The shape of it
A system large enough for a lifetime.
Empty-hand forms
The spine of the system. Each is a compressed record of principles, and the forms are designed to teach one another.
Weapons forms
Bo, sai, tonfa, eku, kama, and rochin and tinbe. They teach distance and mechanics that the empty-hand forms assume.
Kyu and dan grades
Specific content at each level: two forms per kyu grade, then three per dan grade across the remaining curriculum.
Sword material exists past all of it. Most students will never see this, and it is not a loss. It exists because it was given to me and it has to go somewhere.
Roughly twenty forms lead to black belt. Approximately fifteen years of material remain after it.
The road
Progress measured in capability, not attendance.
- 01
The first month
Standing, moving, shifting weight and striking properly. Almost none of it looks like karate. Then one day the body does something correctly without being asked.
- 02
The first year
Two or three forms, done badly and improving. Real striking mechanics. The beginnings of the body method underneath everything else.
- 03
Three years
Eight or nine forms. Partner work, introduced carefully. Material learned in the first year begins to mean something different.
- 04
Five years
Somewhere near black belt, depending entirely on you. Weapons work begins. You are no longer learning karate; you are doing it and refining it.
- 05
Beyond
More forms, deeper applications, and material that only makes sense once the body already carries twenty forms.
If you already train
You will not be asked to pretend you are a beginner.
Some of this will interest an experienced martial artist more than someone starting for the first time.
Around thirty unfamiliar forms
This curriculum is not in any public syllabus. There is no manual and no one else teaching it. Whatever else it is, it is not more of what you already have.
A different body method
The postural rules differ from mainstream Okinawan lineages at specific points. Experienced students often move quickly through fundamentals and slowly through unlearning.
Grappling and close work
The system did not come out of a sport context and never discarded the material sport rules remove. Wrestling and judo experience will recognise more than expected.
Rank, treated honestly
Rank does not transfer into a system you have not learned. Experience does. You will be taught at the level at which you can actually work.
Competition, treated honestly
This is not a tournament system. If your goal is a podium, another school will serve you better. Its structure, timing, distance and ground-generated power can still transfer.
Difficulty on request
The conditioning is real, the deep forms are exacting, and advanced partner work is not gentle. I kept my teacher's standard and discarded his methods. Ask to be pushed and I will push you.
About grading
Rank reflects capability.
Grading is optional
Train and test if you want to. Train without ever testing if you prefer. The material is the same.
There are no grading fees
Not reduced fees. None. You are not buying a rank and I am not selling one.
There is no testing schedule
You will not test because six months have passed. You will test when you can do the thing, however long it takes.
Capability is the standard
Not attendance, loyalty or time served.
Starting late
The forms do not ask you to be fast. They ask you to be exact.
You will not progress the way a twenty-year-old does, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Recovery is slower and joints have opinions. That is real.
What is also real is that this system was built by men who trained into their eighties and nineties. Bushi was in his seventies when he fought two soldiers half his age and beat them both at once. Temur was past ninety the last time he came at me seriously, and he still read my intentions before I finished forming them.
They were working on precision, timing, structure, and decades of understanding what a body does under pressure. Those are the qualities in martial arts that can continue improving with age.
Begin at fifty, train intelligently for fifteen years, and you will be sixty-five with an understanding most twenty-five-year-old black belts do not possess.
What this is for
The punching is how it gets installed.
The system carries an ethic, and it is not decoration. It comes down to doing the right thing, in the right way. Every man in this line did something wrong, recognised it, and made amends.
Bushi spent months drunk and provoking armed men, looking for a way out. Two soldiers tried to stop him and he attacked them for it. Then he sobered up, met them honourably, and gave them everything he had.
Temur taught me harder than he needed to. At the end he handed the whole system over without reservation and removed himself so I would not stand in his shadow.
I met him because I was being beaten and doing nothing about it. He asked why. I said I was afraid of hurting someone.
Being afraid is not the problem. Everyone is afraid. The problem is what fear does when you let it decide: it takes your voice, and then it keeps taking.
What this training gives you, if you stay with it, is the confidence to do the right thing whatever it costs. Stand up to the bully. Say the unpopular thing when the room does not want it. Object to the injustice in front of you rather than the comfortable one at a distance.
I cannot separate this from the rest of my life and have stopped trying. It is in how I work, how I speak to people, and what I am willing to tolerate. That is the real thing on offer.
Where to start
Twenty minutes. No obligation. No physical activity.
Ask whatever you like, including whether this is reasonable at your age or with your background. You will get an honest answer.
Book a free introduction