In the door I walked from Karate on Tuesday night and I was into the struggle of showering, dressing, staying warm and getting under a duvet quickly. It’s a thing in my head. Don’t worry I do pay my heating bills 🙂 Somewhere along the way I looked at my phone and my heart dropped. This was the sort of shock that makes you sit down quickly. News from Ireland. Sensei Brendan Perry had died.

I was very lucky to find his dojo when I moved to Dublin and I was, for many years the crazy person who did the junior and senior class every night. The reason for this was Brendan. I cannot imagine what his family, dojo instructors and friends are going through. I had exactly the shame shock when Rob McGrath (my Uncle also passed suddenly) and it’s something that I can only send my best wishes and offer to help in any small way that I can.

Over the last few days, since the news broke, many have voiced their kind words and I thought I would add to that in the only way I know how, by sharing some stories. The first time I went to Ballyrown Dojo Brendan welcomed me with open arms. He knew I had trained a lot with Sensei Kase and mentioned that he had trained with him also. We shared some stories and it turned out we had been on the same courses! Many years later he would forward the picture on the right to me!

To anyone who will listen, I have rated Brendan as one of the best dojo instructors I have ever met. In fact, this was one of the reasons that kept me going back time after time. The first of these has to be his desire to continually evolve his training. Brendan was completely open to influence from trusted sources, in more than one class he mentioned that “good is good” and “fighting is fighting”, no matter the source. He would compare styles of Karate to rooms in a house, saying that different styles were all seeking the same thing, just that we were in different rooms in the same house. With this thinking our training constantly included elements that would make us better karateka and add to our overall experiences.

He also didn’t suffer any sort of stupidity or discrimination. I joined my first gasshuku in Tokyo and was behind a “Senior Grade” who turned, saw me, looked me up and down (cartoon style) then tried to walk off. Brendan and actually Sensei Aragane saw this, and made it very clear that this was not appropriate behaviour. As we bowed, Brendan told me to “get stuck in” and advised my rather sheepish partner to “you’d better block”.

Countless phrases from his classes have worked their way into my own teaching vernacular, and especially for the kids, it would transcend to their lives outside of karate. “Make sure you get the best seat in the house and all the information you need to be successful”. I don’t know how many times I heard this in class, this, for the kids was advice to ensure that they would sit close to demonstrations (stay attentive) and ask questions. It was not unusual for a kid to be stood up to explain a technique in their language. We all learned.

With the Seniors it was similar, grading candidates were just that, candidates for the year or so before a dan grading, expected to have a notebook (with notes) and able to answer questions at a moment’s notice. Everyone was expected to have their own training regime, outside of Karate. I don’t know how many times I heard that “Karate on its own won’t make you fit”. He was, of course right and when I took my training way to far, arriving to training very cold and tired from a long run, sat me out, sent me to the shop at the end of the row by the community centre, then watched me drink and sat with me whilst we reviewed my training plan.

One thing he was very clear about was his thoughts when people would meet him out and about in Dublin and ask him if he was still training. He didn’t mind that they were not, but he hated the thought that people would ask him as he said he would be training, ironically, until the day he died. There were times people would show up to training with the worst hangover having met him out in Dublin on a Saturday night. It was not a good idea to miss training with “just a hangover”.

Finally, my time in Dublin came to an end and at my last class, I was asked if I had anything to say. I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I had to mention it. See, for years, Brendan had used the phrase, “mass over velocity equals force”. He would speak about bullets and speed and this story was told over and over for years and years. As the kids got older and were doing physics you could see the eyes catching each other around the class. No one ever corrected him. So, my last lesson, I got up the nerve and much laughing followed. He was like that, didn’t mind laughing at himself, most of the time.

When Rob (my Uncle, Karate person also) passed away, he was the first to reach out, with kind things to say and he was no different when I had my cancer diagnosis and started sharing my struggles and wins online. In lockdown, I joined his classes and again learned loads. I even taught a class for him! We laughed about going to Japan, the time we lost a load of kids in the Tokyo train system and walking into a “night club” in Tokyo with a load of cadets.

I’ve come across few who can inspire and influence both inside and out of Karate. I send my sincerest condolences and hugs to his family, Kaizen Dojo, and everyone who knew him. I will leave with one final line, in class one day, a young student asked why we attacked from kamae because, “none of the boys in his school would take a swing like dat”, you have to imagine the Dublin accent. Once the laughing and giggling subsided, he said, “yeah, if someone does that on the street go buy a lottery ticket, your luck is in”.