Just wondering whether anyone has had experience of Bushi-Ryu Karate Jitsu? I have done some Jitsu and am currently in London. I found this style based in Wandsworth but can find no information! Worth going?
Thanks. OK I found that, none of those tell me anything about the style. I was wondering whether anyone had an opinion about what they did!
I'm guessing it's this club: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76821635343 Their link is to www.bushiryu.com, but that seems to be a holding page. Looks like they let their domain name expire. A little more detectoring, however, reveals the following: http://studentzone.roehampton.ac.uk/studentnews/readnews.asp?id=2065&cc=285816 and, best of all, this thoroughly informative page: http://www.karatejitsu.co.uk/index.htm *wins the google fu award for the day*
Mine is more of a post war "google-do", coming from the "google-jutsu", it is more sport oriented, but not yet taught in the universities.
I have no prior knowledge of this club and there's so little information on the websites that Aegis listed, so its difficult to draw any reliable conclusions. 3 things however caught my eye... 1. The only prior experience or qualifications that we know the instructors have is that they learnt and taught GKR Karate. Without wishing to open up the whole debate about GKR Karate, its fair to say that the quality of GKR instructors is / has been extremely variable. Less than 10 years ago it was quite common for GKR instructors to have 2 years, 1 year, or even less training time under their belt. At its very very best GKR is solid traditional but unsophisticated kicky punch karate, at its worst it is the worst karate on the planet. I have no way of knowing where on the spectrum these 2 teachers are. 2. Classes are limited to 1 hour, at £6 a go. That sounds a bit expensive to me, although I appreciate it is in London so that's probably going to force prices up a bit. But I never warm to classes an hour long. You do a warm-up and some exercise, how much time do you have left for actual karate? 3. A more minor concern perhaps: The style/club name includes the word 'jitsu', but the picture shows someone doing a high side-kick. The two things seem incompatible to me. I would expect a karate 'jitsu' to be harking back to how karate was historically practised, prior to karate becoming a 'do' art. In that case I wouldn't expect to see a high side kick as a representative technique on the club's website. All that said, I'm trying to glean something from very little information so its not really possible to make an informed judgement. I would suggest you give it a try - as long as they let you do so without first joining - but also try some other karate clubs and see which takes your fancy. Mike
That's a very valid point. Go Kan Ryu is widely acknowledged as one of the larger generators of McDojo clubs in the UK for precisely the reason mentioned above (though I'm sure that some clubs are better than others, it doesn't help that the head of the style was not particularly experienced when he decided to do his own thing and that junior kyu grades are often given instructor belts to mask their actual belt rank). The fact that it's non-contact training doesn't do it any favours either. From what I've seen, at its best it is solid basics, lacking a lot of the bunkai and other depths of the art. Perhaps I'm not the best judge of the art, but I do believe that the founder of a martial art should be able to do better than this: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POWWlAHSlto"]YouTube - Kancho Sullivan sparring with Simon Bennett[/ame] and this: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fHJF4ha5AM"]YouTube - Kancho Robert Sullivan[/ame] Sadly that sort of price is not uncommon here, though as you point out you usually see 90 minutes to 2 hour classes rather than 1 hour at the majority of good clubs. I'm not going to comment on the rest, as the subtleties of karate are beyond me. I just hadn't spotted that this club was based on our door-knocking friends' style
Wow, those videos were beyond appalling! I know that Bob Sullivan has had some health issues which have impacted on his own training, but really??? I think the vids show not only that he 'hasn't got it' but that he never had it in the first place. One can only applaud his skill in marketing. I think the videos say it. GKR - from its founder downwards - doesn't teach good basics, or good anything. But there are a fair few instructors who jumped on the GKR bandwagon having already trained to a good extent in other traditional karate styles. In my limited experience of the organisation, its these instructors who turn out students who have solid karate basics (and in some instances good competition karate skills). Yes, its the price per hour rather than the price per lesson that I thought was a bit steep. My main issue isn't the money though, I just think people who only teach 1 hour lessons aren't taking it very seriously (assuming you've got some warm-up and strengthening/flexibility training thrown in). There just isn't time for technical training. Indeed, it may well be that only a curmudgeonly pedant like me would care about such nuances anyway, I appreciate that may not concern the majority of potential students. Mike
