Attended a Vince Morris Seminar

[Wastelander]

Vince Morris is often mentioned as one of the people responsible for reviving kata, along with Iain and Patrick McCarthy, so when I saw that he was going to be teaching a seminar about 30 minutes away from me I decided I had to attend. My first impression of him is that he is a friendly but rather rowdy person with a bit of a strict streak (which probably comes from teaching military, police and government organizations?) and he has a very direct and practical outlook on karate. The seminar was supposed to go from 1pm to 3pm, but instead went from about 1:15pm to 4pm, and we covered quite a lot of ground, I feel--I did a full write-up here, if anyone is interested.

Has anyone else attended Mr. Morris' seminars, or watched his DVD's, and what did you think of his applications? Overall, I did like a lot of what he taught, and much of it was similar to things I have seen and done before so it shouldn't be difficult to work into my training. There were a couple things I wasn't thrilled with, and a few historical things he said were a little off (primarily, he mentioned Okinawan bodyguards carrying daisho, which I don't believe was the case, and said "No one in the world was teaching this stuff 25 years ago when I started doing it," which doesn't seem right to me, either) but otherwise I was quite happy with the seminar.

[bassaiguy]

Very nice write-up on your blog. I've wanted to attend one of Morris' seminars for awhile. If he ever makes it to the Northeast I'll make sure to go.

I wonder, did he mention his other group (not Kissaki-kai) the ISOK? I used to be a member before he was chair and I'm considering rejoining.