What is Kickboxing?

Kickboxing refers to a group of martial arts and stand-up combat sports based on kicking and punching, historically developed from karate, Thai boxing and western boxing.Kickboxing is often practiced for self-defense, general fitness, or as a contact sport.

KICKBOXING

A Brief History

During the early seventies the American martial arts world was shaken to its foundations by the demands made on it by a fresh young new generation of practitioners. Fighters started looking for a competitive format in which they could use their skills to the full effect, full power punches and kicks in bouts fought to the knockout. The development of specialised protective equipment speeded up the evolution of this new sport, which became known as kickboxing. Between 1970 and 1973 a handful of kickboxing promotions were staged across the USA. In the early days the rules were never clear, one of the first tournaments had no weight divisions and all the competitors fought off until one was left. A very young Benny Urquidez reached the final. Weighing in at 10 stones Urquidez faced the 14 stones Dana Goodson. Urquidez won the tournament by pinning Goodson to the floor for more than 10 seconds, which was part of the rules.

The Hebron School of Martial Arts club had been invited by the Mayor of Dungannon so that they could be recognised for the work we do in the community.
It was a great honour for club this is the second time for the club to be invited to meet the Mayor William was honoured by the Mayor back in 1998.
The Mayor said that the club had achieved a lot of awards over the years that we had been running.

A little of my life story

William Ferry

There are nine in my family; I have four brothers and four sisters. I was the sickly one or the weakest in the family or so my ma says. At one time, the early 90s, I was rated number one contender in the world in professional kickboxing holding the
titles, Ulster, Irish and British Champions. I was also a 1^st Dan Black belt in
Karate and taught clubs all over Ireland. My hands were registered as deadly weapons. I have trained with the best in the world Billy Murray (World Champion Kick boxer). I trained every day, boxing hundreds of rounds and running for miles every week. Also as an off shoot of my professional Kickboxing career, I trained men and women in the art of self-defence in various clubs the length and breadth of the country. I started to take pains down my legs and neck. My hands and feet swelled, I went to the Doctor and after tests he told me that I had arthritis, the type that is in your blood. I had to stop training almost right away. When I got up in the mornings I would get my breakfast and then have to lie down to rest for most of the day. My hands and my feet started to deform, my neck started to push forward and give me a hump. It got worse every day, I wasn’t fit to walk any more than half a mile and there were days I never went out of the house. I turned to alcohol for help, to get through the days and nights I had a drink every night of the week. Alcohol, for someone like me, was a great discovery, it was a powerful anaesthetic which numbed my feelings; I didn’t have to feel anymore. Reality for me was the distress and disappointment of my personal life and my career, which promised me so much. Life itself seemed to have delivered me a deadly blow and I was on the canvas. With the arthritis and not being fit to work and having to stay in the house all day, I took depression and with it I cried many a night and wished that I were dead. I have had depression on and off for 20 years it started after my first marriage broke up. I think depression is one of the worst things you can ever have because you loss all hope and when hope is gone we die.

One night, when my wife Sandi was visiting at a friend’s house and I was at home having a drink, and looking after the children (!), about 11 O, Clock she walked in through the door and said to me, “we’re not saved; if we died tonight we would be in hell.” Here was me half drunk and as I sat in our living room with not the slightest
concern about God, salvation, sin, hell, eternity, the words that Sandi spoke were a thunder bolt from heaven itself. I had been Christened and confirmed in the Church, but I still knew I wasn’t right with God. It is impossible to please God without faith in Jesus Christ says the Scriptures. For the first time in our lives the fear of God fell on the two of us and I said to Sandi as I held a drink in my hand, “what’ll we do”. There and then we bowed our heads as we sat on the couch, we asked God to save us. No one ever told me that I needed to ask Jesus into my life that I can recall. So I just said to Jesus that night save me and He did and this is why I can testify to what He has done in my life. The next morning I was an evangelist, even though I was ignorant of this fact, because the first thing I did was to go to my own family and tell them, “I’m saved”, they laughed me out of the house. However, God is faithful and a number of them are now saved and in the Kingdom
of God. God is good.

I had left School at 15 and due to a learning disability I couldn’t read or write beyond that of a 6 to 8 year old, because of Dyslexia. One day as I was lying on the couch I said to God would you help me to read the Bible so that I could learn and tell
others about you? As I lay there a young Christian I honestly thought that one

morning I would get up and God would give me the ability to read and write
without having to learn. I started to read the Bible and leave out the words I
didn’t know. It was a long process, my reading was limited but I still learned
more about God.

One day I was at a friend’s house and we were talking about Scripture and then he passed the Bible to me and asked me to read, I blushed with embarrassment in front of him because very few knew that I couldn’t read. He told me to go back to school and learn; good advice. I left his house that day hurt and offended at my own
inability and inside I cried as I drove home. When I arrived home, Sandi knew
there was something wrong and I told her what was said and she agreed with my
friend that I should go back to school. Immediately I rang the local Further
Education College and inquired about a literacy course, they told me that an
Adult Basic Education class started that night, so I enrolled.

The first question the teacher put to the class was, “why are you here”? One girl got up and said she wanted to be able to write her own name at the end of the year.

Pride was getting the better of me and I said to myself I am stuck in here with a pile of dummies and if I was once out of here I’ll not be back!! That’s five or six years ago now, I completed that year by reading children’s books and the following year I enrolled to do a G.C.S.E. in English, and also an advanced two-year ‘A’ level in religious studies. When I went to enrol they asked me, “what exams do you have” and I replied “none”. The tutor said, “You’ll not get in here to do an ‘A’ level without at least a G.C.S.E. or even two. It seemed hopeless but I still insisted on putting my name forward. They gave me an application form, which I couldn’t fill in.
I asked God for help to save me the embarrassment. Instantly one of the tutors said, “Let me see that form, I think its one of the older ones”. He then, to my surprise and amazement began filling in the form, without me having to ask him. This same tutor shook his head and said, “I don’t think you’ll get in”. I can remember saying to Sandi at home that evening, “I don’t care what way he shakes his head, if God wants me on that course, I’ll be there”! A week later a letter came to the house, I was accepted into both courses. “If God be for you who can be against you.” I can well remember the first day when the lecturer stood up and said, “The heading of your page should be in three sections, Marxism, Humanism, and Christianity”. It was then, it really hit me, I couldn’t take the notes because I still had not developed in my ability to read and write. I tried to remember what I could and when I got home, asked William James my nine year old son to write down what I could remember. To say, it wasn’t an easy year would be an understatement, especially as my own physical and mental health was anything but good. I doubted God many times and I felt like giving up. I was told by one of the tutors, not to do the exam paper, my writing wasn’t legible, and she said, “You can’t mark what you can’t read”. One of the lessons that I was beginning to learn was that of taking the disadvantages of life and turning them, with God’s help, into advantages. I went to God for help and encouragement and told Him to encourage me the way he did with Joshua when he took over from Moses. The next day a women teacher came to me and said that if I kept up the hard work I would do well. God gave me the desire to go on. Every day I would go to Him for help in reading and understanding and even for my health. The morning of the results my teacher, who was also a Christian, rang me to say I had passed the ‘A’ level and that he had already went to the other teacher that had told me to give up and told them and they couldn’t believe it. I had done the two year advanced ‘A’ in a year. I also passed the G.C.S.E. English; it is hard for me to believe at times how much God is at work in my life. All my classmates knew I was a Christian because I would share what God was doing in my life. I was only saved a few weeks when God spoke to me through a hymn I couldn’t even read ‘when I survey the wondrous cross’ and it says at the very end of that hymn God demands my soul my life my all. That day as a young Christian I gave to God my all, including my bad health, my bad education and He took it and began to work out His plan for my life and all I had to do was trust Him. Who ever said that being a Christian was boring and uneventful hasn’t even begun to understand what a Christian truly is. “God uses the foolish to confound the wise.” How? By making the foolish wise and thereby causing those who look on to wonder at what is happening in this individual’s life. Maybe you are in the same position that I was in for the best part of forty years, living in a world of secrecy and evasion, fooling every one about my ability or lack of it. In truth fooling no one but myself and hating myself for not being able to read and write. Only for the fact that a loving and merciful God invaded my life, bringing me into the Kingdom of God and helping me to face some stark realities about who and what I was; only for that I would still be living with the disappointment of life. God has given me a desire to tell others about Him and because of this desire I was accepted into the Irish Baptist College in July 01 for a one year course of study on evangelism. Consequently I ended up staying for three years which helped my understanding of Biblical truth enormously. I got the option from the college to do a three-year diploma in Pastoral theological studies and a Bachelors degree in Biblical Studies. I have just finished an MA degree through IBI Dublin. Dont think I can do much more but still in talks with God about that His will and not mine. I still have difficulty reading, writing and spelling even in the simplest words and am caught out from time to time to my own embarrassment. I find it hard to find the books in the Bible. The arthritis is not bad now I am of the medication that I was on for it. I am free from the bouts of depression going on now 2 years. But I can honestly say that I thank God for every sickness in my life. I have seen times when I couldn’t say that but I have learned to be content in the Lord. It say’s in the book of James “Consider it pure joy my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” I can always remember a missionary saying that in a Moslem Country it was easy to die for Christ but it was harder to live for Him. My understanding of God is so vastly different now from what it was. I now understand quite clearly that God is not able to be manipulated either by my pleadings or my demands; His agenda for my life is on an entirely different plane. The grace of God and the power of God can only truly be evidenced in my life as I take the disadvantages of my life and turn them into advantages, thereby bringing glory to God. I don’t know what God has in store for me but I do know that He loves me. You don’t need a lot of brains or good health for God to love you He’ll take you the way you are. I don’t know how I would have coped without God in my life; God has given me something to live for.

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What is Kickboxing?

KICKBOXING

A Brief History