Ian McCranor has seen the worst side of people and has been in more than his fair share of fights.

When he was a bouncer at various clubs in Coventry, England, he was called upon to break up literally hundreds of fights.

McCranor is a fifth-degree black belt in karate, and he knows that what happens in a training environment is sometimes vastly different than life on the streets.

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I was force fed the truth every weekend, McCranor said. A real fight lasts about three seconds. A jumping spinning kick on the skillful level is way up there. But practicality, it is zero.

It is something you wouldn’t do. The most practical techniques need very little skill at all. Eighty percent of what you do in a real situation is mental.

McCranor’s experiences have taught him the importance of dignity and respect because there is nothing glamorous about real-life violence.

It is the discipline, the respect and the humility that you gain from doing this art anyway that you should stress to people who want to take up karate, McCranor said. The discipline is really for anybody.

Disciple means treating people with respect and avoiding fights as much as possible.

McCranor is working with Robert Whelan to recruit athletes to come to Southern Illinois and compete on a college karate team. He also teaches classes at the Sports Center, 1215 E. Walnut St., to the community at large.

He will be starting at John A. Logan College in September and will be majoring in physical education while he works to help increase the level of martial arts instruction in the United States.

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The way karate is in the states, they are definitely years and years behind the European people, McCranor said. They look toward Europe for guidance for the whole basis of competition. What I am trying to do is build that standard over here.

He said the biggest difference is people have lost sight of doing karate for the discipline of doing it.

McCranor believes that instruction in karate needs to be realistic. He does not teach people under 18 all of the fighting techniques, but he tells them the truth about how ugly real violence is.

Some people do not believe it, but it is possible for all people to defend themselves. He said a 130-pound woman using all of her body weight is going to have the same impact as a 130-pound man.

Karate teaches people how to use their body weight to be powerful and to be strong, he said. You can’t teach people that without teaching them what happens to who hits them. So you have to teach them to be respectful of people, to be polite to people, to be humble.

If you look at a gun, you look at the bullet as the thing that hurt you. It is the trigger that makes all of that possible. You put your body weight with your arms and legs, the bullets, but it is useless without the trigger, the brain.

What he teaches is how the most simple techniques can be the most effective in fight situations.

With the fighting, you can be a sort of reasonably good fighter and get through, McCranor said. The kata (the forms) has to be precise. The fighting side of it, you have to become an athlete.

McCranor began his pursuit of karate when he was about 15 years old and has been studying it for 23 years. He took second in the Commonwealth International Competition in 1986 and has won several events in England.

He has since given up most of the competition part of karate, in favor of teaching.

When you train to compete against somebody else, you have to believe the person you are competing against is training that much harder than you, McCranor said. And no matter hard you train, you’ve still got in the back of your mind maybe they are doing more.

So you have to look at the way you train, the way you rest, your diet everything. You have to become a complete athlete.

His time now is spent teaching and occasionally doing motion capture acting for video games. His latest effort was the Batman and Robin video game, which will be released in April for Sony Playstation.

One of his students, Kerry Reeve, also did some of the motion capture for Poison Ivy and Batgirl for the Playstation game.

Reeve became one of his students when she was about 11 years old. During the eight years of training with McCranor, Reeve said his strongest ability as an instructor is the way he tries to understand his students.

He listens, Reeve said. When you have problems with certain techniques, he will listen to you and won’t let you just sort it out yourself.