Hi, I'm Chris from North Wales. My sister was being bullied in school back in 1998 and my mum suggested she tried karate. As my sister was struggling with anxiety my mum asked me to go with her for support. I remember saying at the time 'ok but if I like it and she doesn't can I go back to class anyway?' and my mum agreed. We went to the instructor who taught my mum karate when she was in school. My sister lasted the one class but 27 years later I'm still here. I've trained in a few different styles with different instructors over the years but after a while away I found myself back with the man who taught me in my first Shotokan Karate class. He is 83 this year and is still going strong. Which inspires me to keep training. I have had many inspirational books and films that have kept my interest over the years. When I started Karate Power Rangers had really taken off on TV so that was one of my original influences. But since then Karate Kid, Cobra Kai, Ip Man, The Best of the Best to name but a few have all added to my continued interest and obsession. I read books about all sorts of martial art styles by many different authors. Instructional books always help but the books about people's individual journeys really give me inspiration. They talk about their trials and challenges, their successes and everything in between. You just watch them on screen or in videos and what they do can suddenly become unobtainable in your head. But reading about their journeys, comparing them to my own, reminds me that we're all human and if we train hard anything can be possible.

I enjoy the training because it helps my mental health. Not just the physical exercise which releases endorphins which is good, but It reminds me that I don't have to be perfect. Of course I do my best to do every technique right, perform every Kata to perfection and give 100% in all classes. But it doesn't matter how hard I train. I'll never be perfect. I'll always need to twist my hip more, kick higher or give more power. This could be seen as frustrating. But I choose to change my mindset and instead of 'i need to be perfect' I instead think 'I need to do my best'. It reminds me that as long as I do my best in that particular class or in that particular moment, then I have nothing to feel guilty or sorry about. My best is good enough. And then I try to be better than I was in the next class, even if it's only in a small way. And then the other thing I love is that I'm 28 years in, and I've only just scratched the surface of what I can learn. I'm never going to learn everything. An instructor always has a new angle or way of looking at something when I go to a course or seminar, I always find inspiration in other peoples journeys from the books I read and the videos I watch. As much as Karate has built my physical capabilities over the years and my confidence improved, the biggest things it taught me that I can carry over into every other part of my life.... There are always new things to learn and as long as I do my best then I am 'good enough'.

My mental health is a massive issue for me. Couple this with my job as a Nurse working in the NHS and some days I haven't felt like training at all. The way I fought against this for so long was 'I can't let the students down' which helped get me to class.... But then when students leave, as children often do when they try new things, I take it hard and words like failure run through my head and I always wonder if I've done something wrong. This can make me spiral and I struggle for weeks because I'm always looking for external validation. It's only recently I remembered, and I have to remind myself constantly, I don't train for the students. That's not how or why I started. I train for myself because I enjoy it and after class I'm like a completely different person and can see things more clearly. If only a few students turn up it doesn't mean I stop training. It gives me more time to work on what I want to do and the parts of Karate, and Martial Arts in general, that really interest me.