I have always held the belief that following your passion and staying true to your principles is the best route to achieving a happy and successful life. Though there is nothing new or remarkable in this statement, few people either have or take the opportunity to actually live in accordance with this. For many years, I was no different - trudging into a fifteen storey office block among a sea of faceless commuters, day in day out.

The start of my career in the City coincided with the start of my Kung Fu training. Like many students, I started training purely to get fit, and because I thought Kung Fu looked cool. However within a year I was hooked, and I started to appreciate that I had entered into a world way deeper than I had imagined.

Ten years later, that world is deeper still. Unlike many disciplines, with Kung Fu training there is no end. There is no perfection. Every new lesson learned opens up a new book of lessons yet to be discovered. Travelling and training with the club extensively across China, under leading masters of several different styles has opened my eyes to a culture so rich, colourful and different to our own. And in Kung Fu is the embodiment of thousands of years of this accumulated knowledge and cultural refinement.

That is the beauty of training - whether you simply aim for fitness and health, or to defend yourself, or whether you want a lifetime (or more) of study encompassing anatomy, physiology, psychology, anthropology, language - and almost anything else you care to imagine - it is there.

Through committed training, there is no way but to evolve. I have turned from "skinny punk" to "fat git" - which I take as a compliment from the Chief Instructor as to how my body has strengthened. I opened my own club in 2007. Unlike City life, in Kung Fu seniority is meritocratic - there is no alternative to putting in the hours training in order to get better. In 2009 I left the City life behind and have been teaching Kung Fu full time - being the master of my own time is deeply rewarding and has enabled me to see much more of the first year of my daughter Sophia's life than would otherwise have been possible.

My journey so far has gone a long way towards bringing my life in line with what I believe. I have great optimism for what the future holds, as I pass on what I have learned to the next generation of students.