Shu-Ha-Ri: learning concepts for Japanese Martial arts

                The Japanese concept of Shu-Ha-Ri was first introduced or presented by a famous Tea Master Fuhaku Kawakami of the Ju-Ha-Kyu school o Cha-no or the tea ceremony. The concepts were picked up by other great masters of non-Martial arts like Motokiyo Zeami of Noh acting and after some time the concept entered into Martial arts as a method for evolution of ones own personal style.

                The ideology of personal development and learning is essentially a concentric set of circles that interconnect and essentially state that while the Fundamental knowledge does not change on a subject the way one approaches it or applies it will based on personal preference, history, experience and skill or ability levels.

                The system of learning based on Shu-Ha-Ri is also a guiding principle for those wanting to learn a concept, skill set or art; be it Karate, Aikido, Cha-no, flower arraigning or highland dancing. The concept began to grow when more and more students began to take up martial arts training. Prior to this their was very limited involvement in Martial training, but with the influx of students that the arts saw pre WWII the concepts began to be applied more openly to the practice and learning of Martial arts.

               

                The concept of Shu-Ha-Ri is a descriptive term used to illustrate the learning process one goes through from a novice in an art to a expert. The concept is not only how we learn but a descriptive for the conceptualization that occurs when one begins to train in  specific art form and moves from student to practitioner to master of a skill set.

                The concept is based on the three terms Shu (protect), Ha (detach/digress) and Ri (separate/leave) and works a student from the concepts of knowing nothing, to knowing the subject to innovating and self-creating. After some time the concept was applied to the Menkyu system and then the Kyu/Dan ranking system and illustrates ones personal growth in the martial arts. Each phase has an indeterminate amount of time attached to it. Its not like you earn a Black belt and automatically transcend to some new phase of learning.

                The term ShuHaRi is translated to mean “first learn, then detach and finally transcend”. The idea is to learn a set of concepts and basics that make up the nature of a style of Martial art, then work with other related or complimentary concepts and then finally to merge them or create your own twist on the original concepts.

                Shu means to “Protect” or “obey” and means to learn the basics, to be taught and to stick to the concepts, learning them and internalizing them. This level is similar to the “student” phase in Karate or martial arts. Normally this is from a beginner to Shodan level. The student is expected to learn the key principles, forge technical ability and stick close to the teachings of the instructor.

                The Shu phase is what I call the learning phase, a student enters the club and starts learning the basics and fundamental concepts needed to take and pass Shodan. Now a days the time between white and black belt is about 3-5 years and most students are still in the Shu phase of training when they demonstrate their knowledge of Karate for Shodan. The Shu phase, like other phases is not a definitive time for everyone, some people will stay in the Shu phase for their whole Martial arts lives and never explore further or transcend into the next phase.

                Shu is the phase, in Shotokan, that you learn the first 15 Kata, the core concepts of linear dynamic movement and lateral defensive shifting and a myriad of other concepts that are applied to Shotokan Karate. You learn the basics or Kihon waza that is associated with Shotokan and you develop the skills needed to do proper kumite. This is the very start of your training but will be the bottom part of a pyramid of learning. This base is essential and one should never rush this level and should be studious and diligent in your training.

                Most of the time I see people jump Shu to soon if they do move on at all. Those that think that they want to branch out and learn other arts leave the Karate or try to “twin” their training at Green or Purple belt and the results are sketchy. I waited till Brown belt to branch out and I think I was way to soon in a lot of ways. It took me a tone of time to learn to meld the systems or take bits from the other systems and apply them to my Karate because I did not give myself enough time just focusing on Karate.

                The Shu phase is often the ONLY phase a person goes through as well because they are force fed the crap statement that they need to honor their instructor and not go out and train at other clubs or other systems and styles. This was not the traditional way of training and is a relatively new (WWII time) concept that was brought about when Karate came to Japan. The truth is that the masters of old never trained exclusively with one master. Matsumura Sokon trained under his master Sakukawa Kanga, but he also learned martial arts from master Iwah, Master Anan, and various other masters. People like Chotoku Kyan, one of Funakoshis peers in Okinawa studied under Itosu Sensei as his main instructor, but he also traveled and trained with Ihan Kosatsu, Yomita Yahara, Matsumura Sokon, Matsumura Kosaku, Oyamadori Kokan, Maeda Peichin, Tokumine Peichin and others.

                The Shu period of training for these men would have been years and years long with lots of private training classes. Funakoshi Sensei tells tale of Azato sensei requesting that he perform a single Kata every class for years and would make minor corrections until the Kata was done to his satisfaction, then he would move to the next technique. We don’t really do this today so you can see that the Shu period of our training may take much longer.

                Also, some students are not looking to move beyond Shu level learning. They just want a great work out and want to train in a specific style of Karate or martial art and are not wanting to think beyond this phase of training, and there is nothing wrong with this at all. Training at the Shu level is basic training, learning and polishing the core concepts of Karate and could take a student 10 years easily with modern training schedules.

                Ha is to “detach” or “Digress” or “Break with tradition” and simply means that you take everything you have learned and break free from its classical chains. A student will begin to develop and play with the ideas of the system and work on it from different angles. Be creative and mingle the ideas into different orders, One also starts to challenge the system and structure critically now. One begins to research and break away from just repetitions.

                Normally people see Ha phase of learning and practice as negative, but the truth is by challenging and research one finds a new depth to the training and often a deeper respect for the established form and structure of the style. Ha level training is often a point when students leave the club or begin to study other arts. It can be dangerous as they know the basics of one system but may not be ready to implement a research based training structure. The Ha phase is not a complete abandonment of the original structure, it represents and adaption period where the student is now challenging and assessing the dogma and doctrine that is used to create the system and structures, the concepts and principles.

                A student going through Ha will either abandon the whole style and leave or will create a type of self-validity that will help them legitimize the system in their mind. This is not so much a creative phase as it is a destructive phase, a phase that sees people challenge time tested concepts and test their belief in the validity of this concept.

                The student will bring new concepts in to challenge their understanding of the old concepts and will start to experiment directly with the established norms. They will rearrange or tear down and build back up the constructs that establish the form and functionality of the system. They will also start to use their own character, temperament and personality to view the concepts and to apply them to their own ability.

                At this point the student will begin to grow and create their own styles with in the constructs of the established system in a gross and general manor. An example of this is that a student will begin to experiment with use of distance and what tools they prefer to use in this respect. A student will, for instance, start using various kicking methods and abandon shifting in as they are now working on use of Geri waza in Kumite as opposed to closing the distance and using Tsuki waza.  The student will begin to abandon the “norms” and question them by physically testing them.

                This process normally begins after about four to six years of training at a high level, today it happens around Nidan and or later, but those that trained in the 80/90’s and went to classes five or six times a week may have gone through this sooner. The student becomes and issue for the Dojo and the club itself cannot handle more than one student doing this at a time as it is not healthy to have to many seniors in Ha phase of training.

                Near the end of Ha phase of learning a student will begin to accept that the basic concepts are true and know better when to apply them and through this natural exploration of the frame work they will begin to really internalize the concepts. It takes a great amount of self-awareness and drive to push through Ha without changing directions in your martial training completely and lots of the Ha students end up falling away from training permanently.

                Ri is to go beyond all knowledge and to begin to create naturally. The idea is that you have internalized the principles, tested and adapted many as your own and refined them all to be your core principles and concepts in dynamic use of motion. It is a release from being governed by the principles because you have internalized them and you are now driven by them.

                Your movements and kumite are no longer driven by ideas and practice, it flows naturally out of you, your Kata is no longer a representation of your style, it is an illustration of you! The Ri phase is a transcendence of form and conceptual ideology. This is now going to the highest level of learning and available knowledge acquisition. The process is now about originality and development of personal expressions.

                It is at this phase that students begin to establish a true Tokui Kata, not just for study but for self-expression and some go even further to create their own Kata to express their personal concepts and the ideology and opinions about Karate. At this phase the student is no longer a “student” but a practitioner that is creating their own path in Martial studies. At this point the art truly becomes the practitioner’s possession and the art possesses the practitioner as well. They become fused and grow together as they continue to create, recreate, form and fabricate the very rules that govern the system and style now.

                The student does not stop learning and growing, it actually takes on a whole new dimension and speed as they progress rapidly and assimilate and discard concepts, fundamentals and techniques that don’t apply to them. This process is not direct or linear, one can stay in Shu for the full duration of your training or leave training in the Ha phase of training and never reach the Ri. At Ri the student is still with the group and will help develop and grow the knowledge base of the group.

                Sometimes in Ri a student will break away from the core group and create their own system that is a branch off of the original system. Most masters do this, but often the student loses momentum and drops back to Shu to restart the whole process again. 

                In the life time of a student the process will naturally evolve and will spontaneously change, if one tries to force the process it will not benefit the student at all and the false sense or forced sense of progress will essentially be fake. A student should learn to recognize if their questioning and Ha phase is true or if they have an issue with the instructor and the constructs of the system they are training in however.

                The Essence of ShuHaRi is found in the masters journey. The master started as a student and progressed to the next level and then beyond by study, exploration and reaffirmation of the system they are training in.                

The ART of teaching

                Teaching is an art form! That is a statement that no one can actually state is wrong, and if they do say that its not an art then they are probably part of the problem with teaching!  No one should fall into the cookie cutter, everyone looks the same world that some groups strive for….yes strive for. They want everyone to look, speak and teach the same to a group of students for “consistency” sake, and it takes the art out of teaching and makes it some kind of sterile activity and takes the soul of the class and replaces it with mechanical paint by numbers style teaching that loses students interest and kills Dojos.

                Having said all that, there is an art to putting together a class for students and its something that is part “thrown in the deep end” and part “Deep research and training”. Its practiced personal expression that is conveyed on the Dojo floor or in the class room. The best teachers and instructors are those with personal passion and a need to teach and express themselves, my worst teachers/instructors verbally and physically regurgitated what they were taught and put about as much effort into teaching as they would watching a TV show. The key is to balance what you are teaching with who you are teaching with putting personal knowledge and expression into a set curriculum and balanced frame work of the class.

                Each organization has a curriculum that a student must learn and practice prior to testing for their next Kyu or Dan level.  For instance a yellow belt must learn Heian Nidan well enough to demonstrate it during a test, along with a gaggle of Kihon waza and some three step, five step or in some cases one step Kumite. The organization will set out the syllabus for testing and it’s the job of the instructor to get the student ready for said testing.

                There is however a lot of latitude that one has in teaching to get a student to the level they need to be at for testing. We have three months to teach a “Movement pattern” that is less than 30 movements long, and in some cases around 20!  During that three months we also have to polish Kumite skills, work on Kihon waza, but….if you think about the average time it takes to work on a kata, which is the biggest hurdle in my mind for most students, we have a lot of time to use different skill training and exercises and have some fun.

                We know we have a set syllabus and curriculum to have fulfilled but we can venture a tad out of the linear teaching patterns of Shotokan that we see some instructors follow religiously.  First off the Kyu levels will get bored and never stick around long enough to become Dan levels if we just teach the three K’s of Karate (Kata, Kumite and Kihon) but we also must remember that we are trying to teach a set structure to them that includes those three K’s.

By venturing off the path I am talking about adding to training, not changing it completely.  By adding striking shield training for impact training, maybe some fun calisthenics, self-defense drawn from the Kata or other fun drills to prop up the three K’s we can create a very interesting and fun class and still teach them the skills they need to pass their next test. After all the true artist/teacher makes the students work hard, tires them out completely and exhausts them all while entertaining and making the work out much more fun than it is grueling.

                Sure, teaching kids is harder than teaching adults. The adults often “get it” when it comes to hard work and you need to trick the kids into working hard more so than the adults, but you have the chance to really come out of your shell and be “one of the kids” when teaching them. You can add “Karate Games” and other fun stuff that enhances their training experience all while developing skills that will be essential to them going forwards.

                The trick is teaching them and having fun, but also getting them to learn the curriculum for each rank. Often we end up taking the kids and putting them in a “tiny tigers” program that is separate and has a secondary curriculum based on much more loose structured syllabus than the regular class, and that is fine. The point is to keep them interested and also teach them about Karate, the physical and non-physical things.

                Teaching Kids is not like teaching Juniors (rank) in that we have different ages, not its important to say that a child should never reach Senior level (Black belt) in a kids class, so you do need to, at some point, move them into the regular classes or at least have a kids regular track to your program were you end up teaching the curriculum required for advancement. Because of this I am a firm believer in having a completely separate Tiny Tigers program that makes use of “similar” kata, like the basic Taikyoku Kata and introduces basics with games and gear that is aimed at the appropriate Age level. Meaning no Makiwara training or heavy bag work, but perhaps some hand pads and kick shields for impact training and proper Kumite style drills that are super controlled and safe.

                Teaching Adults can also be challenging at times, but for very different reasons than those facing instructors teaching the kids. Teaching adults is not just pushing a class through the paces. One must remember to respect the students and show them correct physical form and functionality for the movements. But one must remember not to treat them as children,  just juniors wanting to learn! The art of teaching adults is by far easier for most over teaching children, but I occasionally see instructors teaching adults like they are kids, or getting frustrated and walking away from the class or members upset.  Relax, teaching means helping the student make small incremental jumps up the rank and technical ladder. Patience and persistence in teaching is needed just as much when teaching an adult as when teaching a child.

                One of the biggest sins one can exhibit when teaching is Ego, you are NOT their for yourself. Yes you will gain from the experience, but only if you focus on the students not your fancy kicks or fancy movements. The student does not care if you can hook kick and apple of their head, they want to know if you can teach them and train them to be able to do things like proper form and eventually to get them doing higher end techniques.  If you teach with Ego you will get board of showing off at some point and frustrated when students stop being amazed by your ability and frustrated that you are not teaching them to do things.

                The next deadly sin is giving up. You would not allow a student to throw in the towel on training, why are you going to do that on them. If a student does not understand something it is your JOB to try different approaches till they do get it. Work hard to realize that if they don’t get it it is your fault for them not understanding this. Try different approaches, seek out ideas from your peers and push to make sure you work to help the student. They are paying money to be in the program and even if you are not taking in a living wage off of this hobby they deserve your best efforts.

                The next items to discuss is who should teach junior belts and senior belts. My opinion and my instructors are the same. Junior black belts (Shodan and Nidan) are more than capable of teaching and instructing Kyu level students up to Nikyu and even Ikkyu.  Normally I would say that a Shodan and Nidan can run a class for juniors as long as they have solid foundational skills themselves and understand the basics, which may seem a no brainer because having a Shodan means you understand the basics, but unfortunately I have seen a few Shodan that may understand the basics but cannot communicate with others very well, but I have seen a few Yondans in the same situation.  

                Junior Kyu levels can be taught by Nikyu and Ikkyu in a Dojo setting with supervision from a Yudansha, but they should only be teaching basic techniques and not going into advanced stuff,  Just Kihon and working on basic movements of Kata. Shodan and Nidan should be working with the kyu levels to improve the Kata and basic skills. One of the biggest pitfalls a Dojo can fall into is having a intermediate level student teaching advanced skills that they are only just becoming aware of. I Cringe when I hear of a student coming back from a camp or class and suddenly teaching a concept, fundamental or application that they don’t truly understand.

                I teach a lot of joint locks and applications for self-defense in my classes to seniors and I have trained for YEARS in these to make sure I can apply them correctly and in a safe way, I let all my senior students know that I don’t want them teaching these without me present and would prefer that they NOT teach them. When I first started teaching applications I hurt a lot of students out of ignorance and not being careful enough, I learned my lesson and went to train privately with people that specialized in joint locks, throws and even earned a Judo Dan level in the process. I then trained like crazy in the Aikido, Chin Na and Judo so that I understood it, and even now I am only comfortable teaching a small amount of the basics I know in these and applying them to Karate. I HATE seeing people that I consider untrained teaching concepts and applications they just learned and are still figuring out.

                For those reasons I usually limit the shodans and Nidans in our organization to teaching only Kyu levels and leading classes without in-depth explanations for Brown and Black belt classes. The reason for this is that they are still exploring Karate and have just mastered the very basic level of Karate. They are not ready nor do they have the tools to lead a student through the same waters they themselves just came through. My biggest pet peave is hearing that someone just came back from camp/class/seminars and they are teaching advanced class subjects and exercises to people, when they have not had a chance to study this themselves. The problem comes up when something changes or they need to correct something and they don’t really understand the variables because they did not study the material past the class. It can be dangerous and more than likely very useless to the students as the instructor does not know the ins and outs of the subject.

                There is also a huge difference between teaching traditional Karate and sport Karate. Teaching Traditional Karate is teaching a in-depth and intricate set of skills that focuses on many different facets of life; from self-defense to movement skills to health and wellness, stress relief to life skills like goal setting and communications. The teaching of traditional Karate has vast applications and requires a person that cares and it has a deep and rich selection of subjects to teach and specialize in. Sport Karate however is focused on training people to compete. This means polishing the aesthetics of Kata and working on athletic elements like explosiveness, speed, flexibility and range of motion.  The training is fairly narrow and shallow and restricted to specific athletes for short periods of time.

                Athlete training is a limited endeavored and normally only takes up a small percentage of a instructors time. An instructor who focuses training athletes may get a lot of notoriety but the clubs will be shallow and short lived in the end. A focus on athletics will also under develop students and create an ego issue in the end. However, sport is an important part of testing yourself and your Karate to develop and will push you to work specific aspects of your Karate. While one must take care not to over focus on sport it can be a valuable tool in gaging your knowledge and advancement in skill.  Because of the delicate nature of Karate training only those that have a good balance of knowledge and training should groom athletes or train students in Karate.

                I would have to say that anyone can instruct a set curriculum or coach a sport karate class with the right guidance. Its actually much easier than some would imaging, but to be an instructor in Karate takes a lot more than just showing up with a book of ideas and yelping out orders.

                Instructors should first be students and study Karate as a passion. They need to focus on development as a instructor and work towards understanding Karate on a more personal level. They also will find that they specialize in different areas of Karate. They will bring specific teaching styles, ideas and understandings to the table and will help build clubs up with solid students and other instructors learning and developing from them.

                A pre requite to teaching is being a sold student and working hard at finding a deeper understanding of Karate from a personal point of view and then finding out how that applies to the general training in Karate. Some people really enjoy a focused training program, like they really love Kata but hate Kumite or don’t like the sport aspect or don’t like anything but the sport aspect. This makes for a shallow program and even I realize that sport training is required and have studied tournament Karate. 

                It is also important that people bring anything they have trained in extra to the table when training and then try to convert it to the training program that they teach students, this will assist them in building a solid tool kit when teaching. Remember to always study and bring your experience to the table in different endeavors as well, be it a different martial art or outside of realm of Martial arts.

                However, while we all have our own teaching styles and systems, I do believe that not everyone is a good fit for being an instructor. Most people can be coached and given time they become good or at least competent at teaching, but people who enter into teaching because of ego will never be ready to teach or run their own programs even if they train hard and work up to it.

                A few of the best ways to grow as an instructor is to listen for feed back. It’s a funny thing however. We have to have tough enough skin to ignore the insults and jabs that get thrown at new instructors and take them as constructive even if they are not. I remember when I was teaching for my instructor at one of his clubs a rather surely brown belt once confronted me on my not believing in wasting time warming up. Now, let me be honest, I do warm my students up, but not always the way that they are used to. First off I don’t believe that you need to take a third of a class to warm up doing silly Yoga stretches that are better done after class to build flexibility. I think that you should do a quick 5 minute warm up that gets your blood flowing, take a second to stretch out and then get into it!

                Well this gent was used to the ½ hour stretching and bending and warming up like a ballet star that was once prevalent in Martial arts classes. The worst part….I used to lead these warm ups!  Well he got into it with me over the whole lack of warm up and I am sure he had other issues, but once he opened his mouth past just expressing his want for a warm up I stopped listening. I got aggressive back and then I stopped listening all together and told him to call ahead and he did not need to take my classes.

                Point being that it took me a while to benefit from this interaction and the benefit I got, not all feedback is good, but you can still learn from it. In this case I learned you can’t make them all happy and you don’t need to.  I sat back and studied my reasoning, read up on warm ups even more and it affected the way we did warm ups going forwards.

                Feedback however is a great tool.  I don’t go asking “Hey how did I do” anymore but I used to ask what people thought of the class ext. Now I listen and watch how people react, did they get a good work out and are they learning. Often someone will spontaneously interject and tell me how they liked a particular class, this kind of feedback is HUGE in a instructors development. One should ask students in the beginning what they thought, or how they felt a class went, it does not have to be formal just a quick question.

                We often don’t ask for feedback because we are nervous about how it makes us look, are we trolling for compliments? Insecure? Or are we wanting a pat on the back?  It does not have to be this kind of ego trip that leads you to asking how you did, just a quick conversation that asks “Did I do okay, was there something you did not like?”. This kind of critique can help you grow big time as an instructor. Feed back is normally best from those that you are teaching, why…well your peers know what you are teaching and are not your audience, so white we can point out technical flaws and mistakes, your audience will let you know if they will come back to you and train with you.

          

                The last thing that one must understand when teaching or assisting in teaching is that you can not make every student happy. Not all students will Jive with your style of teaching, not everyone will want to do what you are teaching and not everyone is on the same path as you.

                Lets face it if we all wanted the same things it would be dull and Karate would be flat! The nice thing about Karate is that it has so many facets to train in, from Martial Art that focuses on the aesthetics to a very to the point self-defense tool to a sport that is fast and dynamic. The nice thing about Karat is that it has so many faces that you can teach a different aspect of Karate every class and not worry about repeating yourself for some time. However, This is also a problem because not all students want to train in Karate for the same reasons and some are adamant that they don’t want to do specific things, or more than likely are just not going to be happy doing a particular aspect of training.       

                There is also the fact that your teaching style may also rub some people the wrong way. It’s a martial art, some people feel that this means “Military training” and they show up for the grumpy and stern instructor that barks orders and whacks them with a stick to keep them moving and motivated. They don’t like it when you smile and you joke around a bit, they think its impolite and not traditional when you are human and try to have a tad bit of fun.

                Some people think Karate is like an aerobics class with white pajamas. They don’t like it when you go all sergeant major on them and bark orders, and don’t even reach for that shinai or they will shut down and never come back. They want a smily happy person telling them how great they are and how they need to “push on” and “Finish hard”.  Trust me when I say that growing up in Karate in the 80’s, we did not have happy aerobics teachers prodding us on with impactful motivating phrases and a “Great job” kind of approach. Our instructors expected us to train hard, you paid to come to a traditional Dojo and you got the beating to prove it if you did not work hard.

                You will also find people that just don’t like you and your approach. They will question your ability to teach, do Karate, your knowledge, lineage or something….anything….just to put you down a peg in their mind. Trust me when I tell you THEY ARE NOT WORTH THE EFFORT TO FEEL BAD ABOUT. You will always have some negative person or someone trying to shoot you down when teaching. Screw them! You are the one dedicated to Karate enough to teach! Let them be all negative and just keep pushing on.

                You cannot keep all the people happy, you wont make everyone want to train with you, you wont be able to cater to everyone. Just keep plugging away and pushing your training.  If  they like it they will stay, if not they make room for those that do want to train with you. Your true peers will help you, some may even teach so different than you that it’s a good idea to team up! But those that put you down, tell you that your skills as an instructor or Karate person are lacking, well they are short sighted and probably jealous of you in some way so let them go and keep plugging away. You cannot make everyone happy…but you can make yourself happy.  

                So, you still want to be an instructor. You still have the passion swelling up in side of you. Remember its often a thankless Job and you wont make a tone of money at it if you are honest and traditional. You will have days when you are paying out of pocket for rent, you will have months when you see six students show up. But if you keep pushing and you really focus on being the best you can be, you grow and try and improve constantly as an instructor and you are doing it for the right reasons, while learning to avoid the “Issue people”, you will eventually get to that point when you just enjoy showing up to work with your students. You will see progress and you will learn to drive your ego away and keep your students progressing.

                Keep training, learning, studying, refining and keep pushing and you will make this work for you. You will help your instructors legacy be passed on and become part of the lineage of the organization and your instructors lineage.  You will form bonds with students and you will learn to enjoy the important things in life like friendships, relationships and the joy of others.

JKA of Manitoba. A historical view of training and its development over the years

This year marks my 35 year training in Karate. Now I have to be up front and tell you that it has not been a solid 35 years in a Dojo training. I took time off, a few months here and there, and also left Karate to train in other arts, or to focus for short periods on the other arts while being “Away” from Karate.  But at the same time I have to say that while I was “Away” I still did my Kata. At one point I left for a few months (9 to be exact) to focus on my grappling in Judo…but the back yard on Consol ave was worn out that year from doing Kata every day in the summer! I may not have physically been down to the club but I was still training in Dingman Sensei’s Karate!

                Now, I also did not start training at the JKA of Manitoba, I actually started training with one of Dingman Sensei’s Sempais in the same city, but I found I did not like his teaching…and I was a little kid. So while I started at the age of six, I trained for a year and a half and then left Karate for almost a full year before finding Dingman Sensei’s Dojo (It may have been a tad more than a year…give me a break its over three decades ago).

                I hate stories that start off with “IN the olden days” or “Way back when…” so please forgive me in recounting the evolution of the JKA of Manitoba by starting off with “In the old days” and “Way Back When” kind of ramblings and recounts of the past, but I think it is very important to start off at the beginning of my journey in the JKA. Anyways, when I started Karate with Dingman Sensei, or to be more accurate , in the kids class at the JKA of Manitoba Down on Albert street the club had just moved from Transcona and was in its new digs on Albert street. They had been their about a year or two when I joined from what I understand and the club already smelled like a club and looked like a broke in Dojo.

                I remember coming into the club and right away I knew it was different than the previous Karate program I had taken. The kids were huffing and puffing and to be frank…no games were being played…just hard training. I actually watched and Adult class first with my big brother having dropped me off to go find comic books at a local store, I made the climb to the fourth floor and opened the big wood door. The door just said JKA and had the JKA logo under the golden letters. The first thing that hits you when you enter a club is the smell. I cannot describe it really, its actually a mix of everyone’s hard work and perspiration, the smell of moist hard woods and the cleaning supply that was used to clean the floors of everyone’s sweat.

                The class itself was crazy and I had gotten upstairs about half way through class on a Saturday and the adults were doing Kumite…I think it was one step but the movement and rotation of bodies made it hard to tell what I was looking at. They flowed and the whole class kind of undulated in front of your eyes, it was not uniform and robotic at all but the class was moving at different times and lunging at each other, sliding back and blocking and the noise was amazing, Kiais and shuffling of Gis made it hard to focus on one person or one group. The spirit in the room, even the waiting area was almost tangible and you could just feel the exertion and spirit being used in that class.

                At the front of this chaos was a shorter man, about five three ish with a wooden sword in his hand, A Shinai, and he was barking out orders. The volume he could produce without any effort was kind of scary. Now, his orders did not come out violently or in a negative way, he was urging on the mayhem and trying to get people to move. Most of what he was yelling was in English, but the odd word of Japanese (I assumed) would come out. You could not sit in the waiting room and watch this without eventually becoming transfixed by the instructor. He seemed to just exude spirit and an aura I had never seen….and I don’t believe in Auras.

                Class ended and the whole group bowed to each other, looking happy, but worn right out and lined up behind the instructor. When the line was straight as an arrow and all the students were standing straight at attention the instructor lowered himself to one knee, then to a full sitting position and the most senior student yelped some order that I had never heard before and the whole line in unison lowered the same way as the instructor and sat on their knees, in what I thought at the time seemed like a silly thing to do on hard wood floors…..little did I know I would adopt this sitting position for the rest of my life.

                After a short, and very quiet moment or three, the whole class repeated some kind of boy scout oath that seemed to remind me of my cub scout oath I had to learn…of which I do not recall at all at this point in my life. And the group bowed after the instructor turned around and then waited for the instructor to get up and leave. Then they stood up, bowed and a young Green belt flew off the floor, bowing as he left, ran into the mens change room and returned to the floor with two buckets of hot water. The whole class cleaned the floor and the instructor walked towards me, turned to bow off the floor and then walked right past me. I will never forget, he did not say a word to me as he passed by me, but he ruffled my hair with his hand closest to me so fast I could not even see his hand move from his side! That was my first introduction to the JKA of Manitoba….well actually…

                When I came into the JKA for the first time I actually had two very different things happen to me that I would say NO first time student will ever have happen to them. I opened the door to the club, a large wood door and immediately got hit in the head with a big Tonka Toy truck! Now as it turned out it was the instructors daughter that threw it at me, or in my direction…I never did get the answer to that.  If that was not enough of a welcome I was immediately accosted by the secretary. She pointed at me and said “you come here” in a growly voice….now keep in mind I am a young kid and never been here before and did not know who this adult was who was seemingly upset with me. Turned out that after a brief conversation I had been mistaken for another student and was let off the hook. But As a confirmed introvert and shy kid…well my heart was POUNDING in my chest.

                After signing up for the club I started training in the kids class, which was three times a week before the adults trained.  I have to stop and say that the kids class back then was VERY different than the kids classes we hold now. First off it was from five to twelve years of age and no one under thirteen trained in the main classes. Also, we did not do games! The class was basically a mini version of the adult class with some variations, very little Kumite and lots, I mean LOTS of calisthenics and weird exercises designed to torture you and also train your body. We did duck walks, Seal pulls (picture using your arms to pull yourself across the ground from one end of the club to the other), we did pushups…lots and lots of pushups, sit ups, leg lifts and a variety of other exercises that I really hated as a kid…I wanted to hit something not do pushups…did I mention that we did LOTS of pushups?

                We were not allowed to hit the old beat up punching bag or the Makiwara, which was fine by me actually, both were covered in dried blood and the Makiwara often had bits of skin stuck to the harsh looking rope that was used to cover it.  It would be a few more years before Sensei and a Sempai of mine had me hit that thing 100 times before each class with both hands and I would start to like it…..a bit too much if you ask my mother.

                I stuck to the kids classes for a few years, and Sensei never taught more than once in that time frame. He would sit in his office and work or read and have a coffee while one of the sempai, normally a brown or black belt youth (around 16-20 years old) would take the kids through the class and run us till we were exhausted. The whole time he would sit in his Gi or street clothing and often behind a big newspaper so he could hear the class, but not see it. His office was down a hall just past the public bath room that seemed to always be occupied for the 40 minutes before class you may need to pee, which meant a quick hike to the top floor, up four more flights of stairs, in your Gi to quickly relieve yourself, then back down the cold stairs to the class…or worse…to the basement if the top floor was being used.

                Normally 13 was the magic number to transition into the adult class, but I was bound and determined to get in the class at 11. Keep in mind, I was no giant kid, actually I was most often the shortest kid in class and 9 year olds were often a tad bigger than me. I was also not physically gifted to be the fastest or strongest…so it may have shocked Sensei when I interrupted his pre class coffee to ask him if I could stay and try the adult class. The first time I asked he looked out over his news paper and simply said, “No, you are to young”. But I had read or been told this story about a kid that wanted to learn Kung fu and went to the master every day to ask to join the temple and become a fighting monk and I was not going to give up….well I almost did when the third time I asked he looked over his paper and told me I was to small and to short and would get trampled! (now, never mind that he was right…I still wanted to be in the adult class). 

                I was ready to give up and throw in the towel. Now to be honest, it was all on me. If I were in Sensei’s position I would do the same thing! But!!!!! I guess my attitude towards training changed and I missed a few of the kids classes, and Mavis, the gruff secretary noticed my attitude was changing and she took it upon herself to call my mom and ask why I was so glum. My mom told her how I was board with the kids class and I was actually paying for my own classes with a paper route my brother and I did. When I tested I got extra money by selling my comic book collection and saving up my money I got for doing chores (back then doing the dishes for a full week got you two dollars) and I paid for my own training.

                I did not know this but Mavis went to Sensei and pleaded my case to him. Apparently it did not take much for him to agree to let me move up to the big class, with the understanding that this was my choice to do this. I was told at a Saturday Class to try the adult class after my kids class and see if I could manage it. I was ecstatic!

                This was the summer and the kids class was early on and cool in the Dojo still, but as we trained you could feel the heat raising. The old Dojo did not have air conditioning, hell most places did not back then, but we had six big windows that we would open up to try and get a breeze in class. The adult class started and was VERY different than the callisthenic and Kihon centric kids class. While I was an orange belt I lined up in the back at the end of the adults. We had two lines and because I was a kid I was seen as a junior to everyone and I was actually kind of happy….except for one thing. I will never forget that the guy in front of me had the worst smelling feet and when we lined up this brown belts feet were rank as heck and I had to then bow and get closer to them! Yah, that was almost a deal breaker right their!

                The training was also very different, we did not do much calisthenics, just in the warm up. And after the warm up we did basics…and more basics..then a bit more basics and finally….you got it…more basics.  And it was nothing fancy! We did Zenkutsu dachi, age uke to Gyaku zuki hundreds of times on each side. I thought that this was going to be a whole class on this one move! We did 30-45 minutes of basic movements and really it consisted of about four or five different blocks done with a reverse punch at the end and then we finished off  the basics with what I would come to know as the perfect kick…Mae Geri. I knew all these basics from the kids class…but I don’t think I had ever done 1,000 front kids…each leg…in a kids class before.

                Then we did Kata. 30 minutes of Heian shodan and nidan. The whole time Sensei making minor corrections and pushing students slightly to test balance and once and a while poking them in the gut to check tension. He would kick legs lightly to test the base and then push on the hands or pull the hikite hand and turn heads to face the right way. Very little talking and lots of physical training and corrections. In the kids class we danced through Kata and we knew the “moves” but the expression of the Kata was so different and violently perfect it was like it was a completely different exercise.

                After going through the Heian Kata we were split up to work on our testing katas and a senior would walk around and teach us or work with us. They taught us the same way Sensei did, a demo then getting us to do it and finally poking and prodding as we did the kata, a movement of a hand or physically touching and lightly striking to test or point out details.  So far the class was different and tougher in its own way but I thought that class was almost done and I had not experienced the dreaded Kumite component of Karate.

                It is very important to explain at this point that the hour long class was a basic idea of when the class would start…when it would end was a mystery that only Sensei knew and apparently the Seniors were all in on this fact, and most of the adults that were training knew that an hour could stretch out and normally did stretch out to some unknown time. The only defining factor was when sensei would finally feel we had enough, or he ran out of things to teach for that day or lost interest in a specific part of class. While the classes were always an hour long…that was a minimum time. You were sure that Wednesday and Friday classes would end on time because the senior/black belt class was right after and he would even end class a tad early on those days…but this was Tuesday and you never knew when it would end. One time we went two hours solid training, and Mavis would call my parents and let them know I was fine and class was running long and I had a ride home and would not be on the bus at 8 at night.

                Well, the Kumite started after a very brief explanation from Sensei about control and using proper form. We would line up with the juniors running down to find a senior to train with. Sensei would adjust for size and sometimes rank, moving students from one partner to the next to make sure the assigned partner was appropriate for the junior. My first Kumite experience in a seniors class was with a black belt named Keith. He was an older balding man with glasses and really did not look at all dangerous. He punched funny and to this day I wont forget his dipping elbow when he punched. He also had taught me Heian Nidan when I was in the kids class.

                Now, Keith was slower than the other seniors and he had funny form, which Sensei would constantly be trying to correct, but Keith just seemed to be wired different. I have to say that first three step Kumite we did was an eye opener. His arms were HARD as a rock  and blocking his punches hurt your arms, when he blocked he would not smash your arm but it was like blocking a baseball bat with your arm, the harder you blocked the more it hurt and the more it hurt the less you wanted to block, which meant you would get hit in the chest or the face (lightly) to remind you to block harder. Kumite back then was a game of tag, we said “no contact” but what that meant was “don’t cause them to bleed….to bad”.  I was training with the trees now and actually liked it a lot. My first class ended and I was so tired and sore that I had to go home and ice my forearms. My mom thought that I would give up, but really I was getting hooked!

                The Dojo was kind of a temple to most of us, it was a special place that held a magic of its own. Looking back it was probably because of Sensei and his serious attitude towards training. Things were so different back then with training. It was not unique for people to walk around after class with blood on their gi like it was a badge of honor and if you left class and were not five pounds lighter from perspiration then you were not working hard enough. Bruises were badges showing your commitment and attitudes were specific in training. If you had an ego, someone was going to pound you down! If you were seen as lazy you were going to get pushed even harder than most! If you were disrespectful or dangerous when sparring you were in for a world of pain! And while gender was left at the door, if you hit a lady during training…well you were going to have the honor of waking up looking at the dingy ceiling. I only saw this once but while it was scary you had a sense that it was not just sanctioned but warranted!

                 One other thing that we would all brag about, and by this point I was 13 or so and had been training for a few years as a adult class member….was the ability make the walls sweat! This was a unique phenomenon that happened in the summer and sometimes in the deepest of winters when the class got so active that the humidity in the class topped out and we could get the walls to bleed sweat down them.  We managed to do this on several occasions in the summer, which seemed very easy seeing as Winnipeg’s summers are often humid and hot, but on the odd occasion we would have a two hour grinder with Sensei and we would push so hard that all of us were soaked in perspiration and drove up the humidity to the point that the walls would turn to rivers of moisture!

                One other badge of honor we all held highly was the state of the hard wood floors on the fourth floor Dojo. See the first part of the floor that you worked out on when you first came onto the dojo floor was pristine! And after a few years of absorbing oils from human sweat and the cleaning solution we used it was a reddish wood that almost glowed it was so polished. But the back part of the club was a mess. Broken floor boards, duct taped sections and cut out sections replaced with solid pieces of Oak to replace parts of the floor we would break from time to time doing Kata or when someone flew at the floor in Kumite after being thrown. Pretty much any time we broke the floor or the Kicking bag  or the granddaddy …the makiwara…well it was something to boast about and show off as a badge of honor and proof of our training.

                Now I was in the adult class but one very important distinction has to be mentioned here, till I was 16…at least…. we were seen as juniors and basically white belts even if we walked around with Purple or even brown belts. We lined up at the back and at the end of rows and we were to treat adults with respect no matter what the rank. I recall a purple belt getting tossed out of the adult class for two months and banished to the kids class for disrespecting a yellow belt adult. Sensei was VERY clear that respect was the number one thing he demanded in class. He also gave you respect back, but if you were caught being disrespectful or if you developed an attitude seen as disrespectful you were going to be corrected.

                It almost became a paranoid habit of everyone to respectfully bow and say OUS whenever a black belt came on the floor and God save you if you did not bow when Sensei came on the floor. Not because of him, but because some senior was going to grab you by the back of the neck and remind you what bowing felt like…and how your neck would feel after they gripped it with their death grip!

                Sensei rarely had to correct someone’s behavior, we had the “Dojo police” for that. About five different black belts took it upon themselves to keep us in line and truthfully I may have been more scared of Sensei than them,….but just slightly. Kids were expected to show respect to everyone and to train hard and keep up with the adults. If you slacked you were slapped down really fast and pushed hard by seniors, if you were caught Yawning, the worst offence in Sensei’s big book of offensive behavior on the floor, you were “corrected” quickly. Training was strict but it was actually much more fun than you would think in that kind of environment.     

                Another aspect of training that you don’t see much now a days is who is to blame if a student gets hit during Kumite. When I first started this was a given that you were responsible for your own safety! Never did we put blame on seniors for not showing control or juniors for not pulling back. It was not ever suggested that the person throwing a technique was responsible for the safety of the person that would be defending themselves. The idea being that in the street the attacker was going full force and was not going to give you the benefit of pulling a punch. Getting hit in the dojo meant one of two things….you were training really really hard…or you were not paying attention. It was all on you!

                The neat part about class down town was how sensei organized the classes…or rather how the classes kind of subconsciously were organized. The classes at the start of the week were all about Kumite and repetitions of basics. If you went to a adult class on Monday or Tuesday you would get your Kumite in and your basics would be sharpened, as we approached the week end it became a Kata clinic and we would do reps and then Kata. The week end was a mixed bag however and often became all about pushing yourself hard in Kata and Kumite equally. It was funny, even with all three K’s in class you would inevitably find that your training was heavy in one of the three elements. 

                We would almost always start with a very brief warm up, if any, and then transition into Kihon training. Lots and lots of reps and drills or exercises to build our basics up, then we would do Kata and finish off with Kumite. On Mondays we would spend 10 minutes on Kata and 30 on Kumite and by Fridays class we would zip through basics and sit on Kata for 45 minutes and finish off with a little light Kumite. I asked sensei at one time if this was planned and he looked at me like I was crazy.  He simply felt his way through teaching and put emphasis on different aspects of training naturally based on his mood.

                Now before I go on I have to say that testing has never been “My thing” its always been something I avoided as much as possible coming up through Karate. I started and graded with a different Dojo up to orange belt and when I joined the JKA I came in with a white belt and started retesting right from white.  Sensei never pushed us to test, his wife did, but he did not. I got good at timing my quarterly retreat from Karate to avoid seminars and testing, partially because I did not do Karate for rank and partially because I was paying for all this on my own and as a kid I had limited funds. I tested maybe once a year…and only if I could not avoid it! Around “that time” I would cut back to two classes a week, and normally the Saturday when Mrs. D would not be their and the Wednesday when she was busy with other things. Then the week of the seminars I would get a cold or something and miss seminars, coming back in Monday to be berated by Mrs. D for my missing testing.

                I held the rank of yellow belt for a year and Orange for a year and a half. Between Orange and purple however Sensei pulled a fast one on me. He told Yaguchi Sensei how long I had been training and that I knew all the Heian Katas and Yaguchi Sensei gave me a double rank advancement that time….so I justified this as a great chance to take two years off from testing and held my green belt for almost two and a half years before I was forced to test again.

                I also did not originally like competing. I was not one to want to be in the spot light, and that was why I loved Karate. You could go to class and just do the work outs. You could escape into your own head and not feel like you were being singled out or you were in the spot light as it were. I hated competition until one time I got hit in the face…really hard. It threw me for a loop but right away I was hooked. I cant explain the realization that you were really getting hit, it was an adrenaline rush to think that could happen every time you stepped into the ring.

                Now I know we got beat up a lot in class, but it was significantly different when done on the floor in the club opposed to in the ring at a tournament. It was kind of fun! I knew I was “wired different” as someone once said right about that time. You never wanted to get hit, but you  knew you could and the adrenaline was addictive.

                One side effect of missing seminars and testing was that I missed out on training with some really cool masters. One that breaks my heart was missing out on training with Nakayama sensei.  See at the time the normal cost for seminars was about $30, but the office was charging $50 to train with Nakayama and I just could not justify the cost….now I would have paid $2K for the honor of training with him, but I was a kid!

                Nakayama was one I missed, but Senseis dedication to bringing in the best and brightest instructors the JKA could offer up, or rather the ISKF was obvious. We got very close with Sensei’s Sensei, Yaguchi Sensei and he was out every other month and normally he was the Key guy we would see. However, we also had Tanaka, Koyama, Takashina, Okizaki and others come out and train with us. At some point I realized that I had missed Nakayama Sensei and who he was and I just started going to seminars, begging and borrowing money along the way to make sure I could afford it. If it was Yaguchi Sensei I would go every other time and avoid testing as much as possible, but the rest I would see who was teaching and try to make it out no matter what.

                When I was in High school we moved out of town to a small new community north of Winnipeg in Birdhill and the bus trip from down town to home was no longer an option. I was heartbroken when I had to give up Karate. I trained on my own for about three months in my make shift Dojo in my basement and one day my mom came home with the local newspaper and rushed up to my room to show me an add she had seen. A local Karate instructor was opening up a club in East. St. Paul rec center in the spring. Well it was six months away but it was something.

                With out knowing who it was or what style of Karate I called the number on the phone and Jennifer, the instructors wife, answered all my questions and said that she knew her husband was teaching a small group twice a week in their basement and asked if I wanted to join them right away. I was excited and said yes. As it turned out the instructor was one of my Senseis’ senior students that had only trained during the noon class at the club and I had never really met Terry before.

                The classes were surprisingly familiar, he taught basically what Sensei was teaching at the club at noon in his evening class. It was fun but the majority of the students were kids so it was kind of like I was back in the kids class but with the adult class format. The one thing that was different was sparring with Terry. He had this real smooth feel to sparring with him, and he would never hurt you, even if he was going full force. Sparring with him was relaxing and you could have fun. If you ever sparred with Sensei you were nerve racked and paranoid through the whole experience. Terry had a gruff exterior but he was smooth in his Karate and his control amazing, his teaching was basic and clean. 

                I stayed out at the ESP club for a few years till I moved back to the city, and in the summer Terry would grab me and another student and we would go to the noon classes to train down town. I kept a connection to the main club even when I was living out of town.

                One story kind of stands out in my mind however. One Halloween my father “borrowed” My Karate Gi and he sewed on a tone of patches I had collected over the years to make it look cool….well in his mind it did…I was very upset! We had a seminar with Dingman Sensei the next night and I got my Gi back totally covered in patches. Patches from “CANADA” on the arm to  a big Shotokan Tiger on the back. Our Gis are pretty much one patch…that’s it.

                I tried to take off a patch but it left a horrible set of tiny holes in the Gi and the outline of the patches was visible on the Gi so I had to leave it, I only had one gi at the time and that was what I was going to wear! I packed it up knowing it was not going to go over well with others at the club and marched off to catch my ride.

                It took all of about a minute for Dingman Sensei to see the walking billboard I had on and to bee line it to me. He reamed me out for about three minutes before I could explain what happened and left me with a stern warning and told me to have it fixed before I showed up at noon for a class or went to the dojo to training. I apologized to him and Terry and agreed to have them taken off before I would come back to train. I was utterly embarrassed and gutted and my dad got an earful when I came home. I told him that I would borrow all his work ties and sew little patches on them and then give them back before he went back to work….somehow that sounds as dumb today as it did back then!

                Near the end of my living out in East. St. Paul the Dojo moved to the main floor from four flights up and I remember going to the club with Terry and helping Sensei scrape and paint the roof and paint walls.  The new Club had a big glass shield to keep the noise of the Galley away from the training floor, it had a small office that never really did get finished for Sensei and it also had a small office for the secretary, his wife, just as you came in. The move was huge, it was a nice new facility with two working showers in each change room and a toilet in the DOJO…in both rooms! And it had a nice mirror, the Makiwara and beautiful hardwood floors. And despite all this I still think it was a big mistake!

                As much as that club would become my home away from home for the next ten years or so it was the beginning of the down fall of the JKA main dojo. We gained a lot of students from the buildings that housed offices all around us, and the foot traffic was fantastic, but we also ended up with more issues with students and political issues took over our daily lives.

                At some point I went to university after basically taking three years to “find myself” which meant three Karate classes a day EVERY DAY and I even trained Sundays as I had keys to the club. But once in University I had to do the right thing and book my courses….around the Noon class and evening classes. I also tweaked my courses after talking to Sensei so I could learn things that would help me teaching and training and running a club or helping with his. Not a great way to get a degree as it was kind of spotty and had a little of this and a little of that.

                It was around this time that the politics and lack of assistance from the masters got to Sensei and he held a vote with the students after telling them the whole story, of which I knew because I was the one writing and sending the letters to the masters for assistance. We voted and sent a letter of resignation to Both masters resigning from the ISKF, which was a sad day for all of us. I felt really sad for Sensei because it meant he was leaving his Sensei and I think that was the first day I saw him cry in my life, not a lot but enough to show how much it hurt him, All that because some students of his wanted all the power and forced his hand. It truly was a comedy of issues that cause it but we were free and clear of politics and we had four clubs that followed us so its not like we were completely alone.

                After we left Sensei ramped up training, or at least it seemed like it to me. We got harder, classes were pushed hard to show we were keeping or exceeding some kind of mythical standard that he old group had set, and our classes were so much harder now and testing….yah, we went from 5 minute black belt testing to 25 minutes of torture at camps that made the old testing look easy. My first few black belt tests (of which I failed three times) were five minutes each and the actual test seemed to blow by so fast it was not funny, the summer I tested under Dingman sensei for my Shodan I almost died. In place of two Kata and some drills and capped off with a short Kumite component we had four Kata, standard Kihon, then drills from four different instructors, one step, semi free and some god forsaken 20 step full speed Kumite drill, a pencil focus test and then back for one last kata…it was crazy, but I passed and it only took a week to get rid of the stiffness that caused.

                Times were changing for us however. Sensei made a shift from the hard nosed Karate that lead to feelings of pure terror and a feeling of possible bodily harm every time you went to the club to a more family friendly Karate program. This was done to in response to a dip in membership due to the style of teaching and training we had once enjoyed.  And the whole atmosphere changed. The club strived to maintain membership and it became an obsession with some of us to keep the whole thing going, we never had to worry about that in the late 80’s and the early 90’s, we just showed up and did our best to survive a class at a time.

                The club also lost out when we left the organization in that we now did not have the tournaments we once had, we also did not have the masters coming out to grade us and Sensei was so much more picky than they were and the testing was really harder. We started to see a shift in martial arts training in general in our city, more TKD clubs opening because of the Olympic participation of that art in the games meant most people sent their kids to that art not Karate. We also saw a drop in participation in general by kids and adults in Karate. The economy was going in the toilet and it really affected all of us and Karate a lot. People were far more picky with what they spent money on and they were scared!

                Sensei moved us first to the basement of the building and the JKA move down stairs made the foot traffic marketing die, also new members did not like the idea of training in the basement. It was dark and looked dirty and scary, when we were on the main floor we used to joke about the old building once being a funeral home and the bodies were kept in the basement, now we were in the basement! The one good thing that happened is just before the move we found our way back to the JKA and had started to form a relationship with Saeki Sensei in Ottawa. We were solid in our core, but issues with one instructor, my old ESP Karate instructor separated us from that club and a second instructor retired and moved to BC. We had three clubs now and my little club was building in students as well, so really four. 

                During the early ears and right till we left the ISKF and then rejoined the JKA I had the pleasure and honor of training with some great seniors and all of them affected my training. Some I still talk to but because of politics and my inability to get past what some of the seniors did to Sensei I have left many of them alone and not communicated with them in years, but I still feel that when the JKA was at its height it was built by Sensei and those seniors to be something Great.

                I enjoy seeing that most of them still train and that the issues of personality have not affected their passion for Karate.  I also enjoy seeing people from the old days flourish in Karate, people like Scott Middleton who is now a very high ranking person in his new organization. Scott worked so hard and it is only because politics and distance that I don’t train with him now.          

                We really were blessed by great circumstances and a dedicated instructor who gave more than just his time to build the organization and give us all a great club to train at as well as more than just a little information to build our own Karate training around.

                Since then we left down town and moved the club to a tennis facility, that was eventually ripped down, we moved to a church in the down towns less than nice area and lost even more students. But we eventually found our way to a community club in the western part of the down town-ish area and began to rebuild the organization. We saw instructors retire and leave and some new ones pop up. Our style of Karate still holds the traditional components but we now focus much less on sport and more on health and enjoying Karate.

                One of the senior students opened his own stand alone and we are looking at other options for clubs. The whole organization and clubs have changed and are now starting to form into solid clubs and the future is bright again for the JKA. My training has changed as well. I once was very young and my training was all about just doing as much as I could, now with a family and being much older I train smarter and focus more on getting inside of the techniques and understanding what I am doing more than just performing like a purebred horse!

                Karate will always change, but the one thing that has to stay the same is the passion and commitment one has to their own Karate!