Sensei Bill Hooper 4th Dan Shotokan

One of the things that can be said about Sensei Bill’s Karate and Self Defence lessons is that he never teaches the same type of lesson twice. Bill does not work from a set plan set down on paper or rehearsed in advance in his head. Instead he reacts to the way the students are performing on the night. The only pre-ideas he may have is that one night he will give a lesson all about street self-defence and another he may go over Kata and its applications. In this way the students never know what to expect and are therefore never bored with the same old lessons repeated endlessly.

Sensei Bill seldom goes over a grading syllabus either as he believes that anything he teaches in a lesson simply needs to be repeated by a student in their grading. This keeps the students on their mettle, keeps them keen to learn and keeps the club’s standard of karate very high. As Bill has been successfully teaching in this fashion since he passed his 1st Dan Black Belt under the Japanese in 1981 he feels that he must be doing something right!

Bill has a wealth of experience in Karate and has trained with a number of martial artists and combat experts over the years. These have included Senseis , Kanazawa, Asano, Aragana, Trimble, Kato and Enoeda. He has also been on courses with some of the British armed forces as well as the Israeli Special Forces and the Special Forces of the USA. So, apart from learning Shotokan based Karate Bill draws on his huge martial arts experience to teach the students some Jo-Jitsu, some Ju-Jitsu, some Bo-Jitsu, some Judo and some Aikido. He also teaches take-downs, hold-downs, pressure point attacks and street self defence.

Sensei Bill has a ready sense of humour and encourages the Karate Club to be sociable and for the students to have fun and enjoyment in their training. After all, people do this for pleasure!