Been a while

Hi all , its been a long time since i updated the blog. So much in my life has changed recently so i have not been in the loop so to speak.
Well i will start again and move forward life is to short to dwell on what might have been .
Rick Clark.
I met Rick about 10 years ago,i had read a few of his articles on the net and in the MA mags. So i aranged to go to one of his seminars in Macclesfield and what a great seminar Rick was so knowledgable on pressure points and kata bunkai. I was very interested on his ideas on using them in self defence. Rick was again very much like Vince practical and also a gentleman with great teaching skills. The best part of all this was that Rick's techniques could be used with Vince's, they both complimented each other if you could put it in go ju ryu terms . Vince was the go (hard) and rick was the ju (soft) ! Rick has become a real good friend over the years and i hold him in high regard along with Vince . Rick has been to Hull on several occassions teaching my students and all of them love the pain he gives out!!!
This year i hope host Rick again in Hull, its a real honour and privilage to have him here .

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!!