Gasshuku

This past weekend, I hosted the 3rd International Gojuryu Karate Association Pan-American Gasshuku at my Yushikan dojo. I joined the IGKA in 2007 and was appointed USA director, then World Vice President and Pan-American Director. After getting the association up and running in the Western Hemisphere, I set out to start with the Gasshuku's. So far I have hosted 3 (2010, 2011 and 2012). My main goal for hosting the Gasshuku was to bring together instructors and students who mainly have a lineage back to the Jundokan/OGKK or Miyazato Eiichi Sensei, but may be from dojo's of his students and separated from the Jundokan. Basically to bring together the different branches of the same tree. However anyone is and will always be welcomed at the event, regardless of style or affiliation.

2010 Gasshuku

 The first year, I did all of the instruction over two days and the attendees were my students, or students of my students. We went through all of the kata and two person drills up to their ranks and started them all on new material. I think everyone enjoyed themselves and we had a good time training and socializing.

The second year was a little more diverse; I added a third day to the training, we had guests from Indiana, Texas, Illinois, Alabama, Kentucky and this was the first year our group from Canada attended. The first day I did all of the instructing. The second day I started out instructing and then we had a guest instructor, Lloyd Johnson Hanshi 9th Dan, who was a member of the Jundokan for many years.  Johnson Sensei taught sanchin and Hojo Undo for several hours. After a break I resumed teaching and continued with two person drills and kata. On the third day we held the first IGKA Yudansha testing and several people were issued their IGKA International Dan grade certificates. Again we had a great time and made new friends.

This year we again had three days of training. We had attendees from Indiana, Ohio, Texas and Canada.  Not all of my students could make it this year due to family matters, but we still had a great time. We had another guest instructor this year, Col. Tony Willis from Anyu Shinjo Sensei Goyukan dojo. Col. Willis was present for the first two days. On the first day, not everyone had arrived, so it was Col. Willis, Wayne Currie, Jason Thompson and I. We went over several solo drills and compared kata, had dinner and stayed up until after 3 am talking.  Day two started off with a group breakfast and then training at 9am, this year we took a different approach and broke up into groups with Col. Wills, Wayne Currie and myself teaching small groups and then all of us training together at times. Throughout the weekend we trained on almost all of the kata, Gekisai Kumite, several solo and two person drills, as well as, bunkai. Each student had the chance to have all three of us give advice and corrections on their kata. We also compared all of our own kata with each other and even though we all came out of different dojo, I am happy to report that we are 99% the same . On the third day most everyone had to leave for family obligations and no one was testing, so we trained kata and Kobudo and then had a nice lunch. As always, my wife Amber was a gracious host and provided some great food. This year we also had Gasshuku T-shirts. I had a great time and I think everyone else did as well. I think everyone came away learning something and looking forward to next year. I really enjoyed seeing Wayne again and after 5 or 6 years of communicating with each other, Col. Willis and I were finally able to meet and train with each other. Even though the next Gasshuku isn’t until next year, Col. Willis plans to make some visits for training and Wayne and I have some plans to meet up and attend some seminars later in the year.

Females in Karate

Recently I was accused of being sexist and against female black belts, or females in karate in general. I find this accusation laughable but thought I would pen my thoughts on the matter just because.

First let me say this I have seen some really bad female martial artists, but then again I have seen some really great ones, for that matter the same can be said for men. I have seen some great male martial artists, and I have seen some really bad ones.

Back when I ran the Marion Komakai dojo for my father, I had a female student named Tracy that hit hard. She would get out there and kumite with anyone and gave 100%. Training and teaching at the Komakai Honbu there were several females that made it to black belt, some really good and some not as good, but they all gave 100%. Mr. Eddie Bathea had a female black belt, that used to train with me all the time in the 90s, Ms. Dunn, she was excellent.  I have been out to teach seminars at my good friend Rudy Crosswell Hanshi dojo, he has a female black belt that has exceptional form and technique.

To date in my dojo, I have only had maybe a dozen females join, out of that I have had one make it to 5^th kyu and one to 1^st dan, the rest quit because of their own reasons, but what I guess is because I hold everyone to a standard in the dojo.  I have a high standard that I expect out of everyone that joins the dojo, which is that regardless of how good you are, or think you are, that you always give 100%, that you keep going no matter what.

I have been training 35 years now, last year I went to train with an Okinawan Sensei and he watched my kata and said good, good. I asked him if there was anything I could do to make it better, so he pointed out a couple of things, I asked him sensei, if I had mistakes, why did you tell me it was good? He replied with oh you have good kata, nice kata, but always room for improvement.

When I teach at my dojo, I will watch and make corrections, to everyone. Even my best students will tell you that they get corrected all of the time. When I am a guest instructor, I do the same thing, if I am asked to watch or correct a kata, I do that. If I give a correction and make you do it 100 times, it isn’t because I am being mean to you, it is because you still need the practice, you must do hundreds, thousands of repetitions before you build muscle memory.

The way I see it, I have two jobs as a Karate/Kobudo Instructor, 1. Too preserve the teachings of the old traditions, pass it on to the next generation, and instill good moral attributes and 2. Too teach you a skill that will allow you to at the very least too stay alive if you ever need it (hopefully prevail) and to train you in such a way that you do not fool yourself into believing you can survive a conflict, if in reality you cannot fight your way out a a wet paper sack.

I do not care how many trophies that you win, how many titles you have or how great you think you are in your own mind. What I care about is that you show up at the dojo, that you give me your best effort while you are there and that when push comes to shove and you are in the battle that you fight it with everything you have.  In short, holding that trophy up to a mugger and stating your credentials is not gonna keep you from getting killed. There is no whining or crying, there is no quitting. What I expect is that you pull your big girl panties up and get down to business. I do not care if you are a man, woman, child, white, black, red, yellow or whatever. What I care about is that you come to train, that you give your best, and you act like a proper person your sex or race makes no difference at all to me.

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.

Funny stuff

I ran across this podcast and I listened too not only the first two shows but just listen to the live recording and it was very funny I mean super funny, be mindful that it is adult humor and there is some curse words and sex slang so listen at your own risk

www.wangspodcast.audioninjas.com

What is in a name

Recently I had one of my father’s students ask me why I did not call my dojo by the same name as my father’s dojo. Now I am sure I could answer this a few different ways, but let me give a bit of background first.

My father started his training in 1967 at the Jundokan of Indiana / Anderson Goju-ryu Club. Later that year the dojo name was changed to Komakai Academy of Judo and Karate, and by the 1970s it was just Komakai Academy of Karate.  In 1977 my father asked his teacher for permission to open a branch dojo and use his sensei’s dojo name (Komakai), throughout the years the dojo changed locations, but the name always remained the same. In 1992, my father opened another dojo in Indianapolis and again used the Komakai name. With the opening of the Indianapolis Dojo, I was appointed as Chief Instructor for the Marion dojo, until it was closed in January of 1994. At that point there had been ten (10) Komakai branch dojo.

After my father closed the Marion dojo, I asked my father permission to open the dojo back up, he granted me permission, but said I had to ask Mr. Keeney for permission as well. I went to Mr. Keeney and asked permission and was told that I could use the Komakai name if I wanted too, but then he said to me “Mike, why do you need to use my name, you could use your own name, be your own man.” at the time I thought what, no way, I have always been Komakai, I wouldn’t know what to do without being that. I voiced my concern to Mr. Keeney and he said – Well if you feel that you need to maintain a connection to the name, you could also pick a name and then in smaller print, under your name, you could put the phrase ‘a division of Glenn Keeney’s Komakai Academy’. I then spoke with Mr. Keeney’s teacher, Mr. Phillip Koeppel and asked him what he thought, he advised me to call it Mike Jones’ Karate-do Budokai. So when I opened the dojo in January of 1994 that is what I called it.

On top of all of this in the 1990, I began training and researching my roots of the Jundokan with seminars taught by Morio Higaonna Sensei and also Teruo Chinen Sensei, It lead me to Natambu Bomani Sensei and Lloyd Johnson Sensei, both Jundokan seniors, eventually I was granted permission to open a Jundokan dojo in Indiana, and I have a certificate signed by Eiichi Miyazato Sensei giving me Shibu-Cho status for the State of Indiana. So I could have also called my dojo Jundokan. Over the years I joined other associations and was given permission to use other names, but in the back of my mind, what Mr. Keeney told me always kept popping up. So a short time after I opened the dojo I began using a Japanese name for my dojo and I used that name for 16 years, until someone chose to trademark the name and told me to stop using it. So I could have went back to calling it Mike Jones Karate, or Komakai, but I talked with Lloyd Johnson Sensei and Roy Hobbs Sensei about it. Hobbs Sensei suggested to me the name Yushikan, he said he felt that the name exemplified my character. So after much deliberation, I decided to take his suggestion and re-name my dojo as Yushikan.

Now having said all of that and rambled on let me get back to my point. What is in a name? Why do people get hung up on names, my style is this or my style is that. I am from this dojo or I am from that dojo.  People like a brand, which is the short and sweet of it. People like to feel like they belong to something greater than themselves. 

In my dojo I teach Okinawan Goju-ryu Karate-do, in the tradition of the Jundokan lineage, however, I have trained in several of the other Goju-ryu kai-ha over the years and like some of what they do, so from time to time, I may show an alteration from one of these kai-ha, as well, I have trained in other systems and from time to time may throw in something not in Goju-ryu proper, does that make me wrong?

What I have learned after 35 years of training is this, to each their own. I have found that my karate is my karate, while I may strive to emulate or even maintain the principles and traditions that I have been taught to me by my teachers and seniors, I also have my own thoughts and ideas, I have my own beliefs, I have come to my own realizations, after many years of training. All of these things combined with the training I have received from my teachers over the years have lead me to be me, lead my karate to be what it is – My karate. I still have a long way to go on this journey and by no means do I know it all, or have all the answers, but I keep trying.

Recent Training

I have not written much lately, I have been busy in my new role at work, getting things in order and attending mandatory training courses. It has been a busy last four months, but I have managed to get things under control and almost too where I want them to be in my professional life, so I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to spend some time with my good friend, Roy Hobbs Sensei. Aside from talking a bit and catching up some, I was also invited to a private training session at the Denbukan dojo in Indianapolis, where Hobbs Sensei spent a great deal of time training us in the Dentokan (Hakkoryu/Kokodoryu) Jujutsu set of Sandan Gi. Hobbs Sensei is a very detail oriented instructor and if you have never had the chance to share the mat with him, you should, he is an excellent technician. Needless to say some of the students had a rough way to go when trying to use the techniques on me (I guess all of those years of hojo undo paid off), but not Hobbs Sensei, in true form he had me up on my toes.

After the private workout, we went over to the dojo they use for public classes and had an open seminar, there were a few more people at this event then the private workout, and we continued to train in Sandan Gi Tachi Waza.

After training we had dinner with Hobbs Sensei and our host Andy Bryant. My wife was most gracious and agreed to let me attend the event on our 19^th Anniversary; she even hung around and took some pictures for me. Hobbs Sensei also presented me with some gifts that he had brought back from his last trip to Japan.

I had a great time, as I always do, and I can not stress enough that if he is ever in your area, you really should make the effort to train with him, you will not be disappointed. I count myself very lucky to have him as a close personal friend.

The fork in the road

At times one might find themselves at a point where they are at the proverbial “fork in the road”.  Sometimes you may find yourself at this point more than once in a lifetime and possibly for more than one reason, at work, with family or with your training.

I can say that I have found myself at this point many times in life and for different reasons, to go to college or not, to take this job or that one, to change careers totally or not, to move to a different city or not, and I am sure there are other instances I could recall. The fact of the matter is that many times I have stood at the fork in the road and had to choose which way to go. Sometimes you make a choice and everything works out and sometimes you make a choice and it was the wrong one, such is life, it is full of twists and turns, good and bad. The main thing I have found is that even though you may be on a journey, even if it turns out to be the wrong path, it always helps if you have someone to share the journey with.

In my training I have been to this point a few times, trying to decide between a sense of giri to my teacher or what was right for me. Unfortunately there are times when you choose to follow someone or join an association, only to find out that it was not the right choice for you. Sometimes these things happen, what the really hard part is, is having the courage to make that change when you know things just aren’t right.  As a student you should respect your Sensei and cherish the relationship that you have with him, but the same is also true for the Sensei, he must also treat the student with respect and kindness, while he maybe stern and his training hard, he should still treat you with common decency.

Now that I have rambled on, I will get to the reason I started this topic in the first place.  I have found myself at the fork in the road twice already this year, once at work, where I had to decide what I wanted, if I wanted to move up, stay where I was at, or leave and the second time was in my training.

Recently one of my teachers passed away, so I find myself standing at a point where I have to decide what to do next, where to go, who to follow. This is not a choice to be made lightly or overnight. I have to decide if I want to go to Okinawa again to seek a direction,  stay with the association or go with one of the many splinter groups. Perhaps after 35 years of training, it is time for me to just simply keep on keeping on, train in what I have been taught and be content with what I have been fortunate to learn, maybe I don’t need a teacher at this point, maybe I don’t need to line the pockets of someone else.  Then again, I am positive that there is still much to learn, so…

It seems that I have many things to consider and think about, I have been busy this past year, writing the blog, writing books, teaching, training and of course work and family, things have only intensified and become busier these past few months at work, with no sign of slowing down, so I think with my training I will focus on what I need and want, and enjoy the journey, time will tell what it is that I will do and where I might end up, but for now I am just going to train to train.