Welcome to St Pats Karate Club

St Pats Karate club was set up in February 2007 with just one class 5/7pm every Friday, by instructor Sensei Rob Green. He was approached by a project called Grangetown and Butetown healthy living program and they supported the club financially for the first four weeks. The club was based at St Patrick’s Parish Hall Grangetown. That is were the name of our clubs come from.

Sensei Rob is a very experienced karateka, with over 25 years experience in Shotokan karate and having experience running 4 other clubs in Ely, Cathays, Splott and Trowbridge. He is a very active karateka competing in tournaments and attending training courses.

 In February 2007 while with the WSKA under chief instructor Sensei Gabriel Operanta who was Sensei Robs instructor since 1985, Sensei Rob opened his St Pats Club completely on his own, but did and still does have the great support from his wife Sue Green, who is the club secretary with a lot of experience running clubs.

With just one class at St Patricks Parish Hall, demand grew for more classes. Sensei Rob had a meeting with Mr Paul Catris head teacher of St Patrick’s School Grangetown at the meeting it was agreed that karate would run as an after school club on Mondays 4.45/5.45pm. This was and still is a great success with 25 to 30 students training every session.

 By December 2007 the club had entered 10 tournaments picking up no less than 33 medals including three Welsh titles. With such success Sensei Rob decided it was time to move the club to another level leaving the WSKA and joining the VGKO (Vale of Glamorgan karate Organisation) The Vales Chief instructor is Sensei Robert Copeland and club secretary Cathy Copeland. The decision to leave WSKA was not made lightly Sensei Rob had been with the WSKA for 25 years, but with the VGKO being the most successful organisation in Wales, he decided this was the best move for the club, as the vale would show great support to the club in terms of high standard karateka for our students to train with, a great instructor for Sensei Rob and great administration guidance from Cathy for Sue.

In March 2008 Sensei Rob opened another after school club in St Cuthbert’s Cardiff Bay.Again this class was a success with 15 to 25 students at each session.
With the reputation of St Pats Karate Clubs growing Sensei Rob opened a class in St Paul’s Parish Hall Grangetown. With 20/25 students’ training in St Paul’s he was very pleased at how well the clubs were growing.
At all the clubs Sensei found that he had a growing number of students under 7 years old wanting to train so he opened a class at St Paul’s for students aged 4 to 7 years this class was opened up every  sunday 11.45/ 12.30 and was called Little Samurai. karate club This class is a fun way to introduce young children to Shotokan karate. We have a club mascot that comes in most Sessions to train with the children (they love him) his name is Phoenix the cat. Little Samurai also has its own grading system to help develop the students. Sensei Rob wanted this class to be great fun, with the students learning karate by using the kick bags and other items so the children would enjoy an introduction to Shotokan karate. (we now have a little samurai karate class every saturday and sunday in st pauls hall paget street grangetown at 11.45-12.30 on both days , as well as a little samurai class in the gathering place st athans on a thursday evening 5.45-6.30 and they are growing well ,)
Sensei Rob then opened another class in a different part of Cardiff, The Holy Family School Pentrabane.

Sensei Rob was at the point of turning his hobby into a full time job and in September 2008 he opened 3 more classes in Woodlands Special Needs School, Howells College and The Star Sports Centre in splott. And further a field in St Athan he opened 2 more classes in the Gathering Place.
From just one class a week, St Pats Karate Clubs under Sensei Rob Green now has 16 classes a week at 12 different venues. We have attended 26 tournaments from February 2007 to APRIL 2009 and picked up 117 medals. St Pats Karate Clubs are now a well established and serious karate clubs with a full time instructor.

We now have classes in:

7 SCHOOLS                          2 LEISURE CENTERS                 2 CHURCH HALLS                                       
St Patricks, Grangetown     Star Leisure Center, Splot        St Patricks Parish Hall, Grangetown       
St Cuthberts,Ccardiff Bay    Western Leisure Center, Ely     St Pauls Parish Hall, Grangetown
Holyfamily, Pentebane
Windsor Clive, Ely
Howels High School and College, Llandaff
Plas Mawr High School, Fairwater
Woodlands High School, Ely

1 COMMUNITY CENTER
The Gathering Place, St Athan

And with more classes opening soon 2 more special need classes, a special class for the deaf, adults only class in grangetown  And fight classes for competiton karate for our juniors and seniors as well as kata only sessions for for high grade katas and a female only class.  (which as been tried to a great sucsess )
We have also set up an elite system. The club was set up to try and make karate affordable and to remove the the finacial barriers that stand in front of many people to progress a career as a karate competitor, and to produce great characters more than champions with the philosiphy of karate so the elite sytem will allow this to to become possible. To get to elite you have to become a minmum grade of 3rd kyu brown belt, be in the top 10 of both the clubs attencence league and achievment league and be of a kind and helpfull personality. If you can achieve these goals the club will reward you with discounted training fees of just £1 a session along with 75% of tournament fees payed for an a club tracksuit new karate suites sports bag training shoes an new fighting mitts. Many people thought that I was mad to even attempted to make this work but as a karateka this is my aim and I will make this system work. There are many great karate clubs in Wales and we are lucky to be part of one of the great organisatios that is the V.G.K.O I have the greatest respect for all karate and martial art clubs. St Pat's karate club is not here to say that we are better than everybody else and I believe that is not the way any karate or martal art club should act we are just trying a new way and I believe this is working ONLY TIME WILL TELL    

For those of you who are looking for a friendly welcoming club with a future and a real goal to develop you at performance as well as character this is the club for you.
For more information on training times view our class times on the this web site or feel free to contact myself on 07878788034 or 0229344948

Thank You Sensei Rob Green