After earning our black belts around 1987, Mark Harrison and I, along with Sean McCrossen, attended an Aikido demonstration at Sutton Library, Surrey. The instructor was a loud show-off and performed part of the demo with a live Tanto blade, and at one point, once he had taken the blade off the attacker, he stepped back with it and nearly stabbed a student in the face with it (WTH!!). The Aikido students were kneeling around the edge of the mat during the demo. We spoke to the instructor afterwards; he was the most arrogant instructor I have encountered. He gave short shrift to some of our questions, particularly about using live weapons in demos.
Maybe this was the Aikido club Martin went to in the early 1980s with the bad-tempered instructor (see my post. Differences – 1: Intentions). We didn’t know then, as Martin only revealed his attendance at the Aikido club just before he moved to Essex in 1988.
Another incident of excess, though not a demo, occurred at an annual Kyushindo seminar around 1992, where I was sparring with an area coach and suddenly found myself being grabbed in an armbar with my head thrust forcefully towards the ground. Unfortunately, my head missed the edge of the mat by about an inch and banged on the floor. Although the impact wasn’t that hard, any result of a hard floor vs the area over the eyebrows usually results in a small cut, but with visually excessive bleeding. I felt fine, but I was advised to leave the mat, so I went to the St John Ambulance first aider who was on site for the seminar. She was due to give a presentation at the end of the sparring session, so after controlling the bleeding, she decided to use me as the ‘dummy’. The sparring session was stopped abruptly on the premise that there was a ‘man down’ (i.e. me lying on the floor), and she then went through her presentation with an ‘investigation protocol’. It took a while for people to realise it wasn’t a real situation but part of a presentation.
When I was training in Ju-Jitsu in Lee-On-The-Solent, one evening, there were a lot of visiting practitioners from some of the other SCMA clubs in Dorset. There was a sparring/randoori session at the end, and I found myself (blue belt) against a Black belt from the Dorset area. I wasn’t holding back in the sparring, as I usually did – I don’t know why- and the black belt was getting a bit frustrated, so he decided to ‘stop’ me by using a groin kick, which I didn’t entirely evade, so it was enough to stop me sparring but not enough to immobilise. He didn’t even say sorry. Anyway, it’s a WTH as it was deliberate.
Some might say that I should have completely avoided it, even though it was just sparring, where techniques are sometimes pulled, and vital targets are avoided.
At one of the Banstead Tuesday evening sessions, as a 1st Dan, I was asked to take a group of Orange belts who were going for their Green belt grading the following Saturday. When it came to the Kata, I just asked them to do the Kata, without any instruction, as I wanted to see if they knew it. However, when I asked for Kata No. 3 (Kata C), one of the students shouted out that I should be teaching it, and I replied that they should know it, given that there was a grading in four days, and I would make any necessary corrections after reviewing it. The argument attracted the attention of the chief instructor (D.F.), who came over and asked what the problem was. After listening, he just said to the group, “Kata number 3 – bow”, at which point the student said ‘That’s enough’ and walked out of the hall. D.F. said to me, ‘we won’t see him again’. However, there was a lot of private discussion and begging over the week by the student with D.F., who insisted that I receive an apology before he was let back into the club. He did, the next week, saying he had had a bad day.
I have been relatively fortunate in only having minor injuries caused by the Karate training. I have had bruised ribs from a knee strike demonstration, and during sparring as an orange belt, I tried to catch a kick, but the kick ended up impacting my outstretched middle finger, causing a severe sprain, which didn’t help with my keyboard playing in a rock band at the time. When sparring as a brown belt, I attempted a reverse roundhouse kick and slipped, falling on my wrist off the mat ( what no breakfall? ), causing an injury to it, though it was more chronic than acute and lasted for weeks, at which time I decided to see a doctor.
After examining it and performing some manipulation, he asked how I had injured it, and when I told him it was from Karate, his manner changed, and he dismissed me, saying it would probably get better over time.
Although not a full WTH, I was impressed with my karate peer, Mark Harrison, for answering a WTH question from a teenager who had been training for a few weeks at Banstead Karate club, around 1988.
“When do we learn how to kill people”?
“Maybe next week”
Life Style 
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