This Is Me

Sensei Simon Tarrant;

Yes its another post about me. If I get all this out of the way I can start on really writing blogs.

Simon Tarrant; Martial Arts History

I started training in the martial arts at 13yrs old, and as of the writing of this I am just about to turn 57. Over 40 years of my life I have been involved in some kind of martial art or combat sport.

Starting in the 1970s at my local school hall I began training in Tae Kwon Do. I wasn’t a great student, the teen years drove me towards a different set of experiences.

From 16-20 there were fights, crime, alcohol and drugs. I was a teen testing the boundaries that had been laid down by my fundamental Christian upbringing.

During these years I tried some Ju Jitsu (hard old school in the early ’80s, ouch), and sparred with anyone I could find. For a while we lived in an abandoned hotel on the Westcoast of the South Island of NZ, we bought some boxing gloves and I often sparred, a friend, Donald Mcneilly, who became a South Island Golden Gloves boxer just a few years later, was a great sparing partner.

Lets Start That Again; New Beginnings

Restarting my Karate career I started training with Jon (Michele) Vaudrey at Chidokan Karate. This was 4-5 years getting back in the flow of more formal martial arts training in Dunedin NZ.

During this time of my life I would go north and pick fruit. While working in Te Puke I would travel in to Tauranga and there spent time training with Pat Bishop of Tauranga Freestyle Kickboxing. This was an excellent gym who, at the time, had a Commonwealth Champion and the New Zealand heavyweight belt holder.

It was at this time I found I had hep c, so any ideas of competing were stymied. It wasn’t till my 40s that I was cured of the disease.

After a relationship break up I moved north to Nelson and was introduced to Sensei Mike Addison Saipe of Bushin Ryu by my very good friend Jack.

Bushin Ryu

My Karate started again with Sensei Mike at Bushin Ryu.

This is, I believe, where my real martial arts career started, the way Sensei Mike saw Karate was a revelation.

But that wasn’t all…

The vision Sensei Mike saw martial arts with was just one part of it…it was tough, hard beyond reasonable belief. Sets of 100s of pushups and sit ups. One night we did a 1000 of each, but 200-500 wasn’t rare at all. I bled, had my bones broken and spat teeth on the dojo floor – I LOVED IT.

Nile Street dojo. A group of around 10 (although more at times) insane trainers dedicated to squeezing the most out of life and the martial arts. We had some of the early MMA fighters come through but they thought we were crazy.

We earned our knowledge. It was during this time at Bushin Ryu where I first started learning about pressure points and their deep entanglement with the Okinawan arts, the roots of which, were in China.

The technical points of kata and bunkai were things that many years of martial training had never taught me…kata started to become real. Self defence hidden within solo pattern drills.

Energy, Chi, the body through the study of anatomy and physiology became a bit of an obsession. So I went back to school – NMIT in Nelson and studied for a certificate in Sport and Exercise Science.

I ground through the grades, injuries and life issues took time, and eventually I attained my Teacher Licence and 4th Dan Bushin Ryu in 2020. Now I can make Bushin Black Belts.

Back to Hamilton;

After a few years spent in Australia I moved back to Hamilton and looked after my Father who had dementia. 2012 Sensei Mike suggested I may want to start a school in Hamilton. I did – Bushin Ryu Bujutsu-kai.

Parallel to this I trained with Sijo Ian Waite. Sijo is a World Martial Arts Hall of Fame inductee and when I first met him in the 1990s he was head of Ryukyu Kempo in NZ.

Sijo Ian Waite is a master of movement.

After his stint at Ryukyu Kempo he took up Wing Chun Do. A school of martial arts that studied Bruce Lees martial science, and had direct lineage through Bruce’s early students, before Jeet Kwon Do was even a thing.

Sijo Ian recieved his 10th Dan when he started his new school – Tao Shield.

I received my 2nd Dan in Tao Shield and my 4th Dan in Ryukyu Kempo in 2017.

While all this was going on in Hamilton I was lucky enough to run into Shihan Paul Reti of Fuji Ryu Goshin Do Ju Jitsu at a Ju Jitsu Masterclass seminar. He had left Christchurch after the earthquakes and had nowhere to train, so I offered him a place to train at Bushin Ryu Bujutsu-kai.

We were lucky enough to have a masterclass every weekend for around 3 years. That is his signature and stamp on the 4th Dan cert above.

I have been very lucky over the years to have trained with some spectacularly good martial artists. Martial artists that have dedicated their life to the study of martial arts. I have made great friends and put my body through the ringer.

But as you get older you tend to put on weight and don’t watch your food as well as you should. You work and don’t have time for important things. But now I have given up work and moved into semi-retirement so I can now spend time, again, dedicated towards my martial arts.

I still love it, and at 57 I’m getting fitter everyday hahaha.

OSU