Just for Kicks the Art of Fighting With Your Feet by Keith D Yates

Sometimes when I run into a person whose face up may non be famous simply whose reputation is well known, I play a little game. I count the minutes information technology takes for them to brand sure strangers know about who they are. The prize for the shortest time goes to a pastor who took no more than than xxx seconds to assert his importance. Conversely, the winner of the all-fourth dimension humility honor in my little game is DTS adjunct professor, and my former coworker, Keith Yates.

Information technology so happened that I had partnered with him on DTS's flagship magazine Kindred Spirit for no fewer than three years earlier I found out about him. The large reveal happened like this. DTS had sent some of usa who produced the school'south magazine—the director of marketing; Keith, our artist; and me, the editor in principal—to the Evangelical Press Association national meeting. As I think, the city was Boston.

As we walked down the sidewalk to dinner, Keith—a gentleman—maneuvered himself to have the spot closest to the curb. I acknowledged his doing so by proverb something like, "You want nearest the street so you lot can be the one to fight off bad guys, right?"

He nodded and shrugged modestly. Then I asked, one-half-kidding, "You retrieve you could take on some robbers?" Dead serious, he nodded again before conceding, "Unless they accept guns." "What are you, some kind of martial arts skilful?" I asked, again, still half-joking. He nodded quietly. I stopped and stared. "No mode." I tried to imagine repose, reserved Keith doing Jackie Chan moves. I didn't see it. "Seriously?" The rest of the evening, I kept scrunching up my face and asking, "Really?" And, equally information technology turned out, even in his big disclosure, Keith held dorsum. Style dorsum.

Every bit the founder and president of the American Karate and Tae Kwon Do Organization, at the fourth dimension Keith had written more than three hundred magazine articles and authored or coauthored numerous books. (Today the number stands at more than 5 hundred manufactures and twelve books.) For a while, he wrote a monthly column for Martial Arts Professional. And for years, he wrote the "Inside Tae Kwon Do" cavalcade for Inside Karate magazine—which described him in one case as 1 of America's "pioneers" of karate. Additionally, Keith authored the children'southward story, Young Samurai. More than twenty years before, he had received the title of state champion in Texas.

All this explains why Keith'due south automobile license plate read (and all the same reads), "Sensei," which in Japanese means "teacher"—and more specific to his context, likewise means "instructor in the martial arts."

It was all truthful. Outside of the halls of DTS, the guy I referred to as "our designer" was known to many equally "Grandmaster."

Master of the Arts

At the camp Heaven Ranch, where his parents sent Keith Yates, then ten years old, he received Christ as his Savior. In junior high, he took up martial arts training. In that same year, his local newspaper carried an article virtually how Keith had fatigued cartoons on T-shirts and had sold them to classmates. His art skills led him to piece of work equally the cartoonist for his high school newspaper. And during those years, in 1968, Keith also earned his first black belt—at age seventeen—one of the youngest people in the state to do so. Since he was a brownish chugalug, he'due south taught martial arts continuously over the years—longer than practically anyone else in Texas.

Keith chose to pursue a fine arts degree at Southern Methodist Academy in Dallas, Texas, working for a print shop to help finance his education. And while at SMU, Keith decided to build a career in commercial fine art and design.

Both kinds of arts—martial and visual—drove him. The fact that Keith developed a reputation as a top practitioner of kata—the artistic side of martial arts—should come, then, as no surprise. "I gravitated toward the dazzler of martial arts. Maybe that was my artistic side coming out," Keith said. But his gift for pedagogy likewise connected to reveal itself. Equally the winner of several martial arts championships, Keith created a "karate for credit" program—the first person in the Southwestern Us to practice and then. He did information technology at his first alma mater, serving for seven years as an adjunct professor at SMU in the Physical Teaching and Communications Departments.

Afterward stints as an art director for an advertising agency and newspaper office, Keith wanted to design and create more just ads for shaving cream and shoes. DTS hired him four decades agone, in 1978—the yr Grease and Saturday Night Fever dominated the box office. His title? Assistant fine art manager in what was so the Public Relations section.

After hours, Keith took seminary classes. And he graduated v years subsequently as summa cum laude with his main of arts in Biblical Studies. His thesis topic: "The Demystification of Ki: The Spiritual Aspects of the Martial Arts." Many people acquaintance martial arts with Eastern Mysticism. But Keith asserts that the 2 are non essentially connected. In fact, he has fabricated didactics Christian grapheme a fundamental element in his work equally a martial arts instructor.

Primary "to the Tranquility Life"

When I arrived equally a freelance editor of Kindred Spirit magazine, Keith had served at DTS for xx years. Design awards the magazine had received from the International Association of Business Communicators, the Evangelical Press Clan, and the Faith Communicators Council lined the halls. At national communications meetings, Keith shared his expertise in the arts with others eager to learn. And information technology happened to exist at such a meeting where I received a more than complete picture of him.

The campaigner Paul instructs the Thessalonians to aspire to the quiet life (ane Thess four:11). And Keith seems to have internalized that advice for himself. People reading of his accomplishments might have expected to come across a driven, take-charge sort of guy. Just he slipped into meetings quietly, sketched as he listened, asked penetrating questions, supported his coworkers, and rarely talked almost himself. Meanwhile, in some other part of his life, Keith remained famous.

One time I clued in nearly his extracurricular activities, I fabricated sure that when I entered his office to wait at page layouts, I never walked upwards behind him unannounced. And I likewise noticed stuff similar the sudden appearance of a photo of Keith with Chuck Norris. The explanation? In the late 1990s, he was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Texas Martial Arts Hall of Fame in Waco, Texas—along with other notables such as his friend "Chuck."

Chief of His Calling

Non likewise many years passed before Keith received the honor every bit one of a few non-Asians in the world to hold a tenth-degree blackness chugalug in Tae Kwon Practice. What's a tenth caste? It's like a lifetime achievement accolade—a title granted only to martial artists who have given a lifetime to the furtherance of the martial arts. Only a scattering of such black belts in the US exist.

Simply look. There's more than.

Later on Keith mastered the fine art of Tae Kwon Do and had a successful tournament career, he earned black belts in Japanese Ju-Jitsu and Okinawan Kobudo, the art of ancient Asian weapons.

Yet to many of u.s.a. who worked with him in the by, we have seen that he has non allowed his many honors to dictate his identity. His identity as a Christ-follower has driven him.

During some of the darkest days of Keith's life, the intense discipline required in the martial arts helped him stay focused on Christ. And he turned around and used his skills as a door through which to enter the lives of others in need. "Grandmaster Yates" serves as chairman of the board of the Gospel Martial Arts Union and has often teamed up with Norris to utilize his martial-arts credibility equally a platform for the gospel.

As his daughter, Regan, lay in a infirmary room fighting for her life with a rare form of bone marrow failure (Severe Aplastic Anemia), we his coworkers watched helplessly. Daily this begetter of four somehow managed to prove upward on time for piece of work, keep a pleasant demeanor, run into deadlines, weep, ask about our lives, and limited his abiding faith in Christ and the Spirit'due south sustaining power.

Years later Keith looked back on those days and said, "It was an overwhelming feel during which I had to rely totally on the Lord. One of the things martial arts teach beyond just 'training hard' is the attitude of never giving upwardly no thing how difficult the task might be," Keith continued. "We call that an 'indomitable spirit.' I would say that it is one of the greatest lessons I have learned—and that I attempt to teach—from white belt to black belt and beyond. Persevere."

Master of Excellence

Keith'due south accomplishments, both at DTS and in the martial arts field, accept stemmed from a core commitment to excellence. For some years now, Keith has served as director of artistic services and publications. Every bit an adjunct professor, he also teaches the adjacent generation of seminary students about Christianity and the arts. "Since God is the writer of creativity," Keith said, "God's people should be the most artistic—whether they are preaching, singing, or designing a brochure or newsletter."

Throughout his years at DTS, Keith's pattern centre has continued to bring awards. And indeed the long lists of honors stemming from Keith's piece of work as a visual creative person are besides numerous to listing here. Most recently, the redesign of Kindred Spirit morphing it into DTS Magazine in 2015 brought more than honors from EPA.

All these years, Keith has served with humility. The pro who makes time for beginning students—ranging in ages from seven to seventy—in the gym (a task most would cast off to inferior instructors) also makes time to personalize instruction for his DTS students.

Parents of some of Keith's martial arts students describe him equally a person full of "goodness, knowledge, humility, and patience." And that indomitable spirit has seen Keith through myriad transitions at DTS in the past twoscore years. His bosses take changed. Administrative structures have shifted. Procedures have developed. Design requirements, processes, and software have advanced. Job requirements have modified. His coworkers have transitioned, just Keith has flexed with humility. And whereas institutional settings are often creativity-squelching places for artists, Keith constitute ways to acuminate his creative border throughout the decades he has served.

Master of Serving

DTS has helped train some famous people within Christendom and across. And Keith has helped tell their stories. His accomplishments, besides, have brought him before people the world has deemed important. (At that place's a proverb circulating that while some people clothing Superman pajamas, Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.) Yet the only person whose name I accept ever heard Keith Yates drop is the proper noun of Jesus.

This June Keith plans to retire from DTS. He still has enough to fill his days. He continues to have a thriving freelance practice and will work on putting the finishing touches on a 2018 edition of the Complete Book of Tae Kwon Practise Forms that includes video examples and a smartphone app. He and his wife, Linda, also plan to travel to places they've talked about visiting.

The grandmaster'southward iv grown children—including the daughter who survived—gave him ten grandchildren with whom he looks forward to having more time to serve every bit a different kind of sensei. A grandfather.

Photography by David & Luke Edmonson.

About the Contributors

Sandra Glahn

In addition to educational activity on-campus classes, Dr. Glahn teaches immersive courses in Italy and Slap-up U.k., as well as immersive courses in writing and in worship. Dr. Glahn is a multi-published author of both fiction and not-fiction, a announcer, and a speaker who advocates for thinking that transforms, especially on topics relating to art, gender, sexual intimacy in marriage, and outset-century backgrounds as they chronicle to gender. Dr. Glahn's more than twenty books reveal her interests in bioethics, sexuality, and biblical women. She has besides written xi Bible studies in the Coffee Cup Bible Written report series. A regular blogger at Engage, bible.org'southward site for women in Christian leadership, she is the owner of Aspire Productions, and served equally editor-in-master for Kindred Spirit from 1999 to 2016. She and her married man have one adult daughter.

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Source: https://voice.dts.edu/article/visual-martial-arts-sensei-profile-keith-d-yates/

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