My Account
Time spent on ACC waiting for an operation and the need to care for a son with cerebral palsy has given Dave Sawyer of Red Beach the opportunity to contemplate a big change in his life. As well as considering a shift from employment as an IT systems engineer to working full time as a kickboxing instructor and personal trainer, the 44-year old is determined to improve his own health and fitness. He is also focused on assisting young people to make their way in the world with a no-nonsense approach to kickboxing training. He spoke to Terry Moore without pulling any punches.
I started defending myself against bullies when I was around 12 years old. My mother had walked out on our family and I was helping bring up my younger brother. I used to drop him off at school riding a ladies’ bike with a child seat on the back – so I was seen as a target by bullies. They found I wasn’t a weak target. Many people say that ‘talking it out’ is important but I don’t think that works in many cases. You have to stand up to bullies and be responsible for your actions – don’t act like a victim, and don’t blame others. I didn’t win that particular fight, but the bullies didn’t come back. Around this time I got into judo and full contact kickboxing. It was a way of dealing with issues – hitting a bag can make you feel better, whatever people say. I went off the rails for a while in my late teens and early 20s and by the age of 20 I had been to more funerals than birthday parties, due to drugs, or motorcycle accidents. The martial arts training was the only thing that stopped me going completely over the top, and kept me from gaining a drug habit. I had a kickboxing teacher who was old school – in fact he was evil in many ways, but also awesome. He never smiled, and you didn’t cross him, but he kept me from getting into serious trouble. I’m also fairly ‘old school’ in my training techniques. My fighters at the Dynamic Martial Arts Club know I’m hard, but that I’ve also got their back. That’s because when they step into the ring to fight there is no one in there with them, other than the opponent. They have to step up. If you are nice to them, they’re not going to get the inner resilience that’s needed. The tough approach doesn’t work for everyone I teach, but I do push people to do their best. In the club, political correctness goes out the window. We allow kids to be kids – and that can include being aggressive and emotional at times. We’re tough on them if they get out of line, but it’s a balance between sticking to the rules and having the freedom to be themselves. The students respond because basically they know that I give a crap about them.
My son Gary, a Tae Kwon-Do instructor, recently turned 21, my daughter Kim turned 18 and my youngest, Taine, turned one around the same time. Taine was born to my second wife, Kirsty, 11 weeks premature and has mild cerebral palsy affecting the motor function on one side of his body. Kirsty and I both work in IT, and she has taken a year off to look after him. At the same time, I’m on ACC because of a thumb injury that means I’m unable to use a keyboard. I’m due to have reconstructive surgery in two weeks’ time. Without our two full time incomes, we’ve had to cut back on things that we used to be able to afford. It’s improved my diet and we’ve cut our food bill in half, yet we eat better than before. We eat home cooked meals instead of takeaways, make our own bread, buy in bulk and eat lots of fresh veges. I used to drink a 2.4 litre bottle of coke every day, but now we don’t have fizzy drink at home – water’s free. It’s made us think a lot more about our health and lifestyle. Taine’s health issues are the main reason that we are re-prioritising our lives. In order to learn how to help Taine as he develops, I took a course to become a personal trainer, and it has changed how I view exercise, gyms, food and health. While I’m on ACC I’ve been running the club and that’s made me aware that I’d like to do this fulltime. The idea is that once I have had my operation, I will work on expanding the club and while I’m recovering, decide where I want it to go. I hate lycra clad gyms, so we won’t be like that. We have cardio challenges, tyres and sledge hammers and relay circuits. It’s nothing fancy – a lot of the gear has come from Trade Me, or been donated – but it works. I think the fitness industry can be focused too much on fancy machines and boot camps that promise you will change your life in 12 weeks, whereas it should be about changing your habits. I need to lose weight, and I know how hard that is. I know all the barriers that can be in the way of those changes.
I arrived here from the UK in 2001. I chose NZ because it’s got no snakes. I made a vow to emigrate because the UK at the time was really violent and I was sick of it all. I was living in Wales with my family and we were packed into little boxes and there was broken glass in the local park. It was depressing. I am petrified of snakes, and hate the cold so that ruled out Canada and Australia. NZ sounded ideal with plenty of room to ride my motorcycle. Until I flew to NZ, I’d never been on a plane – a few trips by ferry to France was the extent of my travel experience. I had given up drinking, but people on board said you needed to drink lots on a long flight. The guy who sat next to me convinced me alcohol was required, and as a result I don’t remember the flight at all. I landed in NZ with a couple of grand in my pocket, and six weeks to find a job, otherwise I had to return to the UK. I got a job with Vodafone at the last moment, and my wife Denise followed me out here. We lived in Red Beach, but my wife didn’t like it in NZ and ended up going back nine months later. Eventually I got married again, to Kirsty – we met at work. Before we got married, I told her if she couldn’t ride a motorbike, our relationship wasn’t going to work. I’ve got a Gold Wing Honda, 1800cc, that we ride together and we’ve done thousands of kilometres together on it, including our honeymoon, which was a motorcycle tour of NZ with some bikers.
The club started as Nibun at Orewa College in 2005 when my son Gary was 15. A lot of kids wanted to do Tae Kwon-Do and it grew from there. I have always been in the background, teaching individuals. I also started up the Chariot Trust with Barry Wotton in 2008, to give kids that needed extra help a chance to get involved. The Trust enabled them to take part in kickboxing instruction for free, and I’ve still got five of the original 12 training with me now. Currently there are around 80 in the club, and my vision is to grow that into a big club run largely by students with my support. I teach the five year olds, which is so much fun, as well as the adults, while the juniors provide a great example to younger ones. It’s a hierarchal system and encourages the seniors to take on leadership roles and more responsibility. I want to do a lot more work on the anti-bullying programme we’ve recently started at Whangaparaoa College and I’d like to see the programme go into Orewa College in two years time. I think one of the reasons there is a bullying problem is political correctness, which is not doing the country any good. Honesty is really important – being straight up, without being insulting and giving people the truth. That doesn’t work for some people that I teach, but most appreciate that you’re being honest with them.
