EVENTS 2003

AUTUMN GRADING
We our pleased to annonce that Jessica, Chris and Diane all passed their 8th Kyu grading. It is their first grading and it is their most important step onto the road of Martial arts. Charlotte also passed 4th Kyu purple belt, she has been busy with her duke of edinburgh award recently, but still showed a significant improvement on her last grading. Well done to you all.

I would like to thank Assistant Instructor Hadyn Roberts and also John Yarwood for their help during the grading.
Shuko Karate Assistant Instructor Karthik Ravi joins up with Kings School Macclesfield teacher Mr Houghton, to open Kings Shuko Freestyle
We are pleased to announce that Shuko Freestyle will now be opening a new club at Kings School Macclesfield with Mr Houghton who has considerable experience in Kickboxing, as the School representative and Kartik Ravi as our Shuko Assistant Instructor. The club will not be training in our full Triple K system ( Karate, Kickboxing and full contact Knockdown), but sticking to Shuko Freestyle (semi contact) and Kickboxing (semi contact).
Training after school on Mondays and Fridays

WE ARE PROUD TO BE JOINED BY Sensei Maziar Abdollahinia
After reading this web site, Sensei Abdollahinia has requested to become the Middle East representative for Shuko Freestyle. It is fantastic that an obviously experienced martial artist has been impressed by the web site, and as such has asked to join up with us, not for any fanancial gain but as a result of similar values and philosophies.
Maziars dedication to the arts can be read below.
1. President & founder of "international martial arts research & development Center" Including "the world martial arts writers association".(web site coming soon.)
2. Ambassador of martial arts association - International.
3. Martial Arts expert Diploma from Germany.
4. 3-dan in aku-ryu karate-Do from USA.
5. Kickboxing Trainer.
6. free-lance writer & author of "martial arts monthly magazine"(persian)

Our charity web site for Martial arts fighting Cancer, has a new address. It can now be viewed at
www.fighting-cancer.co.uk
NEXT GRADING - SATURDAY 11th OCTOBER for details click SHUKO GRADING

SURFING WEEKEND
We are hoping to organise a Surf / Martial Arts weekend down in Newquay. We will try and arrange the weekend somewhere between mid April and mid May 2004.
For all those who maybe interested please let us know as soon as possible. Alastair Hall from Protea Kickboxing and Steve Fenwick from Shidokan have also said they are interested so hopefully we may be able to get a good size group. We would stay in a surf shack and surf Saturday / Sunday mornings with Martial Arts in the afternoons. I don't think they often get waves like this one in Newquays so don't worry.
Please email us by clicking surf school

BEST WISHES TO MATT Saturday 13th September
We would like to send our best wishes to Matt Sidebottom from Shidokan (full contact) Karate, who unfortunately may have to give up Karate. He suffered a horrendous injury several years ago, whilst Mountain biking. He dislocated three back vertebrae, cracked three ribs and broke his shoulder. It appears that Karate is aggrevating the injury so much that his main love Mountain biking is being affected. We hope that Matt's back which is a bit of a mess at the moment, get's better soon and that his Mountain biking goes from strength to strength. After reaching 4th Kyu in a really hard style it is a real shame to have to give up, but there is more to life - I suppose???
Good luck and keep in touch.
FULL CONTACT
Our Saturday mornings full contact karate class has turned out to be a real success, numbers aren't enormous, but the training is great. I can feel a real improvement myself, so if you would like to join us for our hard training sessions, which include Kickboxing and Knockdown Karate training and a little Muay Thai, please click the image opposite for email details. I would like to thank Protea Kickboxing Association and ShidokanAZ Full contact Karate club for joining us and making it so much fun. I would suggest to any small to medium size martial arts club to team up with like minded clubs to make events and specialist training sessions more enjoyable and fun, and of course cost effective.

Shidokan National Grading 12/7/03
We were invited down to the Shidokan grading in London on Saturday 12th July. Well I was nervous and really considered fighting Full contact to be slightly silly as my job depends on physical fitness, but I went and fought three fights, considering lifes experiences to be important as well as work. My first fight was against the extremely talented Russian fighter, Andreas, I knew how good he was as he joined Sempai Jean Jacque Burnell in Macclesfield for the Martial Arts fighting Cancer seminar and I knew I had to take the fight to Andreas or get mashed. I did this and I believe I did a good job of containing his speed and technique advantage. Second I fought against a big strong fighter called Guy, but I got an adrenaline drop after fighting Andreas and felt exausted, I did well to survive by sticking to simple punches. Finally I fought against the very nervous Roy from ShidokanAZ who along with all the other ShidkanAz fighters put up a brave performance.

I believe as a group, Matt, Roy, John and Paul all need to work on fight tactics, to take less punishment and perhaps give a little more out. Their bravery has been proven, after all felling fear does not make you a coward, it is dealing with that fear that makes us brave.
In general I think the Shidokan grading system is very hard and I personally have not seen other styles put their fighters through such a hard ordeal, great respect goes out to every fighter who took part. Also I would like to send a special thankyou to Sempai Burnell for inviting me and it was great to see my old friend Sempai Steve Fenwick (shown left roundhousing Andreas).

To see more photos click the image

Very Sad News
Unfortunately our great friend and colleague, Dave Roberts died yesterday, Wednesday 21st May from liver cancer.
Dave can be seen opposite training with Dave Green, ironically at the Martial Arts Fighting Cancer 2002/03 last December. It just shows us all that you never can tell and I really hope that everybody supports our fight against this illness next year. Dave luckily only found out a week ago about his illness and his family are glad about that as Dave hated being ill.
Our thoughts go to Mrs Roberts and their young daughter who apparently has got exactly the same fighting spirit as Dave.
Mrs Roberts said we gave Dave a lot of pleasure on our sparring nights and that even over the past week he asked her to keep us informed of events. I find it hard to believe we will not see Dave again., but I am sure he will be at our sparrimng nights in spirit.
For all those who knew Dave it would be nice if you could dedicate a good training session to him as Martial Arts was a massive part of his life. Ossu Dave

NEWS 13 / 5 / 03
1. Georgie Matiaha an experienced boxer, who has fought for New Zealand and has fought in over sixty bouts, has kindly offered to do a boxing session with our class and anybody else who would like to join us. The session will take place at Macclesfield Leisure Centre on Monday 19th May 8.00pm
2. We have had some very sad news about our friend Dave Roberts who is quite seriously ill and in hospital. We hope you are better soon Dave and with your fighting spirit I am sure you will be back at Sparring night soon.
3. Great sparring night last night with an added event, a mini tiournament, it was great. Hopefully some of our Thai boxing friends can make it next month. Monday 2nd June.

Saturday full contact class. Macc Leisure centre 10.35am Saturdays.
Our new full contact class is going well. We're getting an average of 5 fighters down each week for this hard training session. The class is not a compromise, we train hard on pads, conditioning and partner work, so if you wish to join us be prepared to sweat a little. Every technique we do on a Saturday is designed for it's simplicity and power to transfer easily into either Knockdown Karate (no face punches, but no hand protection at all) or into full contact kickboxing. Often these effective combinations are inter-changable through full contact styles. We have borrowed training methods from knockdown karate, kickboxing and Muay Thai.

NEW JJB WEDNESDAY NIGHT

FIGHT PRO CIRCUIT TRAINING
8.00pm - 9.00pm

Come and get sweaty, free to members.

For more photos click image

MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTING CANCER - DONATION TO MAST
Members from Shuko Knockdown Karate, Head coach of Protea Kickboxing Association Alastair Hall and members from ShidokanAZ were present at the presentation of charity funds to the East Cheshire Hospital trust MAST appeal.
We handed over cheques to a value of £620, making the total raised an impressive £1240 after hall hire etc. A bit disappointing after last years £3050, but still very good. We hope we can get the figure up again next year. The total for the first three years is now well over £5000.
Shown left are Janet Ward from MAST, Jon Tilley charity coordinator for Martial arts fighting cancer, Rebecca, Phillipa, Matt, Emily, Alastair, Mike and Karthik.

Many thanks to Sempai JJ Burnell and ShidokanAZ.
I would like thank Sempai JJ for inviting me to train with him and the ShidokanAZ Club at the AstraZeneca sports facility. I could only train for an hour or so which was hard work, the AZ team had to do a gruelling three hours - very hard work.
Also a big thankyou to JJ showing me such genuine hospitality.

To see more pictures click the image.


To see more photos click image.
Sensei Jon Tilley hands over charity funds from Martial arts fighting cancer to Teenage cancer trust representative Ben Jones.
We went to Christies hospital on Wednesday 19th March for two reasons, one to hand over a cheque for £620 to our friend Ben Jones from the Teenage Cancer Trust, and secondly to do a Demonstration class for a group of young ladies who have either been patients on the youth oncology ward and are thankfully in remission and for patients still under going treatment.
It was a great event and thanks to Ben and Lorraine for organising the event and also thanks to Karthik, Charlotte and Emily for helping out., but most importantly thnks to the girls from the ward for taking part. Good luck to you all and keep that guard up!

New pictures from the Double Whammy 25/02/03
Matthew Sidebitham has kindly sent us some new phots of the seminar. To see them click the image.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE
No training this Saturday, due to the IABC grappling course on Sunday.

VIDEO IN PRODUCTION
Stockport College has kindly offered its services to edit our Martial arts fighting cancer 2002 / 03 Video.
It will be a combination of demonstration fights and technical footage. I can garauntee it is quality Martial arts in sharp contrast to the crap which often costs £25 from magazines. We will keep you updated.
I think we will be able to offer the video for £10 a real bargain when the likes of Dave Green, Andrew Manwaring, Jamie Goulding, Andrew Morrell, JJ Burnell, Steve Wilkinson, Alan Cain and Chris Sharpe plus many more including myself are on show. You may enjoy seeing me get a good kicking at least!

SUBMISSION FIGHTING COURSE WITH SENSEI CHRIS SHARPE
Monday 17th Febuary 8.00pm, Macclesfield Leisure centre
Many thanks to Chris, Mark and Steve for another great course, sorry about the turn out, but that's half term for you.
To see more about Chris Sharpe click image.

Double Whammy second seminar. 2/2/03
We had a fantastic day yesterday and I think everybody enjoyed it. We would like to say a big thankyou to Sensei Andrew Morrell, Sensei Andrew Manwarring, Sensei JJ

For more pictures click image

Cruciate Ligament opp. 29/1/03
Unfortunately Hadyn Roberts one of our resident Brown belts and Judo Instructor has undergone ligament surgery this week. It is a stark reminder that it is not only footballers who suffer knee damage, but Martial artists as well. We send our best wishes to Hadyn for a speedy recovery.

If you would like to see detailed pictures of Hadyn's knee click the image.

NEW PHOTOS
We have had more photographs developed from Martial arts fighting cancer 2002/03, including this impressive picture of our friend Jamie Goulding. Jamie recently won the WUMO World Champioships and has kindly done an interview for us. To read about Jamies experiences and his thoughts click INTERVIEW

To see full size pictures of the first seminar click the image