Hayley Jeffries 3rd Dan
My karate journey started when I was six years old. According to my parents, after watching an action movie and seeing some guy beat-up another guy I exclaimed “I want to learn how to do that!” and they enrolled me at SEMKA Karate Club in 2007. After learning that there was much more than ‘beating people up’, karate quickly became the most important aspect of my young life and after many gradings and competitions I climbed the ranks from white belt to shodan black belt in 2012.
During many of the early years I was training as the only, or one of very few, girls in the club but that soon changed when my mum, my suggested supporter, went from watching me from the bench to training alongside me. Now suddenly with my mum and other mums joining SEMKA came an influx of women and girls to the club, and now the number of men to women is 1:1.
In 2014 I achieved the rank of nidan black belt and continued to train and teach until I left for university in 2018. In my first year I joined the university karate club and was able to experience training alongside many different styles of karate which was very fascinating… as we were all adamant that our style of karate was the best (spoiler… Wado is!). Karate is a martial art, and in an ideal world you can train your whole life and never need to use it. Alongside fancy-looking techniques, Wado-Ryu karate teaches real-life self-defence as well as awareness of the world around you to avoid unpleasant situations. Being a young woman, I have had to use my karate training in the real- world, and everyday I’m thankful for my parents for enrolling me in karate.
In my third year of university, I was elected as the karate club President, and on top of running a dojo, attending lectures and writing my final dissertation, I decided to take my sandan black belt a week before my 21st birthday. I returned home just 3 weeks before the grading and this was the only opportunity I had that year to train with my karate partner, my mum! This was our first grading that we took together… and also the most vicious…
Instructing students, both junior and senior, is incredibly rewarding when you see them go from strength-to-strength and come to each class wanting to learn more. Instructors and students alike help each other in and outside the dojo and it is a community that I’m honoured to be a part of.
Today my karate journey has taken me all the way to Japan! After university I began studying Japanese and realised that my dream of going to Japan could actually become a possibility. In August 2024 I flew to Tokyo with the JET Programme, where I teach English to high school students during the day, train karate by night, and explore Japan at every other given opportunity.
Karate teaches you so much more than strength, agility, flexibility, and speed. It has taught me resilience, discipline, loyalty, confidence, empathy, and opened avenues in my life that I never thought possible.