John Gurnett

Hapkido Instructor - 3rd Dan

John started training in 2003, after an incident in the City made him realise that he had no idea how to defend himself or others. John had been previously been teaching fencing, but found that it wasn’t all the practical for self defence. One of Johns friends recommended Factor10 and Hapkido as he’d been doing it for a long time and really enjoyed the atmosphere at the club. John initially started with a goal towards self defence but over his time with the club have picked up several additional goals. John finds it’s a great way to keep fitness up and has come to appreciate the Arts side of Taekwondo and Hapkido as much as the self defence. John feels that he has made a lot of personal development at the club and a lot of who he is am today can be attributed to his instructors and fellow students.

John started instructing regularly when he took over the coaching the Factor10 Demo Squad. While it was very challenging at first, after our first public performance at the Tan’s tournament John realised that he wouldn’t trade the teaching experience for anything else. Particularly with Demo, there’s a great amount of reward seeing your students performing at their very best and pulling off techniques at the very best of their ability. This applies just as much to John's time spent instructing Hapkido. Helping students to reach their goals is the best part of teaching in John's opinion. John love seeing a student nail a technique or goal that they’ve been working towards. Watching gradings is particularly rewarding when seeing the high technical standard that our students demonstrate and knowing that we, in some way, have been a part of that excellence.

That technical excellence shown in our gradings and general work is only part of why John loves Factor10 and why he's remained with the club for so long. There’s just a nice, friendly atmosphere around the place that makes it a joy to train at. John is always looking forward to seeing people in class and around the club. Classes really reflect this atmosphere, as well, with a great sense of camaraderie and everyone working together to achieve something rather than competing to keep other people down.

John is very proud to be a member and instructor at Factor10 - he feels like we really do make a difference in people’s lives.