Vince Morris

The Vince Morris Years
I suppose that this gentleman was responsible for changing my whole karate thinking and teaching methods. Without doubt Vince Morris is the most important karate teacher in modern times. It always puzzled me that if karate was a deadly self defence, then why when it came down to doing any kind of self defence in our karate club we had to do Ju Jutsu ?. This went on for years and we just went along with it as part of the clubs syllabus. Then one day I bought a karate magazine that had an article by Vince Morris, ( I used to get every martial arts magazine that came out and had a very large collection going back 30 years) Karate bunkai and Kyusho jutsu was the article. Typical Vince Morris!
This sparked off my interest in Karate as a real self defence system. Interestingly it was from an unexpected source that I was lent a copy of one of Vince’s seminar sampler videos. One of the clubs in our association that I visited now and again had a Dan grade that I had not seen for many years his name was Alan; Alan mentioned to me that he had a tape of Vince Morris. This surprised me because this was one of the clubs that did karate and then ju jutsu for self defence and was very traditional in the way they taught. Anyway Alan lent me the tape and I was hooked! I found out that Vince held regular seminars in Nottingham and booked us on the next one.
I found Vince to be a real gentleman; he was very approachable and friendly. His knowledge on Kata bunkai (application) and Kyusho jutsu (vital point techniques) was incredible. Vince showed me that Karate WAS a real effective self defence system. I and Chaddy (John) went to Nottingham almost every month for the next Five years. At times we took some of our students with us, all of them loved it! It was a pity not more people from our group took on board Vince’s methods.
This period had a real effect on the club and it went from strength to strength. I changed most of the syllabus to incorporate Vince’s methods and it worked really well.

I wrote this article on self defence karate a few years ago

Karate jutsu

Me and Neil

One down two to go !!

Two real good guys!!

Senior members weekend camp

Ushers

Ushers dojo.

Well I have jumped forward a few years, I had not trained with Frank for a while, the last time I saw him was on a Tuesday night at a club in a school in Hull. At this point in my life I was married with two children. On the 7TH July 1992 my 34th birthday that night I received a call from one of the clubs black belts.
They told me that Frank had collapsed and died whilst at work that day. I was shocked, Frank was so fit and healthy always looked after himself. I could not believe it. After the funeral we held a meeting to discuss the future. I took on one of Franks clubs in Beverley, it was at a fitness gym called Ushers fitness centre. The gym was run by Ivan and Hilary Usher, Ivan was an amazingly fit man who took most of the fitness classes himself despite his age. A real nice gentleman.
The club had about 6 students at the time, and this was my first commitment to teaching karate in a club. They got a bit of a shock that night put them through the whole system in one night! The following week about 4 turned up so I put together some posters to advertise the club. The advert was put up around the local district and eventually I built up a good number of students mostly children. One day two lads came to the club and asked if they could join, they were about 17 years old. (Shaun and Martin) This was quite rare to get two 17 year olds join a karate club, well it did not happen very often and if it did they usually only came once because the training was quite hard for adults, the kids just got on with it, they were real keen and loved it! After a few months or so Shaun and Martin were getting well in to it and had asked a few of their friends to join in. I also had some students come from one of our other clubs for extra training, so eventually I had a good number of students. At around this time my training and karate was changing quite a lot thanks to meeting Vince Morris. Vince was from Nottingham and ran seminars on Karate kata bunkai and Kyusho jutsu. I use to go over to his dojo once a month with a few students to learn some great karate techniques. I put most of what Vince taught into my Karate teaching and it really took me up to a different level.
We had built up a great club (I say we because the club was a family and the students all had a part to play), with a blend of seriousness and humour in my way of teaching and some great characters in the club the atmosphere was great and we all learned together, I don’t see myself as just a karate teacher, I like to get involved with as much of the class as possible. I must mention the annual Three Peaks walk! Great times taking the club over them small hills. One of the famous comments from a young teenager (James) was that he could **** further! Well who was the one struggling along on the first hill mate!! ? And if you read this James, if you look at the pics i am still going up there at nearly 50!

My thanks go to all those people who trained at Ushers I hope you all are having good times in your lives. Too many names to mention here! but I remember you all.

I could write a book on this club but i have kept it short for now.

Early days Longhill Karate club 1978