Kung Fu Fighting – Tamborine Mountain Martial Arts

Cameron Quinn is a black belt who’s been training for 50 years and travelled the world several times, but it’s his accomplishments in our community that have us talking today: for five years, he has run Tamborine Mountain Martial Arts for students of all shapes and sizes. Cameron shares with us how everyone can reap some surprising benefits from stepping into the dojo.

by Kyle Hitchmough

 

How did you come to begin running classes on the mountain?

I’ve been running schools in Brisbane and the Gold Coast since the 80s, and I moved up here with my wife once my children left home. Shane Kelly, who’s a long-time local, said ‘Why don’t you come up and open a school here?’ So we did.

Can you explain what kind of martial arts you practice in your classes? Are they designed towards fitness and exercise or geared more towards training in the sport and actual martial skill?

It’s a bit of both. It’s a martial arts school that provides a range of teachings to help people develop self-protection skills. Sometimes they want to compete as well. We do Kyokushin karate, a well-known full contact style of karate. When you’re fighting you compete in full-contact knockout competition with no gloves. Kids wear head protectors and gloves. We also do Brazilian jujitsu. The combination of both of those is really good. The main thing we aim at, is that martial arts provides an incredible foundation for kids doing any sport because of the broad-based athletic adaptation, and it also provides a range of personal skills such as how to be more responsible, how to take ownership, how to be accountable, how to learn to focus… You’ll find kids that train steadily, their school grades go up, and kids that join the club develop a sense of responsibility. Kids who are a little bit intimidated or who may fit into the demographic where they become targets of bullying, that changes very quickly because they develop such incredible self-confidence.

What kind of classes do you offer? Children’s’ or adults’? Group or one-on-one?

We have two separate classes, kids and adults. We have kids’ training from five years old, and adults up to their 40s. The kids’ classes are definitely more popular. There are so many schools for adults. We have five group classes a week, and I do one-on-ones in the mornings five days a week. One-on-one can be a little expensive, but for some people who are busy with work and so on, it’s the only way they can do it.

What level of skill do you train up to?

We train from white belt all the way up. I have another school in Currumbin, and there we have state, national, international champions, all the way up to the guys who compete at the world championship level. We gear the class towards different levels of skill but as students progress they will just keep moving up through the ranks.

What goes into your role here? What is an average workload for you?

My role is everything from administration, organising the sessions and classes, teaching the classes.

I teach, train, and prepare those who want to enter competitions. I’ve worked with professional boxers, kickboxers, Muay Thai fighters, karate fighters and so on. I’ve worked with a lot of football teams too in terms of mental preparation, goal setting, tackling and skill development. My role is pretty well a jack-of-all-trades.

Are you a local to the area? What’s your opinion on the Tamborine Mountain area and community?

Born and bred at Surfers’ Paradise, but I’ve been coming to Tamborine since my childhood because growing up at Surfers, a weekend here was a weekend in the country. It was very common for us to come up here, we’d pitch a tent in a friend’s backyard. I’ve been coming here for 55 years. It’s a beautiful growing community, there’s no doubt that the environment is one of the best in the world. The aspects, north, east and west are very beautiful. You don’t find too many people coming up here, looking up here, and thinking “I want to go back down to suburbia.”

What do you think Tamborine Mountain Martial Arts provides to the area above all else?

It’s a community service. It provides an opportunity for parents to benefit their children who want to learn martial arts. For adults, too, I think it’s natural for people to be a little bit fitter, a little bit stronger, and in this day and age it’s quite reasonable to develop skills that allow you to defend yourself.

What do you like most about doing this?

If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t be doing it after all these years. What I love most is to see how it empowers people. We get kids who walk in and are so timid that you brush past them and they recoil. Within a very short time, their self-confidence just goes through the roof. I do a lot of seminars around the world, so I’ve developed a really good teaching style that allows the kids to turn around and very confidently be able to teach each other. I love to see kids doing that. I love to see adults walk in who maybe exaggerate themselves, or minimise themselves. They think they’re a lot better or worse than they are. Training balances everything, makes them think “maybe I’m not such a tough guy” or “maybe I don’t have to hide myself from everything.” It’s very good for people with trauma.

 

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Or email the writer at kyle.hitchmough@hotmail.com, and follow me on Twitter @realcasualrvws.