This blog is a brain dump of my martial arts knowledge and experiences, particularly with Kyushindo Karate. I plan to add a new post each week, and they will be bite-sized rather than vast tomes, though the historical ones are an exception. Having retired in April 2025, I should have enough time for this goal.
It will cover history, techniques, opinions, experiences, self-protection, myths and fallacies, things I like or dislike, reviews, observations, anecdotes, and controversies.
This is a personal blog so it’s not an official or definitive view of Kyushindo Karate or any of its organisations.
I welcome any comments, whether it’s an agreement, a disagreement, or if something’s wrong (quite possible if it’s historical).
If there is one thing I regret, it’s not taking more photos or videos along the way.
You can view the current list of blog posts here.
Although I no longer worry about grades, I believe I have been graded a 7th Dan.
I favour the Chinese aspects of movement, flow, and calmness; hence, my parallel training in Bagua and, to a lesser extent, Tai Chi. I prefer unarmed kata so please don’t ask me about weapons kata.
I see myself as open-minded and enjoy researching other martial arts and self-protection. I am particularly opposed to the magical thinking often associated with self-defence instruction in mainstream martial arts.
I aim to become more efficient at performing and look to be as effective as possible, even if it’s outside of normal karate thinking. I very much doubt that my interpretation of Kyushindo Karate aligns with others. The Romsey club has morphed into a pragmatic martial arts club, combining both Japanese and Chinese principles.
I hate dogma and closed minds in the mainstream martial arts and I welcome accusations of disrespecting tradition. Martial arts is about people, not organisations. You shouldn’t justify doing techniques a particular way by simply stating that it has always been done that way. UNDERSTAND IT.
There are people who have had influences on my journey.
Martin Hardy – for ‘lighting the fire’ at the Surrey club.
(Martin is also responsible for recruiting Elaine Chapelhow as one of the many yearly sandwich students at our place of work.)
Ron Hancock from the Romsey Club was instrumental in motivating me to ‘teach’ Kyushindo Karate instead of just wanting to practice it.
James Allenby was a training partner in the early 2000s who motivated me to improve through his exceptional natural talent in martial arts. The restrictions sometimes imposed by clubs are often too much for gifted individuals to keep training long-term.
A lot of discussions with Sean McCrossen in my black belt and 1st Dan days helped make sense at the beginning of my real journey.
Paul Chapelhow
My family surname is ‘Brown’, but I changed it on marriage in 1993, so most of those I trained with in the 1980s won’t recognise me as ‘Chapelhow’.
Life Style 