One of the rather strange questions that I have been asked over the years by people who have found out that I have been training in Shotokan over the decades is this: "Why do you train in a sport that means that you get hurt? You know, when ever I see you, you have these nasty bruises on your arms and shoulders, and sometimes elsewhere. Why on earth would you want to pay to end up getting hurt?" To be fair, it is not, if I am being objective, an unreasonable question to ask a

I do not know about you, but why is it each year that we decide that the time has come to make a change, with the coming of a new year? And if you do decide to do something new or different, how many people actually get around to doing whatever it is that they decide they were going to do in the first place? Having a little think about it, I really struggled to think of anyone that I know who had committed to something new and actually got on and did it. And it may well be th

I was inspired recently when I started reading a book written by a Karateka who has deserved the status “legend” over his many years of training. Renowned as a hard man both in the dojo and outside of it, Sensei Dave Hazard is from the old school Shotokan that he and I were both lucky enough to be a part of back in the nineteen seventies. In one chapter Sensei Hazard recalled the first time that he ever did Kumite with my first ever Shotokan Instructor, Sensei Mick Dewey, who

Welcome, my dear reader friend, to the first Enso Shotokan Karate Club blog. Why would you open a dojo? Well, there is a real Pandora's box, is it not? And where do the answers lie, and in what priority? Well, if truth be told, there is no single answer and there is no priority for me opening my own dojo. It simply became something that I just felt that I had to do. Why? Because I have a deep passion for Shotokan Karate do; it has, for me, almost been a vocation. I remember w