It all started four and a half years ago when I was an unfit father & husband with ongoing lower back issues and had done a couple of years of karate in my younger days but couldn’t stick with it because I found it a little boring to be honest. I have always wanted to get into some other self defence classes but never really got around to it, until one day I made my mind up there and then that I was going to join some form of martial art and it was only because one of my work mates had being training in Arakan and told me all about it so I tried it and have never looked back.

My Journey to my first yellow belt grading was tough mentally and physically as I am 43 years old now but also very rewarding, my state of mind has been to train 110% every lesson and to push myself to my limits and if you continually challenge yourself every day you naturally will get better.

The focus for me has being learning how to retrain the brain so when I train I can work on being present in the moment and try not to let the thinking process come into my head as that is what has been built up in there over the years so I found it very rewarding learning how to control the mind a lot better and once I could improve on that over the years, my Arakan skills got better and better.

The most pleasing thing about the art itself, in my opinion, is that it’s not just about the awesome self-defence skills you learn but the continual growth & learning as a human being in general life, as most of us when we hit that middle age we think we know it all but after training in Arakan for years now I have found myself at peace in life and that everything in life seems to be so much easier and positivity is highly contagious and the better version of yourself really rubs off on others around you.

Arakan, if you train hard, makes you rock hard fit, it empties your mind as you learn the art so you can better manage your life overall. Arakan is a street effective martial art so it is very practical and effective in these times and the self defence skills you learn are second to none, I can’t praise the art enough as now I have my two children also training in the art and it is giving them so much more confidence in life that they can achieve anything they put their mind two so thank you Rob and the entire Arakan family I look forward to many more years of training to come.

Lee Gaylard