Playing Amongst the Pine forest

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.