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Wado or other Karate in Bucks / Oxfordshire

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  • Wado or other Karate in Bucks / Oxfordshire

    For all sorts of reasons, the main one being my club is in imminent threat of closing down (due to ego's and money).

    Can anyone recommend a Wado or any good Karate club / instructors in Bucks / Oxfordshire... I live in Bicester to give you an idea of where I can get to.

    Many thanks all.

  • #2
    Well, the best thing you could probably do is search the net. I found some clubs but not sure if their close to you or not.

    http://www.wadoryu.co.uk/default.asp

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    • #3
      Thankyou Kengar,

      I have followed your advice and searched around.

      I am considering joining the Oxford University Karate Club which is a Shotokan based freestyle Karate institute.

      However I would like to check out the credentials of the Sensei to ensure that I am not joining another Mc Dojo (at times it felt like my previous place was a case of the more you pay the higher the grade... but then I am a little bitter at the moment).

      Has anyone heard of the following Sensei?
      Sensei Ohta
      6th Dan JKA - Chief Instructor and Chairman of the Japan Karate Association England

      Sensei David Graham
      5th Dan JKA - Sensei Dave has his own club in Basingtoke

      Spiros Ventouras 3rd Dan JKA

      More information here

      Many thanks
      Nit

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      • #4
        The JKA is one of te biggest Karate organisations in the world.

        But they won't really teach you how to fight.

        Why not take this opportunity to learn something a little more useful?

        I mean no offense. I spent years in traditional Karate before I truly realised it was a waste of time for my purposes.

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        • #5
          Hi Nit,

          I have briefly talked to someone on the net who trains at Oxford uni. It seems like solid karate - they are traditional Shotokan, and the affiliation with the JKA has meant that their style and methods are uniformly in line with many other karate schools around the world.

          As far as competition, the Oxford students who train there compete against Cambridge regularly, and it seems that Oxford performs stronger in kata than sparring.

          Cakegirl

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          • #6
            thankyou both for such prompt answers, esp you Cakegirl for contacting your erm contact... I appreciate the effort you have gone to.


            Thai Bri, I appreciate your comment, Shotokan has always appeared 'stuffy' to me too... however I train/am taught occasionally by a Shoto Instructor (4th Dan) and it amazes me how difficult it is to get anywhere near him... even when free sparring we can barely get a technique going without being defeated.

            This is one of two things, Either I am so crap I need a lot of teaching or that there is something in it which is useful for fighting.

            Atmittedly probably not as useful as others...

            Can you give me your opinion of what would be beneficial for me to learn? Also what do you learn 'for your purpose'? I value you experience.

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            • #7
              Dearest Nit,

              My journey into the fighting arts has been a long one. Too long. All I really wanted to do was learn how to defend myself, but various arts offer so many distractions to that. They go off at tangents and end up "perfecting" irrelevancies.

              I started in Karate and was indoctrinated to think that it was the bees knees. But here is a brief description of my own views.

              I thought that the touch sparring was conditioning for a real fight. But is it? Basically you learn hot NOT to hit hard. The distances are all wrong, much too far apart. All the techniques, stances, strategies and tactics that help you win in this game are actually detrimental to real fighting.

              Kata? People talk of it being mystical, or helping things like "control" and discipline". They also reckon you can practice techniques that cannot be practiced in sparring. But look at it. Its like a robotic dance, and NOTHING in it helps you in a real fight. Again, it teaches you how NOT to do it.

              The one step / three step sparring sequencies are ridiculous. Who is going to attack with an Oi Tsuki type move in the street? No one.

              The blocks are stupid. Thats why you don't even see them being used all that foten in sparring! By the time you pull your hand back ready to block, a real technique would have already clattered you in the gob.

              Marching up and down the dojo hitting thin air? Robotic and unrealistic crap again.

              No grappling? We could all write a book about that.

              It goes on and on...... Maybe some Karate Ka's at the top ofthe tree CAN use it to defend themselves. But they do it IN SPITE of their training, not because of it. They even turn the fact that it takes an age to get to this level as something good! Why should it take this long to be effective? That doesn't make it "good", that makes it very very bad!

              Don't get me worng. I think the original Okinawan Karate was effective. They trained fingers to the eyes, shutos to the throat, elbows to the jaw, stomps to the knee ec. But Karate lost its way, and became both a robotic Kata competition and a silly game of tag "fighting" art.

              I have researched alot of arts, and a great many teach you how NOT to fight. Karate is not the only art to have lost its way.

              The great irony is that, after nearly 25 years of study, the art I have found is pretty much how I expected Karate to be when I first walked into a dojo all those years ago. It has nasty, deadly, non telegraphic strikes. It can strike in any direction, against multiple opponents. It has the elements of Okinawan Karate that I have just outlined. And it is so simple to learn.

              It is generally called World War 2 Combatives, and was taught to the newly formed British Comandos in WW2 by a guy who had already researched many arts and "absorbed what was useful, discarded what was useless". There are hardly any techniques, but what there are a nasty and evil. There is no messing about. No Kata, no one step, no game of tag etc. You could learn the whole syllabus in a couple of sessions, and then spend you're time perfecting it, so you can be an expert in 6 great techniques, rather than have a poor knowledge of 106 crap ones.

              And you can add other things to it, like some groundwork, or some of Richard Dimitri's "Shredder" work.

              Try these sites




              and their associated links.

              Also try


              Senshido is, at its heart, a Reality-Based Self-Defense system. What this means is that it teaches survival skills for real-world violent situations.


              for other ideas.

              Guess what? Almost all these people came from arts like Karate initially. They have all undertaken a journey. Lets learn from them, instead of wasting the 1/4 decade that I wasted.

              These people will teach you how to avoid trouble, how to recognise it, how to deal with it and how to survive. Karate will teach you NOTHING on those lines.

              I wish I had found it 25 years ago. At least my sons won't waste the time I wasted.

              Good luck.
              Last edited by Thai Bri; 10-02-2003, 09:21 AM.

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              • #8
                Thankyou Bri Thai, I appreciate your directness.

                I have often wondered how useful my karate is practically, but have never really found anything in my area that was 'better' than it.

                I will look up those links, do you know of any clubs / instructors in the Oxfordshire area that in your opinion offer this type of training?

                thankyou

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                • #9
                  Nope, but ask around on the Geoff T forum. Thats mainly English.

                  I've just remembered. I was on a course at work a few years ago. There was a Third Dan JKA Black Belt on it with me. When he got drunk he admitted that all his training didn't really make him feel that he could really handle himself at all.

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