Hello All, I need some help please! about a year back I trained at steve powells JKD in Manchester! Unfortunately I had to give it up due to starting a new job :cry: I'm not giving up in returning to training tho! this weekend I'm starting BJJ at straight blast! and once I have completed the fundamentals I can do the morning classes before work. however I'm also looking to take up Karate. I'm a big fan of Ian Abernethy and watching his videos of applied bunkai to Katas are fantastic! however ive messaged quite a few karate clubs who shall remain nameless who tell me karate is strictly punching & kicking only and self defence is a different entity altogether! OR the Bunkai to the katas they perform is truly heart breaking I have however found 2 clubs I'm interested in club no.1) http://www.shukokai-uk.com/news.html club no.2) http://www.dentonshotokan.co.uk/ if anybody could shine some light on these clubs that would be fantastic. or any recommendations please let me know. I'm only available to train Friday/Saturday all day and early morning weekdays thank you all so much for reading this and for any future response!
Steve is opening up in new premises so may be worth a revisit For karate I used to train here many years ago - http://www.dentokaikarate.co.uk - Sensei Lee Coffey was my teacher and he is very traditional but with excellent skills and pedigree. Well worth checking out
Hi Hannibal thanks for replying mate I messaged Steve not long ago, asking if he will be running any Friday or weekend classes at the new venue. unfortunately no was the answer for Friday classes and weekend classes were for weapons. He did say if that were to change he would let me know. Nevermind. Steve did mention that he once had a chat with Larry Hartsell who said to train in boxing or striking art and Judo over a period of time with dedication would make an individual very self efficient in being to defend ones self! that's when I decided to make a trip to straight blast for the BJJ PLUS they do judo there aswell. And I guess ive always wanted to learn traditional karate aswell, so there we go lol Still bit gutted not being able to train in the JKD concepts but 1 door closes another opens Thanks for the reply regarding the karate, I see that Lee is a shukokia practitioner and so with that I'm going to try the ****o Ryu shukokia karate tonight under Steve Buckley, as he is only 20 minutes away. Denis Casey is the club president 8th dan of the ****o Ryu Shukokia Union. And the website does make reference to the Bunkia of Kata which is very reassuring. Thanks to everybody else who replied, appreciate it! wish me luck for tonight for Karate and BJJ tomorrow at Straight Blast Gym Have a great weekend everyone
Just an info about the bunkai. I don't know much about all the particular styles, but I do Goju ryu Karate and there's a big emphasis on bunkai in general. If that is your objective, maybe search for a Goju club nearby, too.
Good luck and let us know how you go on! SBG are a solid set of guys, so I think you will really enjoy it
The striking curriculm and sparring methodology at SBG will definetly allow you to pressurise any karate you take, plus with their level of MMA fighters youll soon be able to absorb what is useful, etc etc. Let the forum know how it goes!
In general, it is my experience that Okinawan styles (Goju Ryu, Shorin Ryu, Uechi Ryu, Ryuei Ryu) focus far more on bunkai then Japanese styles (Shotokan, Kyokushinkai, Seido) of karate, which are much more likely to do kumite instead.