I help others to be confident like me
COLM Whooley was travelling home from work one day in 1980 when he was involved in a motorcycle accident, breaking his back and sustaining a spinal injury.
The then 21-year-old spent nine months in a rehabilitation hospital and has used a wheelchair ever since.
Colm eventually went back to college to study architecture and engineering, but assumed he would never again be able to pursue his passion for martial arts.
“My focus was on becoming as independent as I could be and coming to terms with my injury. I had thought martial arts was no longer an option,” he said.
“After a couple of years working, I set up Spinal Injuries Ireland, a national support and lobbying organisation, where I worked as CEO for 21 years.”
It was a magazine article that reintroduced Colm to the martial arts legend Bruce Lee, and the possibility that self-defence as a wheelchair user could after all be an option for him.
Colm said: “Bruce Lee’s quote ‘Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it. Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own’, touched a chord with me.
“But honesty was critical for me; I didn’t want to learn techniques that just looked good. I wanted to learn self-defence techniques that would really work for me as a wheelchair user in a serious street confrontation.”
He read about Martin O’Neill, an instructor in Jeet Kune Do (an expression of martial arts developed by Bruce Lee), and was impressed with his teachings. Colm contacted him, explaining that he was looking to develop effective self-defence for wheelchair users.
“If it was practical, I wanted to make it available as CEO of Spinal Injuries Ireland to patients during their rehabilitation. This was the start of a friendship and journey of nearly three decades.
“Once I realised that real self-defence was realistic for me as a wheelchair user, my goal very much changed. I had seen how it had empowered me and given me a new-found confidence and wanted to introduce it to other wheelchair users.”
Colm wanted to look at other styles and systems and incorporate them into what they had already learned.
This set him on a journey of exploration that took him to Britain and Europe, meeting and training with different instructors. teaching a variety of martial arts.
“I was getting a real insight into what was possible. And over the years I was able to get some special techniques that really worked well for us as wheelchair users.
“However, it was a message online from a mom in California that got me looking at how I could make the course available to people with a disability in different countries, and also to instructors, so that they could teach it to wheelchair users in their schools.
“The mom asked if I ran workshops or training in the US that her son could attend. I explained it wasn’t practical for me but I started to look at the option of creating an online course for wheelchair users and Instructors.”
Colm travelled to Valencia to work with his friends Andy Norman and Grek Fenollosa, founders of the Defence Lab martial art, to develop an effective online course for wheelchair users and Instructors globally.
“This took four years to develop. Andy is not only an amazing martial artist but is also a Hollywood movie fight choreographer, known for training Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, and the Batman and Jack Reacher movies.
“Some of the topics we cover in the course include positioning yourself during a charging attack, and fighting within your zone.”
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