December 8th, 2004
Chop, Chop, as Kids’ Charity Benefits
Tuesday night was all right for fighting last week when a Winnersh karate group took part in a ‘punchathon’ to raise money for charity. Members of the SSKI group, which trains at Forest School in Robin Hood Lane, each made an incredible 5,000 punches in an hour to raise £860! The punches – at a rate of one every 0.7 seconds – were counted by banging a drum in time to the action and, although the 27 members of the school group had sore arms, instructor Nick Forgham said it was worth it. “We did a solid hour of punching, which was really good. I’m really proud of them all. We had sore arms but it was just a question of keeping going. I’ve done something like this in the past and everyone was up for it.” Half of the money will be going to th NSPCC and the rest will go to the non-profit making group.

Wokingham Times, May 2nd 2005
Fighting Spirit for Cancer Charity
Karate kids punched their way to £1,000 for Cancer Research UK. Around 20 members of the SSKI group took part in the fist–fundraiser at The Forest School in Winnersh on Tuesday April 24th. By completing 10,000 punches in less than two hours the club members raised £1,011 for Cancer Research UK. Nick Forgham, karate club instructor, said: “ We had breaks after every 1,000 punches, which takes about 10 or 12 minutes, and we had water and bananas to keep us going. We had someing banging on a drum to keep the rhythm. For the last 5,000 punches we had music to keep us going, like the Rocky track. We started at 7.15pm and finished at 9.30pm. At the end everyone was hugging each other and it was really good. I was very proud, it was a really good night. We will have a rest now! Thanks to Coolwater Hampshire who provided the water, Riverford who gave us bananas and Darren Thomas from Solitaire Entertainment who provided the music.”