by Paul Pretty

When I first started training in the martial arts at around 10 years of age there were no separate children’s classes.  As a child I was just lined up with the adult class.  I would train alongside them, spar with them and I’m sure in many of the lessons I’d be the person that they most would try to avoid, as it hindered their training. 

For me it was great, I enjoyed it immensely and liked being treated as an adult.  Training was very regimented and serious. There were no “games,” no smiling, and as far as I knew no difference in the teaching of children or adults. 

However most children that joined never stayed.  It seemed to be more a case of eliminating the weak ones rather than building them up. If you couldn’t take being shouted at you left, and many did.

This interview was published in January 2008

Last month Steve I said the following:

‘Playing around with someone’s mind can cause havoc and I wonder how many ex-students are screwed up because of their martial arts training?’

Now I only mentioned that because in my experience it seems that there are a number of former students that have had problems with the whole martial arts experience.   This shouldn’t be the case but often when I’ve had a conversation with them they always seem to be carrying an element of guilt about having given up their martial arts training.  Yet this never seems to be the case with someone who has given up their gym membership!  Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people and I’ve never come across anyone that’s had any tribulation about stopping their gym payments.  Going somewhere else for better gym facilities or even packing up altogether and taking up something different like jogging or even going to college didn’t seem to give anyone a mental hang up.  Giving up the martial arts however, seemed, for a lot of people, a much bigger ordeal than just ‘packing in’.

Ring ring…. 

“Warriors Heart Martial Arts School.”

“Hi Sensei, this is Sam Jones’s Dad, I’m calling because Sam seems to be losing interest, he was very happy to get his first grade but his peers seem to have gone up and he’s left behind, I don’t want him to give up but he seems to have lost the ‘buzz’ that he had before…”

“Have you seen the feedback forms that I’ve given to Sam?”

“I know he’s had some – but to be honest I haven’t read them.”

“Okay, the reason that he’s feeling like that is because he doesn’t attend enough lessons and doesn’t get the support he needs at home.”

“That’s not fair, he attends all the classes that the others do.”

“No he doesn’t.  In fact I’m looking at the register right now.  The problem is that you see the other students there when he’s there, but he only attends one class every other week whereas the others are attending a minimum of twice a week and you obviously don’t see them there when you’re not there!”

“But we can’t get him there as often as the others.”

The energy from the children’s class is powerful.  Twenty happy, flushed smiling faces, all wanting to talk at once and tell sensei what they’ve been up to since the last lesson creates a level of chaos that frightens lesser instructors and leaves them depleted after their struggle to contain and direct the chaos for 45 minutes.

But sensei has a different method, it’s almost like he is one the kids, but maybe the leader of the gang, he immerses himself gleefully into the sea of energy, floating easily within, and almost imperceptibly guiding the flow….  Often it seems that the children are deciding what to do – and yet if you look carefully, you can just see the work of sensei’s guiding hand…

“What shall we do now?”  The hands shot up 

“Janine?”