in sports psychology, NLP and the other disciplines Martial Artists are naturally being drawn too.  Strength of mind, focussing intent and the efficient use of the body are the cornerstones of a fighter’s skill and Tai Chi trains these traits like no other art I’ve studied.

What I found was that my personal training was becoming almost exclusively Tai Chi based and that I began to improve noticeably compared with my training partners.  I was more powerful, stronger and faster than I had ever been and I was finding it increasingly hard to pass the information from Tai Chi to my students without actually teaching them Tai Chi. I started to become very disillusioned with my teaching and club.

That summer I attended my first Shi Kon summer camp in the Czech Republic.  I was totally immersed in Tai Chi for a week and came back knowing that there was nothing else I wanted to do.  I discussed the matter with Steve and he’d suggested that I changed my club over to the Shi Kon Tai Chi system and that’s exactly what I did.

MAI            So how did a club of doorman and Martial Artists used to MMA training take the switch over to Tai Chi?

GK            Initially surprisingly well.  By that point Tai Chi was virtually all I spoke about and the guys were intrigued, but over the next month or so my classes began to ‘thin’ rather quickly.  It’s hardly surprising really – you take a bunch of young guys used to sparring, grappling and hitting pads and then ask them to move really slowly and try and convince them it will make them better fighters – it is a bit of a hard sell. I’d given up doorwork by this point and was planning on becoming a Shiatsu practitioner; to them I was probably one step away from growing a ponytail and joining a commune!

MAI            How did loosing your club effect you?

GK            I wouldn’t really say I lost my club I’d just taken a different direction that most of my students didn’t want to follow (laughs).  In all honesty it was a relief, I was struggling to teach my old material and knew that in order to really progress with my Tai Chi I needed to immerse myself in it.  Having to focus on classes that I no longer believed in or wanted to teach was a waste of my time and my student’s time.   Folding Combat Arena and embracing the Shi Kon system liberated me to concentrate on my Tai Chi. This is where my heart truly lay.

MAI            What made you give up doorwork?

GK            There are probably a plethora of reasons but again it was another intuitive decision.  One night I went into work and at some point turned to my head doorman and said “I don’t think I want to do this anymore!” and he half jokingly said, “Well don’t then!” and that was it.  I stuck my badge in a drawer and that chapter of my life was over.  I’d lasted five years on the door without getting hurt or arrested, had picked up a wealth of experience and enough was enough.

MAI            Do you feel Tai Chi and Shiatsu were a factor?

GK            Everything is a factor.  I place a lot of faith in intuition and if something doesn’t feel right I generally won’t do it.  I’d love to say that my direction in life was meticulously planned but with most of things I just go with my gut.  Shiatsu and Tai Chi felt right, doorwork didn’t.  Life is really is that simple sometimes.

MAI            How did your Shiatsu studies fit in with your Tai Chi?

GK            Initially they didn’t.  I began studying both within a few months of each other and was an alien in both worlds.  In my Shiatsu studies I was learning how to promote health in other people and in Tai Chi I was becoming aware of my own wellbeing – it took a few years for the two to meet in the middle.  Both sides though were equally enlightening.

At my Shiatsu school I had the opportunity to study under some great teachers who had experience in many therapeutic disciplines.  Although the heart of my syllabus revolved around oriental medicine and anatomy and physiology, I was also exposed to craniosacral therapy, physiotherapy, osteopathy and acupuncture.

In my Tai Chi studies I was being taught how to increase the awareness and sensitivity of my body and posture.   I was also learning how to diagnose and address the excess tension and stress that I had carried in my body.

For the final year of my Shiatsu studies I had to write a thesis and I desperately wanted to find some way of uniting the eastern and western medical models we were being taught.  My research took me in the direction of the myofascial or soft tissue network of the body.  One thing that always struck me about the eastern approach to health is that it is truly ‘holistic’ and I always found it surprising that most western bodywork disciplines focus on specific body parts or systems.  I started to read a book called ‘Anatomy Trains’ by Tom Myers who plotted out continuous chains of muscle and connective tissues that ran throughout the body to a make up a rigging system that forms our posture and enables movement.  I showed this book to Steve along with diagrams of these myofascial chains in the body and he said, “That’s it, that’s Tai Chi!”

From this point on my Shiatsu experiences began to fuse with my Tai Chi.

MAI            Do the theories of Tai Chi relate to those of Shiatsu?

GK            I would say that I’ve evolved my style of Shiatsu to come in line with the experience of the body I have through Tai Chi. My Shiatsu studies were rooted in a style called Zen Shiatsu developed by Shizuto Masunaga which was based on the meridian system found in Oriental Medicine.  My problem was that I never really felt the body as a meridian system, neither in Shiatsu or Tai Chi. I understood Masunaga’s logic and his model is elegant, but it wasn’t how I experienced the body during Tai Chi. And the more I experienced my own body in Tai Chi the more I saw those same processes and patterns in those that I treated.  It would be quite some time before I reconciled my ‘Tai Chi’ body view and Shiatsu.

Towards the end of my Shiatsu course using the Oriental Medicine model became something I studied simply to pass my final exams.  The model of the body presented by Tom Myers in his ‘Anatomy Trains’ book coincided much more closely with how I was feeling my body working on daily basis in my Tai Chi practice.  I was incredibly lucky to have Shiatsu teachers who not only encouraged us to explore all therapies but actually helped us make sure our practice was as intuitive and comprehensive as possible.  A myosfascial view of the human body combined with the internal system of Tai Chi helped me form a concrete ‘holistic’ view of the human body that transformed my approach in both therapy and the Martial Arts.

Another key factor that fused my Tai Chi and Shiatsu was when I began to treat Steve after he had a double bi-lateral knee replacement.  For this operation Steve literally had his legs cut off and pinned back together again.  I started working with Steve about 18 months after his operation – during this period he’d given up on the physio’s and had suffered numerous falls that caused horrific damage and meant he just wasn’t recovering.  There really wasn’t an existing treatment protocol for the work we had to do, we were dealing with nerve and soft tissue damage, teaching him how to walk from scratch, how to deal with the powerful pain medications, strengthening the body and many other factors we could never, ever foresee.  Combining Steve’s knowledge and sensitivity of developing the body through the Martial Arts and my studies of Shiatsu and bodywork lead us to start to form a rehabilitation plan – now Steve is completely off his medication, is teaching and training on a daily basis and hasn’t had a major fall since.

MAI            How did you approach Steve’s recovery?

GK            We simply used the Tai Chi training process.  By approaching the problem with total mindfulness and sensitivity we slowly figured out what worked and what didn’t.  On a weekly basis Steve came for treatments sometimes lasting a couple of hours where we’d painstakingly work with the damage.  Then we’d discuss what I’d found and worked on during the treatment and Steve would explain the rehab training he was doing and we’d constantly monitor the results.  I don’t think many people appreciate what Steve went through during his recovery, but his honesty and sensitivity during this period allowed us to work through it.

I can’t tell you how much I learned as a result of working with Steve so closely.  Steve literally had to teach himself Tai Chi again.  We saw first hand how trauma affects the body and how to address it.  Once we’d addressed the damage from the falls and operation we then had to develop a programme to strengthen the body and re-educate his nervous system to able to move using two brand new titanium knee joints.

The methods we developed during this period skyrocketed our ability to train and rehabilitate the body and greatly advanced the Shi Kon system, not based on theory but on practical experience.

MAI            So would you say that the Shi Kon system is centred more on promoting health now than Martial Arts?

GK            Well our health is the foundation upon which everything is built, so really all Martial Arts should be centred on health – an absence of health is generally referred to as death!  (laughs)  The Shi Kon system for me is about human development through the Martial Arts – and the Martial Arts have so much to offer than simple self-defence and fighting!  Let’s face it you are far more likely to suffer from ill-health than being attacked.  If you look at the traits needed to be a fighter; strength, focus, emotional stability, good posture and efficient dynamic movement – these are all things associated with good health!

The application of the Shi Kon system is based on skill, and skill is rooted in health.  Once you have health and skill anything you apply them to become applications.  I started studying the Shi Kon Tai Chi system as a doorman and so-called ‘reality’ Martial Artist – it was the effectiveness and practicalities of it that caused me to change everything I did.  And it is a journey that is continuing to amaze and enlighten on a daily basis.

MAI            So where do you see this journey taking you in the future?

GK            Well in the immediate future I’ve just opened my own full time Martial Arts Centre in Hockley, Essex so that is taking up a lot of time.  Other than that I really will just continue to train and learn and see where the wind blows me!

MAI            Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Gavin and good luck with the new centre!

GK            It’s been a pleasure!

For more details on Gavin King or Shi Kon please visit www.shikon.com Gavin can be contacted at gavin@shikon.com

Gavin King

Gavin King is a Shiatsu practitioner, writer and Martial Arts instructor from Essex in the United Kingdom. He runs a full time Martial Arts centre in Hockley, Essex teaching Tai Chi and Kung Fu. You can contact him via Facebook or Twitter!

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