Page 6 - Newsletter

Get inspired # 1 Florence Saussol

Q : Can you talk about yourself a little bit ? Where are Q : What brought you to martial art ?
from, how long you've been in VF?
I initially started martial arts at 6 years old - in my
I come from Fontainebleau in France, near Paris. It’s a village the only options were dance, horse-riding
beautiful area of the country renowned for horse and Judo - there was no way I was putting on a tutu
riding and bouldering. and pink tights so I went for horse-riding and Judo. I
was the only girl in the Judo club and by far the
I have been with VF since 2001, I started working on smallest so I never won any competition but I loved
Jansport France, and then as distributors for packs, the art and skills I learnt.
then I became a team leader for UK, France and
Scando’ for Eastpak, Jansport and Kipling. When VF I had to stop both activities when I was about 12
bought Timberland I was part of the integration team, because of back problems. At 18 when I went to
developing a whole training programme and giving the university one of my friends was into Tae Kwon Do
training to the Timberland teams in the local countries. and he often showed me moves. I used to replicate
I was then asked to move to JW to look after the them and he said I was a natural so I went to see his
French and Benelux team when we centralised instructor to ask if I could join the classes. He
customer service 4 years ago.
looked me up and down and said that I was too
short and a woman so I would never be any good
at martial arts. I was upset but I dropped it as I was
about to move to the UK . When I arrived I found
myself sharing a flat with a guy who took Tae Kwon
Do lessons and started showing me moves and told
me I should join a club. So I found a club where I felt
comfortable and welcomed, and I started my
journey.

Q: What do you like about Tae Kwon Do? What's
your 'level‘ and how often do you train ?

In martial arts I love the match between physical
and mental activity. Although it is a physical
exercise, there is also a lot to learn and memorise,
we learn about the history of the art and the
meaning of moves and patterns we learn. I am
th
black belt 4 Dan, a master instructor.
Unfortunately at the moment I only train on
Saturdays and Sunday mornings, we have classes
on Thursdays as well but work often means I
cannot make it to classes on time.
Q: Can you talk about your club and how everything started?

So my club started 15 years ago. Master Bridgeland and I were both training in Nottingham but had some
issues with the way the club was run - being very elitist was one of the issues we had. So Master Bridgeland
(ex navy, 6th dan in Judo, 4th in Ju Ji Tsu and 2nd in Tae Kwon Do and Kick Boxing) decided to move away
from that club and create his own vision of what Martial arts should be. I followed him because I liked his
ethos of making Martial arts available to all and to reach out to as many as we can. It was not about money,
we charge a lot less than most clubs : our goal was to include as many people as possible because we believe it
can really help people and make lives better. We started working with special needs children and adults
unconsciously at the beginning, because we never looked at a student deciding they were "too short, too fat,
too women, too anything" . So we ended up teaching the "rejects from elitist schools" and we loved it.