Episode 998- Mr. Chris Rickard
In this episode, Andrew sits down and chats with Chris Rickard about his training as a child, his break, and how his daughter inspired him to start training again.
Mr. Chris Rickard - Episode 998
SUMMARY
In this episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, host Andrew Adams interviews Chris Rickard, who shares his journey into martial arts, his experiences with different schools, and his involvement with Whistlekick. The conversation covers reflections on the impact of martial arts in Chris's life. In this conversation, Chris Rickard shares his journey through martial arts, discussing the challenges he faced, the importance of teaching, and how his experiences have shaped him both as a martial artist and a teacher. He reflects on the role of curriculum in martial arts training, the transition to teaching, and the impact of family on his martial arts journey. Chris also emphasizes the significance of community engagement through tournaments and the motivation that keeps him training. He concludes with thoughts on future aspirations and encourages others to find their path in martial arts.
TAKEAWAYS
The importance of finding the right fit in martial arts schools.
Chris's journey into martial arts began in the mid-90s.
He started listening to podcasts to connect with his interests.
Chris's daughter inspired him to explore martial arts again.
The significance of community in martial arts training.
Chris's experiences in different martial arts styles shaped his journey.
He emphasizes the value of personal growth through martial arts.
College presented new challenges for Chris's training.
Finding a new dojo felt like coming home for Chris.
Teaching martial arts requires a different skill set than practicing it.
Having a clear curriculum can enhance the learning experience for students.
Patience and self-awareness are crucial in both teaching and martial arts.
Community engagement through tournaments can foster a sense of belonging.
Motivation to train often comes from personal growth and helping others.
Transitioning to teaching martial arts can be a rewarding experience.
Family involvement in martial arts can create lasting bonds.
Exploring different styles can lead to finding the right fit for individuals.
Continuous learning and adaptation are key to long-term success in martial arts.
CHAPTERS
02:00 Chris's Journey into Martial Arts
7:52 Early Martial Arts Experiences
13:55 College Years and New Challenges
19:59 Finding a New Home in Martial Arts
22:37 The Journey of a Martial Artist
24:37 Overcoming Challenges in Training
27:13 Teaching and Learning in Martial Arts
30:14 The Role of Curriculum in Martial Arts
33:30 Transitioning to Teaching Martial Arts
27:00 Family and Martial Arts
38:24 Tournaments and Community Engagement
39:53 Motivation and Personal Growth
43:10 Future Aspirations in Martial Arts
45:36 Closing Thoughts and Encouragement
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.
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Show Transcript
Andrew (04:16.303)
Welcome, you're listening to the next episode of Whistlekick martial arts radio and I am your host for the day, Andrew Adams. Jeremy is off today and so here I am filling in his shoes. Luckily we wear the same size, we have the same size feet so that works out pretty well. And today we're joined by Mr. Chris Rickard. Chris, nice to see you today.
Chris Rickard (04:39.086)
Nice to see you, Andrew.
Andrew (04:40.839)
And for all you listeners that may be new I want to encourage you to check out whistle kick martial arts radio comm where you'll find all the information on this episode and every episode that we've had In perpetuity they will always go there and each episode will have its own page show notes on information on the guests and how the episode went maybe some other photos and If you want to check out everything that whistle kick does you can check out whistle kick comm
to find out all of the things that we do, whether it's events or books that we have for sale or merchandise. And if you do go there, please check out, when you check out, use the code podcast15. You can save yourself 15 % on anything in, pretty much anything in our store. I think events are the only thing you can't. And it really helps us to connect, educate and entertain all of the martial artists of the world, which of course is our...
mission statement here at Whistlekick. So Chris, it's great to see you. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. You have been a long time listener of the show. I know you've been involved behind the scenes for a long time. Why don't we start there? How did you get involved with Whistlekick? And then we'll talk about your Marshall journey.
Chris Rickard (05:42.616)
It's great to be here. Long time coming.
Chris Rickard (06:00.378)
if this is going to come as a shocker to anyone, Andrew, I know it'll be you. I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. However you want to say it. my day job is I teach high school chemistry and a public school in New Jersey. And at one point, my now wife and I, when we were dating, we're living in completely different States. And that can be a little bit tricky. And one thing that I found to spend my time was podcasts.
I would listen to podcasts and I built that habit in like the mid 2000s. So like 2025, 20, 20, no, that's next year. That's, this is going to be awesome. like 2005, 2006, I started listening to podcasts and my daughter was born in 2012 and
Andrew (06:42.887)
You
Chris Rickard (06:57.482)
when she was in preschool, there was a local martial arts school that came and did a seminar like once or twice a year with them to expose the kids, drum up business, the whole deal. And it was really good. And she had seen some stuff on TV, watching PBS. There was like this karate tiger guy that I don't remember the name of at this point. And she would show some interest and she would start to sort of mimic some of it.
And I had done martial arts previously. So it was like, definitely like you're watching you like, okay, does she really want to do this? Or is she just getting my hopes up kind of thing? And as a result, again, she's around five or so. She's like, I think I want to do this. And my wife was fully supportive, looked at the school that had come in and done the demos for her daycare preschool and
It wasn't a good match for my daughter. It was a little bit too loud, a little bit too energetic. And after that school, we stopped at another school because again, for as much as there's a joke, there's a martial arts school on every block. This was more like a half mile to a mile away. And we went in and it was exactly the kind of school that would work well for my daughter and would work well for me to be truthful. And
Andrew (08:23.004)
Hmm.
Chris Rickard (08:25.27)
So signing up and getting through all that. And then just like anything else, when I dive into something, I will start doing the deep dive. And so now, okay, we're back in martial arts. Okay, let's start looking up the martial arts podcasts. And whistle kick came up as one of the top hits, started listening. And this was back when it was really just Jeremy doing interview after interview after interview. And yeah, that was how I first got it.
And later on, Jeremy had asked, I believe the question was something along the lines of if Whistlekick had an infinite budget, what what could Whistlekick do? Like what things should be on his idea? And I kicked in and shot him an email. I was like, hey, this isn't really infinite budget idea, kind of is. But it's that idea of record the video in person and then
After the episode is over, take another five minutes, 10 minutes with the person being interviewed and have them show you something. Like if there was something that they wanted to be known for, because again, whistle kick is definitely style agnostic. It's never telling anyone the right way to do something. It's always about exploring ideas. And this would be a way of exploring an idea or at times like even maybe
Andrew (09:32.742)
Mmm.
Chris Rickard (09:51.906)
trying to preserve something that is unique to that person that was being interviewed, that once they're gone, it might be gone with them. And it was that idea. And that conversation led to just some other conversations. And there was a hiccup or two along the way, like trying to do something similar, but it never really caught traction. And I started doing other things as far as Whistlekick was concerned.
Andrew (10:16.263)
Yep. So, in the early days, there weren't video at all. We've obviously transitioned to now all of the episodes are released in video. So at least we've gotten it there. there have been some in-person interviews. So, you know, we're, getting closer, I guess, but you said something interesting that I want to go back to. You mentioned that when you were going around looking at schools with your daughter,
You had already prior Trent, you had had prior training, which I want to go back to that, but because you had training, were you specifically looking for things specific school type for your daughter?
Chris Rickard (10:57.826)
I will say I wasn't looking for a particular style like Taekwondo versus Tang Sudo versus any one of the specific flavors of karate or anything like that. But I've been in enough martial arts schools and trained at least for a short period in enough places that I know what the right martial arts school for me feels like.
almost the moment that you walk in the door and I'm pretty sure you have a similar experience like you can walk in you can watch class for five or ten minutes and you already know whether it's a good fit for you or not and it's not a judgment as to whether the school is a good school or a bad school it's like ice cream flavors some people like chocolate some people like vanilla some people want the peanut butter cup magic 13 ingredients kind of thing and you just know which one is the right fit for you and
That's really what it came down to is that first school wasn't a good fit for her. I could see it was a good fit for a number of people because the class size was solid. They had instructors that were motivated. They were doing the right things for their group. It's just my daughter wasn't someone inclined for that.
Andrew (12:11.943)
Now, let's rewind all the way back. How did you initially get involved in martial arts in general?
Chris Rickard (12:20.238)
Okay, arts in general started for me in the mid 90s. so I mean, 1994 timeframe, my dad was a big Chuck Norris movie fan. And I remember him, like we'd go to the video store, and this was before Blockbuster even. And there'd be whatever movie in the kids section that my sister and I could get. My sister's two years younger than I am.
and a lot of times he would get a Chuck Norris movie. And it didn't matter which one, was just that that was gonna be the way that he was gonna unwind after he had to sit through a kids movie. And when we got to high school...
My dad decided that he wanted my sister to be able to handle herself if something unfortunate should happen. And this isn't a situation where we were in a bad neighborhood or anything like that. Like I grew up in a nice rural, technically it was a city, but I think that's more of a technicality that the population hit the right number at one point kind of thing. And there was a small
school opening up nearby that my dad knew the person that was running it, at least tangentially. And it was, Price was right. Like that was another factor. And he wanted me to start at the same time so that my sister wouldn't be the only one and she wouldn't feel that it was just her. And I was like, yes, please.
This is awesome. I would love this. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, the whole thing. Like, let's go. and it was an old school style school. It was Hopkido, which for me, it's, I don't know what that means. That's great. and it turns out that the instructors that were running the school also had a background in Tang Soo Do at the time. we did a lot of grappling.
Chris Rickard (14:29.718)
We did a lot of conditioning. We did a lot of jumping, a lot of kicking. And one thing that we didn't do was forms. They, that was not on their curriculum. That wasn't on their plan. They had the plan up on the wall. There were all of the different ranks up to black belt. And there was the list of everything that you needed to know. And.
Andrew (14:40.721)
Hmm.
Chris Rickard (14:57.964)
I remember going from white belt to yellow stripe. There were 17 kicks as a part of it. Like that's, that's the part that sticks for me. and it's all the classic kicks that you would think of the front kick, the sidekick, the backside kick, things like that. and it was rough. was
It was a kid's class, or I should say it was a teen's class. They broke it up. really younger kids, teens, and then there were adult classes as well. And one of the interesting things I came to find out a little bit later is they actually had a special needs class as well, which in the mid nineties, I don't think was really the norm, but it played into a background of a handful of the instructors. And so they made a point of making it a point and.
So I'm in the teens class. I've got a couple of friends that are in it. My sister's in it. A couple of her friends are in it and all. And it was great. Had a blast. I think over two or three years, I think I made it to my yellow belt. Like it was definitely that old school of the, no, you're going to be at this belt until I tell you that you are ready to move on. And before I graduated high school,
Andrew (16:17.735)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (16:24.322)
I was in the marching band. was on the volleyball team a couple of things. And if you know me, me being on the volleyball team should be funny because I'm a whopping five foot eight, but missed a couple of classes because of when the classes were. And I got to go to the adult class a couple of times to make it up. And that was when I realized it was a different world. It was the same things, but the intensity, the application and everything. It was two levels above where they were teaching the teens.
Andrew (16:32.615)
you
Chris Rickard (16:54.476)
It was cause I called this, I kind of wish I could have been okay for this, but I wasn't old enough and that was that. unfortunately going away to college, I had to take a step back because I couldn't commute back and forth, didn't have the car and I didn't have a Hopkins school at college. So that was sort of where that intro sort of died off a little bit.
Andrew (17:22.289)
Gotcha. Now you started training in as a teenager with your sister. How did that affect the dynamic of your training being there with your sister?
Chris Rickard (17:37.122)
I don't know it was actually an issue for us at all. I took to it, I enjoyed it. She had a ballet background, so there were definitely some things that she took to a little bit better. I don't, she never really...
got addicted to it, I guess, in the same way that I did. Like, I was really enjoying it. She also was running cross country and stuff at the time, so it was more for her just a thing that she did. But for me, it was a thing that I wanted to do, I think is a good way of putting it.
Andrew (18:11.151)
Hmm. Hmm. Got it. Now that gives you that brings us up into your late teens, early 20s up through college. Where do you go after that?
Chris Rickard (18:26.782)
So college, I thought I was way better at martial arts than I was. And this is one of the things that I can now say as a 40 something year old guy that I wouldn't have been comfortable admitting when I was in my 20s. I originally started off joining the Ishen Roo Karate Club at Penn State. Go Lions. And I thought I was hot stuff because I was with the sparring sort of things.
Andrew (18:31.291)
Hmm.
Andrew (18:46.991)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (18:56.45)
tossing their brown belts around and things like that to the point where like, okay, who are you? Why do you have a white belt? Like how long have you been training and everything like that. And so again, like high school guy ego was out beyond where it should have been.
Then it came time for the first belt testing. And it was all based on could you do the kata? Like we're gonna watch you do the kata and that's your test. And we're not even watching you as individuals, it was as part of the group. And it was Seisan. I thought I knew it and apparently I didn't, or at least not well enough. And...
After the test is over, like I went to one of the instructors, not the head instructor, but one of the others, it was like, what did I do wrong? Like I thought I had this, like, tell me what I need to do. And he's like flipping through, looking at notes and he's like, it was your back foot.
I'm sorry, what? Your back foot. You weren't 10 toes forward. Our standard is 10 toes straight forward during this kata. Okay. I have an issue though. Okay, what's that? I like, I broke my leg right at the end of third grade. And when they reset my leg, my toes don't point straight forward anymore. I'm like, so I'm off at a little bit of an angle. And he's like, okay.
That doesn't change anything for today, but we'll keep that in mind going forward, but try to, again, you can compensate a little bit. It's not ideal, but try to get those 10 toes forward. Okay. I can do that. So end of the semester comes around. It's time for the next test. And I put a lot of effort into making sure that my 10 toes were forward. Like that, that was the thing for me. And end of the test happens and
Chris Rickard (21:02.03)
Okay, great. And then I don't get called for having passed the test again. Okay. So afterward I go to one of the other instructors and like, what happened? Like, let me know what I did wrong. And he's like, well, what we noticed is when you were in your stance, your knee was cocked in. Like your knees weren't pointing forward the way they should have been.
on your back leg. I'm like, okay. I'm like, let me tell you something that may not have been communicated. And I like mentioned the whole thing about the broken leg. Like, so I can either have 10 toes forward or my knee can be forward. I can't do both physically. And he's like, oh, okay. We'll, we'll keep that in mind going forward. I'm like, you know what? Like I, it was one was like, that was enough for me.
Andrew (21:46.0)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (22:00.534)
at that point, was just deciding it wasn't a good match. and another part that factored in is being a chemistry major. I didn't have time in my schedule based on where some of my chem labs were to keep going in the spring with the same. it was going to conflict with the club nights, so I wasn't going to be able to attend. And so that was just where I sort of fell away from there. And I will say now.
Like I have that better appreciation for it. I really wish I had been able to stick around and learn more, but it was me. It wasn't them. And I'll admit it. Tried some other things here and there while I was in college. And while I was grad school, tried taekwondo for a little bit, but again, schedule just wasn't working out for that. I ended up moving eventually to Maryland and I got a job.
down in the Annapolis area. And one day, because I was in charge of doing computer stuff, the computer consultant would come in and would do our backups and everything for us. We got to talking and he's like, you used to do martial arts? I was like, yeah. And had a similar conversation to what we just did. And he's like, okay. He's like, I've got somebody I want you to check out. And he's like, I think.
It's the right place for you. And I'm like, okay, great. Like I'm not doing anything that way right now. I'd love to get back into it. I'm at a stable enough point. I've got free time because I'm a single guy and my girlfriend is in another state. Sure. Why not? And so he points me to master Al Gauthier. And that was one Andrew that I will say is that moment when you walk into a new school or you walk into schools like
This is home. Like I walked in. I almost didn't need to like watch the lesson before I was like, yep, here, take my money. Sign me up. Like this is it. It was a two car garage worth of space that he had turned into a dojo at his house. wood fireplace in the middle, along the wall in order to heat it up. The weapon racks, the whole deal. And he was a Korean compilation style.
Andrew (23:59.047)
Mm.
Chris Rickard (24:27.576)
called Hanguk Musul, which basically just means Korean National Martial Art to a certain extent. And I was there with him for three years and learned so much. It was great. I managed to earn my black belt before I was moving away because in the time that this is all going on, I start dating my now wife. We got engaged.
And her rule was we had to be living in the same state in order to get married, which I think is a fair rule. Reasonable. And she really liked her boss at the time. I wasn't a huge fan of my boss at the time. And cost of living in both of our areas was pretty high, but around where her mom lives in South Jersey, cost of living was a lot lower. So was one those like, okay, I think.
Andrew (25:03.259)
reasonable.
Chris Rickard (25:26.966)
we can make this work if we end up around where her mom is. And that's what we did. So.
That was me transitioning out of the style that for the longest of times I really like I would have referred to that as my style. The Hanguk Musul. Like if you ask me, that's what I did. It's Korean. It's a compilation of Hapkido and Tang Soo Do as well as Qigong and a variety of other things like it defensive tactics. It was fun. It was a lot. It was perfect for me at that point in my life. And
Andrew (25:47.975)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (26:06.456)
Then I moved to South Jersey. And again, being from Pennsylvania, I will make jokes about South Jersey, but we'll hold off on those for now. And there was a local Tang-Sudo school that I ended up joining. And there was a lot of overlap with the forms. It was a school that had had a person or two along the way that had also joined on the Olympic team for Taekwondo because enough overlap that
Andrew (26:12.999)
you
Chris Rickard (26:37.088)
It worked. And so it was a very different focus than what I was used to, but I had enough appreciation to see all the positives on it. The downside was when I started teaching at the high school that I'm still teaching at now, I couldn't make it work with my teaching schedule. It was just, I didn't have enough time because a first year teacher, you're in over your head and everyone knows that you're in over your
Andrew (26:37.126)
Mm.
Chris Rickard (27:06.262)
And so I had to step back from that and never got back in there. And then eventually fast forward another, we'll say roughly six years or so. My daughter's born. And then we get back into the story that we started off the episode with. So that gets us caught up to today for the most part.
Andrew (27:23.174)
Yeah.
Okay, so here's something that I found interesting about your journey is you started training at what age roughly?
Chris Rickard (27:37.374)
Let's say 14.
Andrew (27:38.759)
14 and you went off to college at I'm assuming 18. So you'd trained for four years, which is not a ton of time, especially in a 14 year old slide. I mean, percentage wise it is, but you know, when you're at that age, you've got, you're being pulled in so many different directions and you go off to college and you have your own admission, feel like you're a much better martial artist than you were. And then you have, you're given this, this
challenge kind of like, you know, get your toes pointing forward because you failed the, the exam and then fast forward to the next exam, you're failed for a different reason, but it's a related. That would be really easy for a student to say, you know what? That's it. I'm done. I've this, you forget it. I'm out of here. Like I'm never doing this again, but you didn't, you stuck with it. Not necessarily with that group, but
You know, can you talk a little bit about what was going through your head at that point?
Chris Rickard (28:44.382)
I if we want to go into the why I didn't just call it quits at that point, I had had such a positive experience with my first school where again, it was grappling, was sparring, was joint locks, things like that. And then the club was very opposite in my mind where I would have said my Hoppocketo school was a very soft style.
The club was a very hard, rigid version of things. My hap-kido school didn't focus on kata. The club had a really strong emphasis on kata. Like I remember the beginning of class after a warmup was everybody that was there that night would start off and we'd all do the first kata together. And then anyone that knew the second kata stayed on the floor and everyone else.
bowed off and you did calisthenics or other things while everyone else is going through their kata. So it was really kata focused. And that gave it a separation for me where it wasn't martial arts as a whole. It was this style of martial arts. And so for the longest time when I was sort of looking, I kept trying to look for a small, soft style school.
Andrew (29:54.95)
Hmm.
Chris Rickard (30:06.39)
rather than the hard style school. And when I tried the Taekwondo school, when I was in grad school, that was an attempt to be like, you know what, I'm going to give this another try. Maybe it's going to work. And I wasn't really there long enough to see if it was a good fit for me or not. But being back was like that. I enjoy this. I still enjoy this. I still remember some stuff. I like this. And
Then again, as we fast forward to when I was out there outside of Annapolis and Maryland, that school had a bunch of Cata and I had matured enough that I could look at it and be like, okay, this isn't the only thing we do, but it's an important thing and I was appreciating it a bit more for what it was more than what I did.
or more than what I would have when I was in college.
Andrew (31:13.771)
Got it. Okay, and that makes sense. know, no your personality I think that makes that makes a lot of sense now the other the other thing that I found interesting was you And I don't know of another school to do that does this I'm sure that there are but you mentioned the first school that you went to They had their entire curriculum on the wall Right to get your first rank. You need to do all of these things and and not only was it you
public that you could go and find me. I've seen schools that have a book that you could look at, it's on the wall. How much do you think that played a part in your enjoying that school because you could see what you needed to do?
Chris Rickard (31:56.788)
It definitely set up the, okay, so wait, what do I still need to know for this next rank? And you have that, I'll say like Christmas morning kind of thing of when am going to get to unwrap it? Like, when are you going to show me that thing? I know that it's up there and it has a name, but it doesn't tell me how to do it on the wall. It's just the name and they weren't the like
hand grasping swallow's tail or something like that. It was like, it is the front kick. It is the sidekick. It is the self-devance combination number one. Like it was all very plain English and everything. and so that was interesting because it gave you that idea of what the instructors were looking for. It didn't tell you when you were going to get it.
And once you had everything checked off on the list, it also didn't mean that you were testing right away. was the, when you're ready, we'll let you know that you're ready and don't ask us because if you have to ask us, you're obviously not ready.
But it also gave you that perspective of being able to look down, okay, sheet 10, sheet nine, sheet eight, all the way up. was like the, wow, there's a lot of stuff that you need to know in order to get to those higher ranks and eventually a black belt rank. that's, and you're sort of like doing the math as well as like the, this is a long-term commitment and some people liked it, other people not as much, but.
Andrew (33:29.511)
Hmm.
Chris Rickard (33:30.358)
It was really interesting though to see the whole progression. And you could also see that at times some of the techniques you learned at the lower ranks were coming back at the higher ranks as a combination where it was like you'd have to do this, this and this all in a quick sequence kind of thing. So you could see how the pieces started to fit together as well.
Andrew (33:51.207)
Hmm. Now you mentioned earlier that you are a science teacher. Um, do you feel that your martial training helped you as a teacher and vice versa? Do you feel like being a teacher, whether it's a science teacher or not has transgressed into your martial training at all?
Chris Rickard (34:14.7)
I think in the beginning, my martial training helped me be ready for the teacher, like being the classroom teacher, not because it was necessarily the teacher teaching part of it, because I've been tutoring since I was in high school and that kind of a thing. But the patience and the calm and the dealing with somebody that's a bit riled up.
or you feel yourself becoming bit riled up, it's like, nope, not the right time, not the right place. Dial it back. Just that self-awareness in the beginning was really important. One of the things that I will say that I appreciate is that I haven't had to use my martial techniques for the most part while teaching. I've only ever had to help break up two fights and they weren't
Andrew (35:03.547)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (35:12.962)
fights that I would be nervous about trying to be in the middle of to break up. It's people aren't pulling out weapons or anything like that. I'm in a good school district and all. It's become something at times that I've been able to relate to my students about because some of them study martial arts or interested or again, who doesn't like a good action movie kind of thing? For now, it's been longer now.
Seven years ago, I had a student in my chemistry class that also studied at the same martial arts school that I do now, and he outranked me, which became really amusing for me. It was always a little bit awkward for him because I can transition back and forth as far as that. In this setting, I outrank you. In that other setting, you outrank me, and that's fine. It doesn't...
Andrew (35:54.024)
Chris Rickard (36:11.704)
phase me in the least because different settings, different rules, you know more of that, I know more of this and vice versa. Like it was easy, but it was always weird for him. It was like having to call me one thing in one place and call me another thing in another place. And that's been fun.
Now that I've stepped into more of a assistant instructor role in my current school, all of my years of experience teaching high school sciences definitely plays a bigger role for me when I'm in the dojo as well. That some of the classroom management and some of the trying to figure out how to reword things especially.
Like I've been able to fine tune that a lot more in my high school teaching and then being able to take that skill set over into the martial arts of the like, okay, you're not understanding it when I say it this way, when I show you this way. Let's think of it like this. I want you to try to think of it this way instead. And then you see the light bulb go on or then you hear the pad smack the way that you want to hear the focus smack and things like that. Like that's, it definitely plays back and forth.
Andrew (37:29.511)
Yep. Now, what's your training like look like these days? Like, you know, you're you've been at the same school for a number of years. You mentioned you started becoming an assistant instructor. You know, what what was that transition like?
Chris Rickard (37:47.784)
in the beginning, it was definitely a bit of an ego boost. I'll admit it. walking in. So we started my daughter and I at the school in November of 2017. And I've been with them since she had her little dragons class, which was then followed by, the basic level class, which was all ages. And so it'd be her class and then it would be my class and.
It was a lot of fun. I'm sitting there in the parent gallery during the kids class because you're allowed to watch and everything. And I'm there with my notebook and I'm taking notes. Like I'm doing all the things that a geek does and a teacher does. was like, okay, so wait, what order is Sensei doing the warmups in? Is this a different order than the other day? Like, and all that. And Sensei Fran knew that I was a teacher.
because we had had that discussion early on. She knew that I had a background. And so then she's got me coming out on the mat with the little kids. Again, another adult in the room when you have a kid's class is never a bad thing for the most part. And so I'm helping out that way. And before long, I was accepted into our associations, what we call CIT program, so certified instructor training.
because they do put effort into trying to help teach people how to teach. Because doing martial arts is one thing, teaching martial arts is another thing. There's overlap. Some people are better at overlap and some people can't overlap. And so they got me involved with that. And especially when we were getting to four school events, because locally in our style, there are four schools, sister schools that we will get together.
Andrew (39:21.927)
Hmm.
Chris Rickard (39:43.328)
a couple times every season essentially and do a tournament or a board breaking event or things like that. And so there'd be this yellow belt, orange belt up there that was at the end of the CIT line. And like, you're definitely getting like weird looks like who's this guy and why is he there? And then people got to know me like, okay. It's like that. Yeah. PS like I had a black belt in another style too. So if I don't look like a normal or like your typical yellow belt or orange belt,
there's reason to lie, just get to talk and we'll explain it. It's no big deal. But again, like I'm not trying to demand that I should have a black belt from day one either. Like that's no, I've been out of this long enough. I'm rusty enough, like, and I don't know your style at all. It's not what I trained in. Bring me up. And it's been great. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And especially once I got my
first degree black belt. I'm up in front of the room more often. There's usually a night or two a week where I can be one of the people that's responsible for making sure the class happens and everything like that. And it's just, it's a lot of fun.
Andrew (40:58.853)
Now, is your daughter still training?
Chris Rickard (41:00.928)
Unfortunately, no. When she was going to transition out of the Little Dragons class into the Basics class, Basics was more martial arts than she wanted. She enjoyed Sensei Fran. She enjoyed the game level that we had in the Dragons class. And she was also in dance classes at the time. And she decided, you know what, this isn't fun for me right now.
I'm really enjoying the dance. Can I just do dance? And so this was right around when she was going into first grade. It was like, sure, not a problem. And she continues to dance to this day at this point. that's, she's always done it and she knows that she's always welcome to come back. She's done like a board breaking event once or twice, just for fun, mixed success because as you get older, the boards get bigger, they get thicker.
Andrew (41:51.591)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (41:57.964)
gets a little bit more challenging and if you haven't actively been practicing, it doesn't go as well as maybe you would have thought it might.
Andrew (42:05.445)
Yeah, now you mentioned that your school, your current school has three or four or four other sister schools and you get together to do tournament thing, you know, every every year or so. Do you? Does your school go to other tournaments or have you gone to other tournaments outside of those?
Chris Rickard (42:24.302)
Um, my school, so like my location, we'll call it the Mullica Hill location. It does have people that are more often starting to go out to other non-affiliated tournaments, more open tournaments. And part of that is because, um, the gentleman that I think of as my lead instructor right now, Sensei Aiden, he went to the local college and was involved with their, um, karate club, martial arts club.
and they were doing tournaments. And so him having that exposure, he wanted it to be more available to anyone in our school that wanted to do it. And so we do start to branch out. I know a couple of the other affiliated schools with us have some individuals, but it's not like we generally put together a big team and go to an open or anything like that. It's available, but not as taken advantage of as maybe it could be.
Andrew (43:23.237)
Hmm, interesting. And you should try to figure out where I was going to go from here. I'm going to this down so I can remember.
Andrew (43:46.459)
What keeps you motivated currently to still train?
Chris Rickard (43:53.55)
I'm a better person when I'm training and my wife will completely support me in that statement. She knows when it's been too long since I've made it to the dojo to really work out and everything like that. Like, fortunately during that whole 2020-21, we did the Zoom classes and things like that. So you got to still have that involvement and it wasn't just a dead stop to a certain extent.
But like if it's been a week or two and I have been able to make it to class, she knows it and she reminds me like, and I appreciate it every time she does.
Chris Rickard (44:36.418)
I forget where I was going with this one. Andrew, help me out.
Andrew (44:38.631)
You know, so the question was what keeps you training currently?
Chris Rickard (44:44.288)
Okay. So yeah, better me is definitely a part of it. Helping other people along their journey is another big part of it. again, when you can help a student, especially the younger kids gain that self-confidence, get those light bulbs to click on where you know that they're like, 10 minutes ago, I couldn't do this and now I can do it. Like that's a great feeling. And
Helping to be one of the people that keeps it available as an option is a big deal. Helping out the adult students as well that are toward the beginning of their journey. Because again, they came in because their kids came in or something. And learning martial arts when you're in your forties and fifties is different than when you are single digits or in your teens. there's, yeah, it's not a big stretch to say that it's a different thing. So.
Being able to be the adult in the room that is again, thirties, forties, fifties, be like, yeah, no, this works a little bit differently for us. And here's for where you're at. Here's how we can help you make it work for you. And then you keep moving toward this, toward that. One of the other things that keeps it interesting for me honestly, is all the whistle kick stuff, the free training days, the Marshall summit, and the people that I've met.
and the people that I've shared with, trained with, that's fun. They're outside my style and most of the people that I've worked with have all been very receptive to helping each other out, trading information. And again, that whole thing of, this is the way that we do it. I'm not saying that what you're doing is wrong. We just do it differently. And...
maybe we do it differently because it's a different style or maybe it's because of body type or things like that. And maybe it's just because we're looking at things a little bit differently as well. And so being able to interact with some of those people and their energy, their enthusiasm definitely helps as well.
Andrew (46:59.075)
And where do you go from here? What's next for you in the future? If we were to get together in five years and do another interview, what would you hope to be saying?
Chris Rickard (47:10.808)
I'm still doing it. That's my biggest hope because that's one thing that I will say is I have had those periods in my life where I have stepped away and it's not stepping away for a week or so. It's stepping away for a couple of years or a decade to a certain extent. And the amount that you lose even in six months or a year, like, yeah, you can get most of it back most of the way, but the best way to keep
improving is to just keep doing it day by day by day. I don't want to have to say that I got injured or something and that put me out for a year or something like that. I want to be able to say I've been able to train. This is where I was. There's some things that I used to be able to do that I probably can't do because again, five years from now is five years older. But here's the other things that I've learned in the meantime. This is the new depth.
of knowledge that I have. This is what I understand that I didn't understand before. This is what I've been exposed to that I wasn't before. If it involves a rank change, yay. If it doesn't, I still learned the whole time. That's what it is. The rank to me for a certain extent is more so for other people to know where you're at. And I know where I'm at. And that's really what matters.
Andrew (48:36.865)
And if people listening want to get in touch with you, there, know, the Instagram, any, any socials that you want to share with people?
Chris Rickard (48:44.84)
what I'll say is if they want to be in touch, if you don't mind, I'll ask them to get in touch with you and have you forward them to me. I try to avoid the social media as much as possible to a certain extent. Part of that comes with being a public school teacher as well. Like there's some things there. If you look for me on Facebook, you'll find me on Facebook, especially if you run in any of the whistle kick martial arts circles.
Andrew (49:02.439)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Rickard (49:13.154)
But yeah, that's what I'll say on that one.
Andrew (49:15.847)
And I'm gonna throw it back to you here to close, just to let the audience know, remind everybody that, you know, whistlekick.com does a lot of stuff. Whistlekick does a lot of stuff. You can go to whistlekick.com to find all that information. you know, Chris, what do you want to close out the episode with? What do you want our audience to take away from this?
Chris Rickard (49:36.82)
well, before I close and give you that one, how about I say, if you haven't checked out master hop kick, Check out master hop kick. It's unofficially whistle kick mascot. It's a story of a young man going through his karate journey has a adorable rabbit sidekick known as master hop kick, but we're not going to get into that. Part of the reason why I mentioned that is because it's great for kids.
Andrew (49:44.167)
you
Chris Rickard (50:05.292)
It's great for martial arts schools. And I may just have happened to have written a teacher's guide that accompanies it that you can purchase as well. So if I...
Andrew (50:13.831)
Talk a little bit about that. Talk a little bit about what that is.
Chris Rickard (50:18.678)
So Master Hop Kick, the book itself is a lot of short chapters written at a roughly like middle grade, late elementary level. And they're the sort of chapters that you could read in five minutes. So in a kid's class or even in an adult's class at a martial arts school, you could either assign the chapter or potentially have read the chapter.
If you have like before time, after time, when the kids are getting ready or just as a wind down. And so what I did was I took each one of those chapters and came up with discussion questions, reading questions that could be used to dig a little bit deeper. Okay. Well, what do you think our main character learned in this chapter? Things didn't go his way. How do think he's going to deal with it and letting helping kids explore?
those interpersonal relationships and everything like that, looking and saying, how do we overcome a challenge? What do we do when things don't go our way? And it's something that could be used in a traditional classroom as well. It doesn't have to be a dojo. And one of the nice things about it is that the main character spends most of his time in and around Australia. So for those of us in the United States, it gets us to focus on another part of the world a little bit as well.
we're going to look at a map and we're going to get a perspective of, well, this person's from here, this person's from here. Where really is that? And it's been a lot of fun. The second official book, Book of Master Hopkick is out. The third book is in process. And I have been reminded that I need to be working on that second teacher guide to go with it. Jenny, who's in charge of book division has been great.
The other Jenny that actually wrote the books, also awesome. But yeah, it's been an interesting opportunity for me. admittedly, it's kind of fun to see your name up on Amazon.
Andrew (52:27.495)
So yep, you can indeed purchase those through Amazon. You can also purchase them through whistlekick.com and you can use the code again, podcast one five, save yourself some money instead of going to Amazon. You could get it directly from us. That's great. So how do you want to leave the audience now?
Chris Rickard (52:45.866)
Leaving the audience, let's go with the idea of if you haven't started training, try look around, find a school near you. Whoops. look around, find a school near you and give it a try. If it doesn't feel right, look around, see if there's another school that maybe does give it a chance. If you are training, try not to stop. If you find that the style isn't right for you, there's
almost assuredly a style out there that would be a good fit for you, you just need to find it. And if you do have to stop because you can't attend whatever school you're going to, don't stop, stop. Like keep working on your stuff so that you don't lose it because who knows, maybe you're going back to a same school or maybe you do find that other next school for you later on and you'll be happy that you did.