Holland

I prefer Eku, Nunte bo, and bo. I like two handed weapons.

Many styles consider kobudo training an entirely different form or martial arts...and really it is. In isshinryu we teach some kobudo, but in order to really get advanced weapons training I had to go outside our style. On top of running my own Isshinryu school, I train at a shitoryu school where the head instructor is a 6th dan in shitoryu and a 5th dan in Okinawan kobudo. I am on the verge of testing for my sho-dan in kobudo and I am looking forward to starting a seperate weapons class at my own school starting this May.

I train in and teach bo, jo, kama, tekko, eku, nunte bo, tonfa and sai.

I have promoted 10 to black belt...although two at this point are only Jr. Black Belts. Of those ten, one has made it to 2nd degree.

Good: Has the ability to laugh and have a good time Teaches good karate Is not in it for the money Promotes based on time in rank and merit. Makes class interesting and promotes dojo fellowship Is as good of a student as they are a teacher Bad: Promotes on a schedule regardless of ability Promotes to keep people from quitting Is too stuck on demanding respect instead of earning it Plays politics Is an egotist Makes training tedious and rarely varies class Treats the adult class like children and makes taking karate less fun than going to work

There was no Isshinryu in my home town and I was traveling two hours away each friday to train with my instructor. I started a school to have people to train with. Originally I trained in my house but eventually got the opportunity to use our church's gymnasium. It is now five years since we started teaching and I have 75 students and I have promoted 10 students to black belt. Since I get the building for free, I only charge 10 bucks a month. (most of that goes to our church) It really is an ideal set up.

I run a school and I am really open. I am 31 years old and many of my students are my age or older. These are my friends...sure I am the head instructor, but that does not make me the supreme guru of all life. All of my best friends are karate friends and if I were to list the 10 people in my life (not including my parents) in which I am closest to, the list would include my sensei, and 5 or 6 students that I have promoted to black belt.

I belonged to the USIKA (united states isshinryu karate association) but I was kicked out by the executive board. I belong to a couple of local and regional associations, but that is it.

I actually run a school like this! I have an arrangement with my church and I use our full court gymnasium to train people as a ministry of our church. (https://www.capefearisshinryu.com) Originally I did not charge at all, but now the church asks 10 bucks a person or 15 dollars per family to help pay the power bill and such. About a year ago I had a student show up that was a total poison to what I was trying to do. Her older brother was a brown belt and she started training with the sole purpose (I suppose) of making him, and me as miserable as possible. Most of the time when someone comes to the dojo and they are miserable they quit...but not this one. She spread her misery around. Eventually after being disrespected (and I am seriously not a respect freak) and seeing my other black belts disrespected, I went to the pastor of my church and explained that I wanted to dismiss her from the program. He supported me fully and told me that who I train is my choice. She is a member of our church, but now in my dojo she is persona non grata. It was an ugly situation, but one that was necessary. The truth is that it is your choice as to who you want to pass your knowledge onto...no one can force you to teach someone that you do not want to.

I am a high school P.E teacher, along with running my own isshinryu dojo. I do tons of high energy warm ups and I could probably type my fingers to nubs doing so.... One of the ones I like alot is a variation of dodgeball...I do this in my 8-13 year old class. I have a gymnasium...and line the kids up on one wall and me and another black belt or two throw the soft dodgeballs (the gator skin type) at the students. If they get hit, they have to go off to the side and do a kata...then they come back in. They have to do a different kata each time (unless they only know one, then they just do that one...) This gets them warmed up, and promotes kata practice as well. I also do an activity that requires listening...it starts with the fact that I will say that everytime I say "stop" I want the students to run in place...but every time I say "go" i want them to stop moving. I add more and more commands to this like "when I say jump up and down I want you to actually start doing jumping jacks,,,and when I say do jumping jacks I want you to jump up and down" The complexity is up to you, but it can get pretty intense. At the end of the activity I have an elimination round, in which every time a student messes up, that student is out. Another one I do is that I make two lines and I have the kids do various locomotor movements back and forth from one line to the other when I say "go!" We do sliding, skipping, galloping, running, running backwards, front-kicking, etc.... At the end we go back to running and we do an elimination round in which each time we go, the last student to cross the line is out...eventually it ends up being just two, and they have been going for a while.... Its a good activity that gets all of the students warmed up and promoted good footwork.

I have 3 white and two black shureido heavy weight gis and I love them. It seems that the martial arts world is split on which is better though. All of the black belts I came up with loved shureido, so I just grew to have the somewhat uneducated opinion that they are the tops. My kobudo instructor though, swears by Tokaido..and I respect his opinion as well. I also use Kamikaze ( I have three of these as well ) and while they are comfortable, they do not look as good as the shureido by any shot.

Giving out rank to kids that do not deserve it is no worse than giving it to the adults that don't... I mean, in my style we have a scenario where one of our 10th dans (yes, sadly we have quite a few) did a death bed promotion of one of his 8th dans to 10th degree at the age of like 46...that guy has then gone on to promote several people to 9th dan since then. One person he promoted from 8th to 9th after about a year and a half. Its sad, but the integrity of promotion is only what each school makes it to be. In my school getting a black belt means something and I do my best to never cheapen that. We have time requirements for each rank that I will not budge on regardless of how good a student can perform physically. On the issue of age though, I do it like this. Personally i will not even start training a child until they are 8 years old. I used to start them at six, but I have since raised that age. I train 8-13 year olds together. At 13 my kids can start going to the adult class as well...by 14 if they are coming to the kids class, it is to assist in instruction, not to be a student. Our age for sho-dan is 15. I do not budge on this. At 11, if a child basically meets sho-dan requirements I will test them for jr. black belt (which has a white stripe in it) but they will not be eligible for a full black belt until they are 15...which in many cases means a child will be at, or near, their adult size when they test.

I work out at a shitoryu school as well, as my kobudo instructor is a 6th dan in shito ryu. (https://www.classicalmartialarts.org) and I will just have to disagree with you to some extent. First, we almost never spar with gear. Go to my website and look at the instructor section...on each of them you will see that during their kumite we are sparring hard, and we have on no gear what so ever. What I think you are doing, is taking your knowledge of the one or two isshinryu schools that you have dealt with, which may or may not be the dregs of our style and assuming, incorrectly, that all isshinryuists are the same. That would be like assuming that since the Tae Kwon do school in my area is a money machine that teaches crap, that all tae kwon do sucks. Well, since Chuck Norris' primary training was in Tae Kwon do, that of course is a ludicrous statement. Now don't get me wrong, there are some horrible Isshinryu schools out there, I see them every year at our hall of fame tournament...but there are good among the bad. There are also some less than stellar shotokan and shitoryu schools as well...though one of those is certainly not the one I attend. At the core of it, I love karate...I started in Isshinryu and I am a san-dan...I am training in kobudo and I am learning shitoryu kata as well. My philosophy is simply that there are no bad styles of karate, but just bad instructors...and you can even learn from those.

I can see both sides of this issue. First of all I am a san-dan in Isshirnyu, but I have been trained in Shito ryu and I am working through toward my shodan in weapons from a teacher that used to be with the old NKJU and now is aligned under a shorinryu shorinkan instructor. I run my own school, and I do it as a church ministry. I have some very low income students and I only charge ten bucks a month...of which most of that goes to help pay off the gymansium the church lets me use. I have seventy five students (https://www.capfearisshinryu.com) and I am anti political. I say what I feel and I have often gotten in trouble for it...This past year I was kicked out of the USIKA...if you can call it that. Really I kinda refused to join or make my students join so they revoked my membership...but that is neither here nor there. There are a ton of really bad Isshinryu tapes out there. I have seen more than a few...Some are expensive, and only contain a kata or two...others have really poor performances etc... It always galls me that people sell these things. An exception to this rule would be the tapes recently released by Harold Mitchum, which were fantastic. BUT I will say that i love Isshinryu and have met some great Isshinryuists. I kinda resent the comment about Tatuso being the nominal of the shimabuku brothers. I seriously doubt you would hear Eizo say that or even imply it. As for our diluted katas....I guess you have never seen us do kusanku, chinto, seisan or others, as they are very close to the performances found in shorinryu...after all Tatsuo studied with Kyan much longer than his younger brother. But I digress, I love my style but I am always looking to learn new things. If you want to see how my group does kata you can download katas from my site for free, performed by myself and my black belts. They are not great, and were recorded all in one sitting with very few retakes...but they show the flavor of what we are doing. They can be found at https://www.capefearisshinryu.net our main site is the same but .com. Anyhow...I enjoyed this thread.

Name: Brent Holland Style: Isshinryu and Okinawan Kobudo Rank: San-dan in Isshinryu, about to test for sho-dan in kobudo. I also run Cape Fear Isshinryu in wilmington NC. (https://www.capefearisshinryu.com)

Minimum 3.5 years of training Since this is an isshinryu school... katas: Seisan, Seiuchin, Naihanchi Sho, Wansu, Chinto, Kusanku, Sanchin, Sunsu. Kobudo: Kyan no Sai, Kusanku Sai, Tokumine no Kun. I also train in and teach Okinawan Kobudo...Sho dan for that requires the performance and Bunkai of 12 weapons katas.

At my dojo, (https://www.capefearisshinryu.com) I only charge 10 dollars a month since I am given use of the building for free. That money mostly goes toward helping with the light bill. My whole philosophy since I started teaching was that I did not want to do it for profit. Thus, I charge six dollars a person when they get ready to test. That simply covers the cost of the obi.

Open hand: Chinto Weapon: Shorinryu/Shorin kan no Eku dai Ich. Chinto has been my best kata for years...I also like Kusanku as well though.

Definately the fault of the instructor. Sadly too many dojos get into the trap of feeling they have to promote their students in order to keep them around. That is how you often end up with students like you have mentioned.