MARTIAL arts instructor, Master Everton Smith has come full circle since he first took up the sport more than 30 years ago.

The 53-year-old is a former World and European Champion in karate after starting out training at a former YMCA in Newport when he was just 19.

Now, he is training kids – and adults – himself in the practice of martial arts and all entails, including the mindset and self-discipline which accompanies it.

He runs Newport City Martial Arts, in Commercial Street, where up to 130 children and adults are trained in a total of 21 classes in kickboxing, karate and other forms of martial arts.

Both karate and kickboxing come under the wide umbrella of martial arts, Mr Smith said, although the difference lies in their age. Karate is thousands of years old while kickboxing emerged in the 20th century.

Mr Smith is proud of what he’s achieved. “I started from scratch,” he said. “I’m not only a former World Champion but I was named Sports Personality Coach of the Year.

“After touring Britain, I came back and now work in a building almost right opposite where I started out - the Tom Toya Lewis pub which used to be the YMCA.”

Mr Smith teaches his students a range of techniques of martial arts, including the colour code of self defence: white, yellow, orange and red.

“White is switched off, and not being aware of something. Yellow is being switched on and orange is being switched on and ready to make a decision of what to do. And red is making the decision, fight or flight.”

This, Mr Smith said, is what he teaches his students. “A martial arts person will, if I asked them, know how many blue cars were down their street as they left their house this morning. Whereas a person who is switched off, colour code white, would not know.

“Being switched on, it’s a mindset. A lot of it is about self-discipline.”

He gives the example of a small child in the playground at school. “A kid in the playground, if he is switched on he can sense what is around him. He might be able to sense something going on over there and then he has a chance, in advance, to decide fight or flight.”

But Mr Smith added: “Martial arts from my perspective is not about violence."

He said: “Many people have different perspectives. Some forms of martial arts can render people unconscious or take strikes to the vital parts of the body.

“But what I teach is the art of winning, without fighting. Of course fighting is wrong, but defence is a different thing.”

The martial arts school aims to better its students by filling them with a “whole new energy, strength, health, confidence - and the motivation to achieve your goals”.

Mr Smith said his classes are as good for adults and families as they are for children, who he teaches from as young as three-years-old – although he has one student who is two and a half. The Panda classes teach children aged three to five, while the Dragon classes teach five to six year olds.

The instructor claims, through martial arts, he can increase children’s confidence, self-esteem, increase their focus at school, teach them to defend themselves and teach them how to handle bullies and life skills – because it did just that for him.

As a youngster, Mr Smith said he had a “ferocious temper” and anger management problem, and as he grew older he became increasingly worried these traits would lead him into serious trouble.

It was his fascination with Bruce Lee – “I was absolutely mesmerised” - which first got him trying karate at 19. He said: “I discovered for myself that martial arts somehow enabled channelling that aggression and helped to bring about a more positive me”.

Now, as well as having a wealth of instructor experience since teaching from the early 1980s, Mr Smith is the the Dilman Karate Institute Representative for Wales and is a qualified anti-bullying coordinator, working closely with primary schools in the area.

“I just want to help people,” he said. “And it worked, it’s the discipline, the respect, that’s what helped me. It’s now gone from a hobby to a profession.”

But while karate is a physical activity, Mr Smith places equal weight and importance on his mental attitude, and using the martial art to build character, education, life skills and leadership. At the Newport city centre club, he now runs classes in character, education, leadership and life skills.

“I am training every single student to be a champion, in whatever they choose to do,” he said.

“They can be a champion in anything, the influence I give has an underlying foundation and tells people to stand bold.

“The martial arts training has prepared me for where I want to go. That’s the encouragement I give to my students. It’s confidence.

“‘The few who do are the envy of the many who watch’, these are the sort of things I say to motivate.”

Last month, the martial arts expert was featured on a Channel Five programme which documented how his teaching improved the behaviour of nine-year-old Newport boy, Toby Stapleton, who needed to control his temper.

But Mr Smith said he is always learning and taking on new projects, and also teaches Krav Maga at the club – a self-defence system used by the military in Israel which consists of a combination of techniques taken from aikido, jujitsu, boxing, judo and wrestling.

At the moment he is developing a new focus on pressure points – a knowledge of the weaknesses of the human body.

“It’s about knowing how to cause severe pain and where the weakness points are in the human body, and I’ve developed a programme of my own,” he said.

Mr Smith has also been studying Filipino martial arts which he says is his next project.

“I’m quite pleased with what I have done because I feel I have achieved quite a lot,” Mr Smith said. It is clear he has but it is not only him who benefits, but also the many other Newport youngsters who have been inspired.