Mike Nott

As a few friends/colleagues know, I decided to join a Shotokan Karate club back in August. I’d been looking for a regular exercise regime for the last few years, and as my wife and daughter had been attending and enjoying the club since January, I thought I’d give it a try.

It turns out that Karate is one of the most addictive things I’ve ever tried, as now I can’t stop talking about it and practising constantly (I got called an evangelist).

We were first introduced to the Westwood Karate Academy by Janette’s friend Marites Tomlinson and her son Chris who are both currently part of the ITKF England team. We are actually so lucky that we have one of the country’s top clubs in Southend, and our Sensei Alan Parrish, is also currently the head coach of the England squad.

Anyway, the reason for this post, apart from to spread the word about how great Karate is, is that last Sunday I had my first grading.

All in all, for me personally it was quite a strange experience as I had jet lag due to flying back from PubCon Vegas the day before, so was quite tired. During the practice session beforehand, I consciously felt crap and weak as I’d had no proper training during the previous week.

But as soon as I was called up to grade, my mind actually went totally blank like everything around me just disappeared and all I could actually hear was my pulse pounding in my head. I can’t really remember many of the actual details of the grading as I seemed to do everything without thinking.

My daughter Mya during her grading

Once everyone had finished their grading, Sensei announced the results and told me that I had passed and said “that was good” instead of the usual critique, so I was over the moon.

So now I’m an ‘orange belt’ (9th kyu) and my wife and daughter also passed their gradings - Janette has her ‘yellow belt’ and Mya a ‘red belt’. But it never stops as we only have 4 months to train for our next grading at Easter.

Btw, am only joking about the ‘SEO Ninja’ part, ‘SEO Karateka’ is more accurate.