My Passion with Mark Alston: How Mighty Atom put me on the path to martial arts

Despite its horribly naff name, I get my kicks from practising Defendo, Britain's only home-grown martial art.

Best-described as British jiu jitso, Defendo was created in Liverpool before the First World War by the late Bill Underwood, nicknamed the "Human Atomic Bomb" and "Mighty Atom" as he was only 5ft 2in tall.

When he was a teenager, Bill earned pocket money selling programmes at the Vaudeville Pavilion theatre, where he met two jiu jitso experts who agreed to teach him some basic techniques.

Subsequently, Bill built on this foundation to develop his own system.

He later emigrated with his family to Canada, where he refined his techniques. These were subsequently used in the Second World War under the name Combato, to train special forces and spies.

Intriguingly, Winston Churchill was so impressed by Defendo that he supported the use of assassination teams, trained in the British martial art, to hunt down Adolf Hitler. It's this historical aspect that, for me, makes Defendo so enjoyable.

After the war, Bill Underwood's techniques were adapted for defence rather than aggression and the name Defendo was coined. Knowledge of this martial art had by then died out in Britain and it was only practised in the US and Canada.

Then, nearly eight years ago, I found out that someone called Clive Elliot had reintroduced it to the UK. At the time, I was working for the Royal Armouries, so I arranged for Clive to run a seminar at the museum in Leeds in 2003. This proved to be very popular and the Royal Armouries has since hosted three seminars a year.

I have always enjoyed the sport as a means not just of keeping fit but also of relaxing and refocusing my mind. Defendo, in fact, is completely different from the traditional oriental arts in that it has no accompanying ritual and culture. There are no fixed stances, forms or katas. Instead, it offers a toolkit of pragmatic techniques and principles, which are easily learned.

Essentially, Defendo uses joint manipulation, restraints, strikes, grips and leverages, as well as by manipulating the assailant's nervous system, to overcome an attack.

Most importantly, training is both relaxed and fun and you don't have to be fit to take part. In other words, it is accessible to everyone.

Visit www.defendo.co.uk