I bet someone will say, what is he doing talking about
Shorin-ryu, he’s a Goju man. While for the most part that is true, over the years, I have had an odd fascination with how things are done on the other side of the coin
so to speak in Okinawan Karate. So while
I have trained more in Goju-ryu than anything else, I have spent a great deal
of time over the years “Playing amongst the pine forest” and training in
Shorin-ryu as well.
When I started training under my father in 1977, he taught
me Goju-ryu, in 1979, he began sharing a dojo with his friend and I started
training in Shorin-Ryu (Kobayashi) on opposite nights, from Mr. Bud McCollar. I trained with him for a couple
of years, before my father moved his dojo again and that was the end of the
Shorin-ryu for a while. In 1982 my father started also teaching me Shuri-ryu
karate-do, in addition to Goju-ryu. In
the late 1980’s I moved with my mother and step-father to Glendale, Arizona
where I continued to train in Shuri-ryu with Mr. Robert Trias, but while in
Arizona, I also took the opportunity to visit a dojo that was only a few blocks
from my house, the instructor was Mr. Jiro Shiroma Sensei and he taught the
same branch of Shorin-ryu (Kobayashi) that I had trained in before, so it was
easy to join in and not feel out of place. While in Arizona I also took the
opportunity to train in Uechi-ryu under Mr. Al Saddler and Shito-ryu under Mr.
Rudy Croswell.
In 1989, my family moved back to Indiana and I resumed
training at my father’s dojo and I also began training with Mr. Phillip Koeppel
in Matsumura Seito Shorin-ryu and Shuri-ryu with Mr. Mike Awad. By 1990 I was traveling and training all over,
and I also fortunate enough to be getting private lessons by Mr. Eddie Bathea in
the same branch of Shorin-ryu (Kobayashi) and Kobudo. Mr. Bathea worked in the
town I lived in and he would take his lunch breaks and came to train with me,
it was a great time and we did this for quit a while. In fact I also got to
train with a few of his students over the years. He was very gracious and gave
of his knowledge freely.
In 1991, I was able to train with Mr. Shogen Oyakawa also of
Kobayashi. By 1992, I was splitting my time between my father’s two dojo,
teaching Goju-ryu and Shuri-ryu, but I was also visiting as many dojo as I
could. I trained Isshin-Ryu with Mr. John Lennox, Motobu-ryu Seidokan with Mr.
Tom Short, Motobu-ha Shito-ryu with Mr. Steve VanCamp. I continued all of these
relationships for several years. I also had the opportunity to train with both
Fuse Kise and Yuichi Kuda of Matsumura Seito Shorin-ryu.
By the late 1990s I was training in Seidokan with Col. Roy
Hobbs and Ryukyukan (Kobayashi) with Mr. Koei Nohara. I stopped training with
Nohara Sensei in the mid-2000s, but we are still good friends. I have also
trained in seminars with several other people, but as I look back at this
ramble, it might seem like I am just name dropping, far from it just trying to
give some recognition to those that helped me along this path.
Suffice it to say, I have had the opportunity to train in a
lot of different systems over the years and I am grateful to everyone that has
taken the time to teach me over the years. The fact of the matter is that I
enjoy training to train, I like budo, I do not get caught up in all of this
style or that style, I just like karate. Perhaps it was because my father made
sure I had a diverse education, that I feel that karate is just karate and
style names limit it.
While at my dojo the Yushikan, I teach Goju-ryu and Kobudo,
I still maintain my own training in Shorin-ryu for myself, I have never taught
it to my students, and even though my father spent a great deal of time
teaching me Shuri-ryu, I have not taught it in my dojo since 1999, even though
I can still do all of the kata, after all it would be rude of me not to
practice something that I was taught. In the dojo there are various aspects of
things that I have learned over the years that may not necessarily be Goju-ryu
in origin that may creep into the training from time to time, but hey it is
Karate after all.
