The Yorkshire Terrier: An Interview with Chris Beanland

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By Pete Mills, on 25-01-2008 18:14

He still competes vehemently, and sees no sign of slowing down. “I was fighting some guys in Hereford last week,” Chris says over the phone in his strong West Yorkshire accent, “and the three of them were working as a tag team. Their combined ages didn’t even add up to 60, and they were really fast guys.” I ask him if he ever feels his age when he steps up to compete, and whether he has any training secrets or tips that he can pass on to future stalwarts who would love to kick and punch the same way that Chris does when they reach middle age? “You just have to train at their level and keep up with them. At the moment we’re training for the World Championship – we’re running three times a day and then hitting the bags. We fit our training into the evening as well, whereas most people will do a 9 to 5 and then train in the evening, we’ll train throughout the day. We do squad training with the national team twice a month, which is a two and a half hour session and it really takes it out of you!

“For the major competitions, they’ve introduced an executive division. Some people may think it is all old men, but these are fourth and fifth dans, and they’re all cracking fighters. One guy, I think he was 64 years old, could kick so fast and so high that he’d really give the young guys a run for their money. One guy at last year’s Champs was awarded his fifth dan on his 75th birthday. It’s all about self improvement. We like to fight young guys in major tournaments because it keeps you sharp. We don’t mind taking it to them, and I see no reason to stop.”

And neither should he; he feels as strong and focused now as he’s ever done throughout his whole Taekwondo career, which can be dated back to the early 1980s and the formation of the Taekwondo Association of Great Britain (TAGB). This is where he first crossed paths with his instructor Kenny Walton, who would go on to be a great inspiration and mentor during his fighting career. “Kenny is older than me. He was team captain, but I’ve seen him come along as a Coach and once, when he felt that two of his fighters weren’t up to scratch, he stepped in and took both of their places! I’ve seen him fight some of the best Lau Gar fighters and come out on top. He’s had a go at everything; he’s done freestyle, he’s beaten people on the circuit, fought some amazing fighters and kicked some serious butt.” It was Kenny Walton who would first inspire the young Chris Beanland to seriously consider taking up the martial arts as more than just a hobby. He progressed quickly, and took his first dan in 1987. His second followed two years later, and then he went on to teach straight Taekwondo.

“Teaching was something I toyed with, but it was not a deliberate move. I trained in Bradford with another black belt under the same instructor, and I felt that if I didn’t get a club now, then he was going to get my area.” I ask him whether he feels his attitude towards the martial arts has changed since he started teaching. “Oh yes, completely. You have to get your message across, and you start to see people making mistakes and then you end up looking at yourself and picking up on your own training. I sometimes try to make moves a lot more elaborate to keep it fun and interesting. But the biggest factor that new instructors face is the time element, and this can take a while to improve. Instructors that are new to teaching often have a time management problem; they either find it hard to squeeze everything in, or they find themselves with too much time. It’s a hard balancing act, because you’re not just passing on the message but you’re also keeping them entertained so that they keep on coming back.”
Although Chris is Taekwondo through and through, he has dabbled in many different styles which he believes has strongly improved his technique in competitions and also helped immensely with his teaching. Beanland has dabbled in everything from Thai boxing to Judo to Ju Jitsu to Wing Chun, but feels that many of the latest crazes (particularly for arts like kickboxing) are taught as a means of achieving simple aims of fitness and sparring, and that much of the depth involved in studying a martial art is neglected in this day and age. “Some instructors haven’t grasped the depth of some martial arts,” he tells me, “and they don’t know what it all entails. Students see the kicking and the punching and they think that’s what it’s all about. We do kickboxing, and a lot of people look for shortcuts. People see what we do as a great all round fitness and those people who don’t have the initiative to do the pattern work prefer to pick up the sparring.

“I remember when I first studied Lau Gar and I adapted the stance for my competition fighters and now I teach it to my people. Because of these adjustments, our fighters are now very hard to hit. I’m always reminded of something Dave Oliver wrote in his book, about if your instructor learns something and then it is passed on to you, then it becomes Taekwondo. It’s an ever-learning, ever-growing thing. I’ll pass on a technique and others will pick it up, but then they’ll find something that works for them and that will give them a much broader spectrum. They’ll adapt. You should always change, learn, develop and adapt, because then people can’t work you out.”

Chris has developed a long and distinguished reputation as a representative for the TAGB, which boasts an impressive 20,000 members and over 450 clubs around the country. Their syllabus is regimented and regulated, and designed to offer everyone from young toddlers to the supreme elite a confident, educated and disciplined style of teaching. “We do traditional Taekwondo, involving self defense, fitness and sparring, and we specialize in all areas. A lot of people who join us enjoy the competitive edge of sparring, and we have quite a big team. At the last count, we took 52 competitors to the British Champs last year. We also do self defense courses and stick to the TAGB syllabus.

“The TAGB are very professional, and no one can really match them. They’re the biggest independent martial arts organization in Europe, and their tournaments are very professional. I’ve been to top class freestyle comps and they’re so unorganized, there’s no control. There are no outsiders at TAGB competitions. This year they’re running the World Champs with 52 countries taking part and they’re expecting 3,500 competitors. It’s advertised as the biggest martial arts event ever. The competitors are very good and the majority of referring is good too, so the standards are very high.”
Chris talks so passionately about the competitions and the sparring that I wonder whether he prefers this side of the sport to the teaching and business side. I tell him that it must be hard striking a balance between mixing business with pleasure. “Sometimes I do think my hobby has gone out the window… I still compete on a full time level, and train with the national team, and I push my students and train with them and tell them to keep going, so in a way I still have my hobby. But the teaching can be very hard to pass on. When I go on holiday I find it hard to let go, because they’re my people. It’s been two years since I had a holiday!” He laughs, but with a slight sense of foreboding. “I can’t be poorly because somebody else will take my class. So I believe in continuing to train - you need to be rejuvenated or else you become stagnant. I’m learning all the time. I go to comps and analysis people. I’ll find someone who’s doing well and learn different ways on how they can improve, or think of new ways to get people to learn certain things.”

“It comes back to getting the message across. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it doesn’t sink in, but everyone has different learning curves. Some people are very visual, some people have to be taught, or have it drawn out for them. You have to be patient, and reach all the people in all their different ways.” He feels adamant that becoming an instructor is not something that can be taken lightly, and that when you’re learning something as serious and passionate as the martial arts, your teacher should represent the perfect embodiment of these ethics. He applauds the new system within the TAGB (and other organizations) of only letting people teach after they have undergone the intensive training courses. “If you leave brown or blue belts in charge, then you know what you’re getting,” he says. “Some people just don’t have the experience. With Ju Jitsu, they have them running their own clubs from brown belt, but they don’t know enough. The learning curve starts when you get to black belt. Until you get your black belt you’re not ready to be in that position.

“Taekwondo is fast to pick up from a basic level. From day one, you could become competitive within the first year. The TAGB is so big that you can enhance quickly at different levels; in competitions you never fight with grades other than yourself. After three months you could be competing at yellow belt level.” And with a busy schedule teaching people from all ages and backgrounds, Chris knows that teaching the martial arts is not just about telling people how to kick and punch. Chris hopes to extend his classes into the school room, with PE lessons taking the form of Taekwondo classes and students achieving GCSEs in the martial arts. This is a reality that Chris is faced with in Bradford, and he intends to be riding on the crest of this wave. “One kid in particular came to us who was always a handful. He was disrespectful and had a bad attitude. We didn’t actually know at the time that he had been expelled from school and wasn’t allowed to be on his own. When he started with us he was accepted back in, and his discipline on life had completely changed. He started making friends, and his whole attitude changed.

“The martial arts cover fitness, confidence, motivation, self esteem and promote a much healthier way of life,” and it is these morals that Chris intends to promote in the future with his own business venture, the Taekwondo School of Excellence. Chris’s own academy has grown and developed over the years to become a limited company, moving to a new training hall with future plans to hold gradings and seminars, as well as travel into the schools and take their teaching directly to the kids. “We have only two working members at the moment, but we plan on bringing more instructors in. My partner works on the admin so that I can concentrate on teaching. We plan to branch out and then we want to start marketing ourselves.

“I want to get a network of people below me. New students tend to take up most of the time, whereas experienced people need less guidance. Eventually, I’d like to sit back and teach the higher grades.” And his dream? “I’d love to have a Taekwondo club in every school in the area. There are 157 schools in Bradford, lets get a club in all of them. If we can introduce that to Bradford, then we can say to people ‘this is how we do it here’; if it’s successful, we could go nationwide.”

So in essence, Chris Beanland plans to turn his Taekwondo School of Excellence into a social enterprise of curriculum approved instruction that many would agree could vastly help inner city kids with learning the important development skills of respect, loyalty, health and discipline. “There are a lot of good instructors out there, and a lot of bad ones. If I can be one of the good ones then that means people will come back to me. I don’t care if someone opens up a rival Taekwondo school upstairs, or even next door. If they can’t keep up to my professional level then I’m going to pinch all of their customers.” Like Chris’ mentality on the matt, he approaches his business with the same passion and ferocity. He is living proof that age, wisdom and experience can certainly count for something in this rapidly modernizing, contemporary martial world.

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