Author: TSMA Page 166 of 200

A bionic OAP is back to his karate black belt best at the grand age of 68 despite just recovering from cancer and having two replacements hips.

Bernard Taylor, is back to full health  kicking, punching and karate chopping his way through the gym despite his former ailments which included prostate cancer.

Nicknamed The Bull by his karate mates, he attends Colne Valley Black Belt Academy in his home town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

‘It’s brilliant,’ he said. ‘I had one hip done, then I had treatment for the prostate, then I had the other hip replaced.

‘Now I’m back fighting, kicking and running around like a lunatic.

‘The younger lads can’t believe it.

‘I can still do everything – but the super power kicks maybe aren’t quite as hard and the flying kicks aren’t as high as they once were.

‘Doctors have told me I need to take it easy but I just love teaching the kids. I’ve probably got 250 pupils.’

The married father-of-two puts his rapid recovery down to his karate and general fitness levels.

‘I was never worried once,’ said Bernard. ‘I took it all in my stride and just got on with it.

‘Karate is about positive thinking and it instills discipline.’

Mr Taylor only took up karate when he took his children Leanne and Scott along for lessons.

Leanne secretly filled in the forms for her dad and he ended up joining too at the age of 42.

Mr Taylor, who had been sporty in his younger days, never looked back and quickly rose through the ranks, achieving his black belt aged 47.

Three years later he won the Martial Arts Illustrated magazine’s British Championship.

It was about four years ago that Bernard started feeling pain in his hips.

True to form he battled through the pain barrier, thinking it was a pulled muscle.

Eventually his wife persuaded him to go to the doctor’s and arthritic spurs were found on his hip joints, which could only be solved by replacements.

Shortly afterwards discovering his hip problem he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Mr Taylor said: ‘For me it was ‘okey dokey, let’s get on with it’. I wasn’t too bothered. It was my family who felt it most.’

Mr Taylor then had surgery on his right hip before embarking on treatment for his prostate.

He decided against an operation to remove the prostate and opted for three months of hormone therapy followed by radiotherapy.

Mr Taylor had to wait up to six months for the radiotherapy to leave his system before he could have the left hip done.

He went into hospital in August 2011 and again his rate of recovery amazed medical staff.

‘Now I’m back on top form,’ he said. One of the students brought a lump to my throat the other week when he made some comments on Facebook about this 68-year-old guy running up and down like a young ‘un. He said I must be a bionic man.’

Mr Taylorsaid he wanted all men over 45 to get themselves checked for prostate cancer.

‘It’s a simple blood test and all men should do it,’ he said. ‘I had no symptoms and only found out by accident.

‘An early diagnosis can save your life.’

CHESHIRE — Jamie Arute was first motivated to start his own martial arts training center in 2006, after his daughter happened upon several trophies from his competitive days as a fighter.

His daughter, just 3 at the time, was inspired by his expansive collection of medals — Arute’s training dates back to 1981 — and wanted to try martial arts herself. Arute took her to about 15 different studios in the area, all different styles and backgrounds, but couldn’t find the right fit. Either the classes were too big, or the instructors didn’t provide the right kind of training.

“I thought to myself, ‘This town needs a school that will give the kids personalized attention, help them grow and achieve goals, teach them proper techniques, but still allow them to have a fun and exciting environment,’ ” Arute said.

Arute now owns and operates Alpha Krav Maga, at 1070 S. Main St. The business, which opened under a different name, has gone through many changes over the past five years. Arute said they have all been positive, especially since last year, when he changed the martial arts organization he was affiliated with.

Now, “people seek me out,” Arute said. He receives private business from the entire state and Massachusetts, he said, along with several law enforcement organizations.

“I’m just a different breed,” he said.

In March 2008, Arute opened his own self-defense school offering several types of martial arts, but emphasizing Krav Maga (the Hebrew term means “contact combat”), which was developed for the Israeli Defense Forces in 1948. At the time, he used curriculum from Krav Maga Worldwide, an organization that recruited former IDF soldier and Krav Maga expert Sam Sade to teach. Last year, Sade left the organization to begin Alpha Krav Maga, which concentrates entirely on the teachings of the Israeli martial art.

Arute saw an opportunity in the change, and decided to partner with Sade. The change made Arute a member of the organization’s board of directors and designated his Cheshire branch the Northeast Regional Training Center for Alpha Krav Maga. Arute said this means that any instructor who wants to be certified in Krav Maga or wants to open his own branch through Alpha Krav Maga on the East Coast must visit his school and undergo training.

Arute said Krav Maga is “a more aggressive martial art.”

“If a child is put in front of a situation, they’re going to try to verbalize their way out of it or deescalate it, but if something does happen, they are going to defend themselves,” he said.

A majority of children won’t defend themselves because they’re scared of getting in trouble with their parents, Arute said. Arute invites parents to be a part of the class, allowing them to understand the teachings, so children understand that “mom and dad have your back if you need to defend yourself.”

“You might have consequences to deal with at school, but if you are truly defending yourself, you’re going to get a big hug from mom and dad, and a high five from your instructor that you successfully stood up for yourself,” Arute said.

It’s not all about children protecting themselves, though. Arute holds age-appropriate classes, with only children 13 and above who pass a maturity test allowed to enter the adult program, which is much more physical and includes sparring. He also holds classes for children as young as 6. Adults with under a year of experience enter at level 1 and learn the basic philosophies of Krav Maga before moving to level 2, which includes sparring and more intense training. Law enforcement and military professionals automatically progress to level 2 because of their prior training and experience.

“It’s about defending yourself,” Arute said of his interpretation of Krav Maga. “It’s developed to be straight to the point, using normal reactions of the body. Say someone is getting choked. We take normal reactions and create explosiveness and movements to release hands off your neck.”

The use of Krav Maga isn’t over when one finds a way to escape the choke hold, though, Arute said.

“We don’t train hit once and run, we train hit until they’re not coming back for us anymore,” he said. “Everyone has a different line in the sand. We don’t start fights, we finish them.”

Jennifer Bernstein, 43, has been training with Arute for several years, “mainly because of the horrendous crime in 2007,” referring to the Cheshire home invasion.

“It scared me,” she said. “It really resonated because it could happen to anyone.”

The training she has received at Alpha Krav Maga has been life changing, Bernstein said.

“At the time of the home invasion, I felt like I wasn’t fit, and I had a big target on my back,” she said.

Krav Maga has become a big part of her life; she is now an instructor at Arute’s facility. Bernstein said Krav Maga is not all about physical fitness and punching power.

“We can teach people how to hit and strike and duck all day, but there’s a mental perseverance that is key,” she said. Arute also teaches mental approaches to presenting yourself as less vulnerable, therefore less of a target.

Dave Barger, 57, has also felt the benefits of Krav Maga. He’s trained with Arute for more than a year. He spent 24 years as a state police officer and already had years of martial arts background, but found that “Krav Maga is more real life.”

Barger, now the chief of public safety at Quinnipiac University, often hires Arute to teach his officers self-defense and disarming techniques.

Art and aikido have a lot in common, according to Harvey Konigsberg, a Woodstock artist and head teacher at Woodstock Aikido, where students train in what is perhaps the most subtle of martial arts. “They’re both about creating harmony out of chaos,” he says of his two professions. Both also require the ability to let go of effort and join the flow of energy.

“You have to move from your center, not from your shoulder,” he explains on the mat at the dojo, or training hall, in the Byrdcliffe barn, where the Woodstock Guild has hosted aikido classes since 1986. “Let all the tension go from your arm and just move your hips. Your arm will go where it needs to go.”

He shows me the wrong way to try to throw an attacker, resisting as a student grips his wrist. Then he demonstrates the right way, and the student is flung abruptly to the ground.

“But they both look the same,” I say.

Smiling ruefully, he replies, “That’s the problem.”

When I started studying aikido 11 years ago, I was fascinated by the counterintuitive quality of the techniques, but I was so busy learning the footwork, like a musician practicing scales, that I barely grasped the principle of non-effort that makes the techniques most effective. Now that I am at a level where I really have to let go of effort in order to advance, I am mesmerized by the challenge and by the pleasure when, occasionally, I succeed.

“Aikido is not about meeting power with power — even a very powerful man will eventually find someone more powerful,” says Konigsberg. “In this philosophy, we’re trying not to deal with mass but with energy. There’s no limit to what you can do, but you have to be free mentally and emotionally, and the body has to be in alignment.”

This reliance on guiding energy rather than exerting strength makes aikido well-suited to women. Woodstock bead artist and black belt Annette Mackrel, who has been practicing for 27 years, finds that aikido builds self-confidence. “You move differently. People who get attacked are often projecting a victim image. It has to do with how you carry yourself — it’s a subtle subconscious thing.”

Students of all shapes and sizes are drawn to the practice. “It’s good for short people, too,” she comments. “You can work out for strength and elasticity, but you even see old people on the mat — they’re not as quick, but they’re still doing it. Of course, Harvey is so fast.”

At 72, Konigsberg still teaches several classes a week in Woodstock and Manhattan, and is in demand as an instructor at aikido seminars around the world.

Although I know he does not plan to hurt me, it’s scary when a 200-pound man is advancing across the mat to grab my wrists, and I have to decide in a split-second how to respond. In most aikido classes, students work one-on-one, practicing techniques demonstrated by the instructor. In advanced “freestyle” classes, the action is more spontaneous, with one person dealing with multiple attackers in sequence.

Faced with this situation, I automatically tense up and contract, the opposite of what aikido demands. With Konigsberg’s coaching, I’m beginning to retrain my reflexes, to glide out of the line of attack while staying connected to the attacker, extending my energy through my relaxed arms so that he is constrained, by his own momentum, to follow where I’m pointing — down to the ground or across the room.

If I put muscular effort into the movement, he feels it and fights back. When I’m deeply relaxed, and it feels like I’m not doing anything, he falls.

This paradox is hard for beginners to accept, says Konigsberg. “At first, you’re still brainwashed to think, if something didn’t cost me effort, I didn’t do it, and it has no value. But it’s the same as in art —your best work comes with no effort.”

After 48 years on the mat, Konigsberg finds, “It still fascinates me that the spiritual, creative side of life taps into a different source. Most other things come with a linear progress — you go by the book. This is a letting go, trying to find the joining, the flow. Anyone who does anything creative — painting, music, writing — at a certain point you’re getting out of the way, letting everything flow through you.”

In the advanced classes, Konigsberg displays an uncanny ability to isolate what a student is doing wrong, even when it’s invisible to the rest of the class. I ask how he manages to detect the subtle errors. “I feel it in my own body,” he explains. “I resonate with people. I feel the tension within myself, so I can see it in someone else.”

As he clarifies this point, he applies it both to his perceptiveness and to the student’s ability to let go of tension while executing techniques. “Human beings are like tuning forks — when you press one point, without a visible attachment, it resonates on another point. It’s difficult to learn to trust that. We’re asking people to change psychological, physical, and emotional patterns in the way they approach everything.”

Konigsberg was attracted to martial arts from a young age. “I was going to be a boxer when I was 16, 17,” he says, “but I didn’t like being hit. The kind of life you have as a boxer is very damaging. I love to watch it — there’s a free movement to it when someone isn’t overmatched. But when I saw aikido, I saw the same kind of free movement, without the damage you do to another person.”

Although he is a seventh-degree black belt and received, several years ago, the title of Shihan, or master instructor, from the U. S. Aikido Federation, he says he’s still learning. Recent years have brought difficult life lessons as well.

“There’s been a lot of loss,” he says. “I had to deal with my partner, Patty, dying. All of a sudden, I have to deal with the idea of letting go but not giving up. It’s had a profound influence on what I do at the dojo. Things get put into perspective. I still get affected by things and think, why am I overreacting? But it gives you a certain point you can return to, a compass. When you go off, you feel it, then you can go back to center. Once you establish some kind of center, you have something to go back to.”

Lately, he’s finding other reasons to let go. “There are certain things I don’t want to do — I don’t want to use force any more, partly from injuries, and from maturing. I get great pleasure, not from competition or domination, but from this kind of blending you do with other people in aikido. It used to be what I could do to someone else, now it’s what we can do together.”