The healthy adventure of training Karate will make this year exciting with many advantages like fitness and focus. It is good to adventure into something different like red slope snow ski or deep-sea diving or more doable in sunny South Africa – unarmed combat training.

The Art of Combat was introduced to sunny shores of South Africa in the early fifties by the late sensei Stan Schmidt and sensei Norman Robinson. Their knowledge was based on Judo training and karate books but it grew rapidly into an extremely popular activity across Southern Africa.

Fortunately, the original teaching in South Africa was based on teaching in Japan thanks to the late Chief Instructor of JKA, Masatoshi Nakayama who decided to send his top instructors to South Africa to teach and expand Karate-do!

The legendary Hirokasu Kanazawa sensei led a group of four to stay and teach Karate at all the major cities in South Africa for four months in 1964. Included were the late Taji Kase sensei, Hiroshi Shirai sensei and the notorious Masahiko Tanaka sensei.

Strong South-African ambassadors for true Japanese Karate-do led the expansion of this fighting art across Southern Africa and still plays a huge role in the teaching Karate today.

Most cities in our country have more than one karate school with instructors of good standing with reputable styles and organisations. It was predicted that karate practitioners will seriously increase because of inclusion in the Olympics Games?

The current epidemic of discrimination or “bullying” at schools can only be addressed through increase of self-confidence of the victims. Karate training provides this confidence to stand-up against unjust behaviour.

The fitness in regular training stays one of the most motivating factors for new students. Cardio training and explosive energy will influence before technical training becomes the more important focus.

Self-defence is a huge attraction for new beginners. Students might not always be able to defend themselves against any attack by they will remain composed to make to best decision in a specific situation.

The competition side of Karate stays an attractive drawing card for the younger generation.

A difficult choice is to select the right school to enrol for classes. Do not even consider a school where parents are not allowed to watch – red lights go on! A second warning sign are these so-called self-graded instructors boasting about their grades but never seen training or in a proper karate suit.

Consider the closest school but watch a class or two and sign nothing before allowed to check on a number of references. Google do provide information of schools, styles and instructors but I have seen beautiful websites with very suspicions teachers.

•