Nintai Martial Arts was founded by Mike Sensei and his wife, Rhian. Mike Sensei has been studying martial arts in one form or another for over 30 years, and Rhian is a former teacher, so they combined their skill sets to form their own dojo, inspired by their daughters’ love of karate.

All members of the Nintai Martial Arts team have enhanced DBS certification, and have undergone both safeguarding and first aid training. In addition, instructors complete both Level 1 and Level 2 instructor training. 

SEND is the heart of Nintai, as that is where it has its origins. Mike Sensei and Rhian’s eldest daughter, Keira, has special educational needs, and they have often found it difficult to find activities for her outside of school. So they created the Kitsune class specifically for individuals with SEND.

Describing Nintai would be incomplete without mentioning their younger daughter, Phoebe. Phoebe has studied karate with her sister and father since she was four years old, and trains at the dojo in the Dragons and Mixed classes. Her favourite activity is sparring, but she also enjoys developing her focus through kata.

At its core, Nintai Martial Arts is a Shotokan karate club, teaching karate in keeping with the philosophy of Shotokan’s founder, Gichin Funakoshi.

One of the main tenets of Shotokan is adapting techniques and teaching style to suit the individual. But, we take advantage of our experience with other styles and martial arts to take this a step further, incorporating techniques outside of Shotokan or doing advanced techniques earlier if they are more accessible to the student.

As our students progress through their grades, we use this same experience to explore Shotokan and its self-defence techniques in a more rounded way, encouraging our students to look at the weaknesses of our particular style as well as its strengths.