Instructor Profile: Ash Simonds, Verve Karate
Ash Simonds is a 41-year-old instructor from Norfolk, England. He has been practising martial arts for 28 years.
When and where did your journey with martial arts begin? I started Karate at age 13 at Shotokan school based at the sport centre near to me. It was a great introduction to traditional Karate, but this particular school did not compete, spar or put much into self defense application — so I went looking for other things. I found Wado-ryu under my instructor at the time Dave Pleszko and this is the core style I have stuck too and still teach today.
When did you open Verve Karate? We opened Verve Karate in September 2018. It started off as just one night a week in a small business hall, and from there it continued to grow. We now offer training 3 times a week at a much larger venue and are looking to expand on that in the near future.
What attracted you to being a martial arts instructor, and what advice would you give to anyone thinking about making the career change? Martial arts has been my passion since I was 13, and I love seeing the positive effect it has in people's health and well being. Sharing it and teaching is massively rewarding!
My advice to anyone wanting to step into running a school would be to get the right people in place to support you. I have an amazing team around me in my assistant instructors — Poppy, Evie and Andy. They are really passionate teachers and share my values in martial arts. We also have Laura, who is our welfare and admin assistant, and keep everything running smoothly in the background. My instructor, Master John Swift, is also always there for guidance and support.
As an instructor, it is easy to fall into thinking you have to do everything yourself, but the right support will help both you and your students grow.
What are the most rewarding and challenging parts of your job? The most rewarding part of what I do is seeing everyone working together to reach their goals. We have an awesome family of students at Verve who genuinely want to see their peers succeed. It’s really gratifying to see our students improving, gaining confidence and developing new skills — all whilst having fun!
The biggest challenge has been teaching through lockdown. Although it was completely unexpected, it offered us the opportunity to adapt and experiment with different ways of training — whether that be online or in socially distanced classes. We definitely learnt a lot, and some of the new methods we learnt will stick with us.
What do you think sets Verve Karate apart from other schools? We are part of a larger group of schools, but we are not a franchise. This gives us the ability to host lots of training events through the year and share experiences from other instructors, but also keep the smaller school and family training ethos.
How does technology help you run your business? We started using Martialytics’ student management software just after we opened, and it saves us so much time! Martialytics handles everything for us, from attendance tracking to grading eligibility — I wouldn’t be without it! Technology plays an even bigger part in martial arts in the post pandemic world. The ability to share training content and being able to hold live remote classes throughout all the lockdowns was an amazing way to keep our team and students motivated and ready to get back to the Dojo.
