syberghost

Wow, how much has changed since I first posted this thread. The history on my school is this: It was first owned by Benn Cohen. When he went off to Hollywood, he sold it to Walter Somerville. Walter hired Mike Friedman as an instructor, and then later sold the school to him. Walter's brother Tom still teaches Kenpo in the Orlando area, at Jeff Speakman's chain school. As for Mike, his teacher was Manny Reyes Sr., who studied directly under Grandmaster Parker. As the avatar shows, I'm now an orange belt, and working hard for my purple. I'm proud to say I met my goal of "orange before 40", albeit only barely due to six weeks out with a broken toe, which happened the night I got my yellow belt.

I'm pretty new at it, so I don't know a lot yet. Our teacher is Mike Friedman, and his teachers have included Manny Reyes Sr. and Tony Young. The school web page is http://www.championkaratefl.com . I don't want to throw around buzzwords like "Parker style vs. Tracy style" and sound like I know what I'm talking about when I don't, so I won't.

That's what I said; Bill McDonald developed it. I trained under one of his students, Mick Smith, briefly, and then lost contact with him before I ever learned anything about the history. There is precious little online about it, and to the best of my knowledge Sensei McDonald doesn't have a web page. Now I'm learning Kenpo, and the similarities have peaked my curiosity as to the history of my old art.

Yes; Bill McDonald in North Carolina, modern enough that he's still teaching it. However, unlike with American Kenpo, there's not a lot of information out there about the philosophy of its derivation and how specifically it differs from goju ryu and shorin ryu. I know that in the yellow belt requirements it very much resembles Kenpo, and from that assume that he was trying to do the same thing Ed Parker did and working from similar roots (since Parker was working with Shorinji Kempo and shorin ryu derives from that as well) and thus arrived at some of the same places, but as I had so little exposure to it and there's not much about it on the web or in any books I've seen, this is not only speculation on my part, but very uninformed speculation. I was hoping somebody out there knew more. I guess I might have to load up and go ask Sensei McDonald.

So, what about Goju-Shorin? I studied that for about a month many years ago, then parted ways and haven't run across it since, so I don't know much about it. What is its historical place in relation to Goju Ryu and Shorin Ryu?