A 2020 message from Kyoshi Marc to our members

As we see 2020 coming to an end, I’m sure we all are looking forward to seeing 2021!

Our instructors and staff team are the BEST that any organisation could have asked for and I know other organisations would be envious to have. Gena, as you know has been taking care of administration, class bookings for mat sessions and over the shutdown period, setting up our zoom training and communication. Gena has been super busy this year behind the scenes and has done an outstanding job! Renshi Cam, Dai-Sempai Dylan and Sempai Neil – all of whom even had to run Zoom classes from their own homes for a few months during our second and longer shutdown, have been exceptional! These AAMA instructors further demonstrated the commitment they have to everyone at All Active Martial Arts. Personally, I am not only grateful for all the effort they all put into their teaching and helping all of you, but have seen further growth and development in their teaching and skill over the course of 2020, which will only help all students achieve their goals too.

2020 forced change on all of us in one way or another, with many changes to our personal and working lives. Kids had to attend school from home, with mum and dad becoming teachers, many while working from home themselves. Online appointments replaced visits to the doctor, Zoom for fitness, Zoom for meetings, Zoom for catch-ups with friends and birthday celebrations, Zoom for training, the 5km rule, only 1 hour outside per day, the list goes on and on.

As you all know, All Active Martial Arts’ moved to online training and Zoom sessions for nearly 8 months of this year to keep our classes and all of your training going (albeit in a somewhat different format)!

All Active Martial Arts and its instructors were able to do gradings via zoom this year and even had a Junior Black Belt grading for our Kidz Karate system. A year ago, I would have said no WAY we would ever do that and I think everyone would have agreed!

I must say the standard of the grading online via Zoom was extremely high, with all the instructors – with the help of mums and dads – working hard to achieve such a great outcome, not to mention the high standard demonstrated by our grading students!

Now due to Covid-19 our online training tutorials and Zoom class videos comprise over 300 videos that have been shared online to our study portal for you to use anytime (so that is something good to come of 2020)! 

We are still looking to get 2020 club t-shirts printed to celebrate our members’ resilience and commitment during the year we had! But due to being unable to have them manufactured this year, we will look at getting them made early 2021.

All Active Martial Arts will continue to give only our best training and commitment to you all, including more online training videos for you to get train anytime, from anywhere.

A new website is currently being developed to include a fresh new look and more features, including an online shop and an upgraded members section.

A new driving training course will be available to our members, specifically to prepare parents of teenagers who will be teaching their children how to drive as Learners. The course will focus on teaching good driving behaviour to and what VicRoads licencing requirements will be, to assist parents with being the best driver trainers they can be for their young learners. I will be using my experience in the industry to deliver this program to you, and because I can expect you will be asking the question “how does a Martial Arts Instructor know any more than anyone else about driving or teaching how to drive?”, I’ll fill you in on some of my background.

Before I opened All Active Martial Arts in 2012 as a full-time training centre, I worked full time as a car and heavy vehicle driving instructor, and was up until recently a VicRoads Licencing Testing Officer. I continue to work in this industry with several RTOs as a trainer to trainers for car and heavy vehicle instruction. My recent work includes instructing and assessing courses for MFB, CFA (now Fire Rescue) and license upgrades for VicPol, and have been working in this capacity over the past 10 years.

All Active Martial Arts will be adding more classes across all our systems in 2021, as well as special sessions for Black belts and above, as now the second floor is completed and fully operational, giving us more flexibility and capacity to deliver more sessions.

Local Tournaments for stick fighting and forms will be held here at All Active Martial Arts in 2021.

Our final day for on-the-mats classes at AAMA will be Wednesday 23rd December 2020, with classes returning on Monday 11th January 2021. As you all can understand, our training team and staff will take a much-needed break and re-charge our batteries before resuming in the New Year! The AAMA Study portal and all online videos will continue to be available to all our members during this time.

Finally, I would like to again THANK YOU ALL for the support you all have shown All Active Martial Arts and wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a much much better and Happy New Year.

We are looking forward to an awesome 2021!