About Us

For a number of years Charlie Wildish was frustrated with the way that martial were being taught!  They had been dumbed down even in the Far East for various social and political reasons compared to how they were originally taught.  Language barriers between Eastern Masters and Western students did not help either.

The post war trend coming especially from Japan and Korea is to focus more and more on sport (as a way to measure success and build prestige) rather than realistic self defence skills.

More recently still, for business reasons, many martial arts teachers have simplified their syllabus’s to teach larger groups and some schools are little more than a fitness class with a martial arts theme, where more time is spent on circuits type exercises than actual martial arts skills!

So Charlie began to train further afield and sought out instructors who thought outside the box and taught a more practically applied version of Karate.  He also trained for a while in Wing Chun Kung Fu and Tai Chi, which ironically led to unlocking some of the secrets within his Karate.

He attended special courses/seminars with world leading authorities on conflict management and the psychological factors of confrontation.

Separate to his martial arts study he developed a keen interest in self development and how the mind works.  Although he did not do for his Karate, he was able to see direct implications for self defence!

So in 2012 he put all these aspects together and created Holistic Karate in Midsomer Norton.  It’s not a new style or system, it’s just a more complete, realistic and authentic approach to training martial arts in today’s world.