Ahh! Really rough week at work this week. Without martial arts, I sometimes don’t know what I would do; it really is a total panacea for me.
If I hadn’t gone to the Manchester Martial Arts school some twenty years ago now, who know what might have become of myself, Joe Akka.
More than anything else, I think martial arts teach you about discipline and commitment, and I’m sure some of that training kept me out of trouble at Manchester GrammerS chool.
I was never one of the ‘hard’ lads at school, but I guess I was one of those lads that if you asked someone, they would say ‘Joe Akka, yes I know him’, so not in the ‘in’ crowd but not in the ‘out’ crowd either.
So this week, having had a s*&t week at work, you couldn’t get me down to Manchester martial arts centre fast enough. I love it there- it really feels like home. I walk through the door, and virtually everyone I meet shouts out, ‘Hey, Joe Akka, great to see you!’ or, ‘Joe Akka, when are you going to start competing again?’
I get that a lot. I used to be pretty good at martial arts, Taek Wan Do in particular, and ended up competing at quite a high level, but I got to the point where for the level of commitment needed, leaving Manchester at 4am on a Saturday morning in order to get to a competition, hearing the name ‘Joe Akka’ and being called to the podium just didn’t do it for me anymore.
So now adays, whenever I am in the gym, I inevitably get someone coming up to me going ‘Joe Akka, there’s a brilliant tournament coming up..’ but as I say, it just doesn’t do it for me anymore.
I’d much prefer staying in the gym in Manchester, honing my skills because I want to, not because I have to, and passing someone of my hard-earned Joe Akka experience onto younger guys and girls.