Our Teachers

 

 

Written by Guss Wilkinson 2005

 

I thought that it was high time that I put finger to keyboard and tell you about some of the characters that were important to me (us) in my (our) martial arts journey. They were our teachers.

 

I won’t at this stage include any of the many people who ran short courses that we attended, even if some of them did have a profound impact on the direction that our martial arts took – no, that will have to be another story.

 

From a very young age, I was fascinated by some of the heroes in Swedish comic books that I read. They were all translated from American origins and they created in me a longing to strive to be a cut above average – somebody that the world looked up to – somebody that would make a difference. I wasn’t really aware of martial arts as such at that age (I can’t have been more than 7-years old) other than the un-armed combat stories that my Father would tell us of his days in the New Zealand air force. These stories, I am sure, only ever contained a minute grains of truth – but as bedtime stories, they too fuelled images of heroics and super-human abilities. As wide-eyed kids in our pyjamas, clutching our teddies and sucking our fingers, we loved them.

 

But shortly afterwards, when I was about 8-years old, something very big happened. The series, “Kung Fu”, staring David Caradine, started on TV. I was totally mesmerised. This was absolutely what I wanted. Not a week would go by where I didn’t sit glued to the box, soaking in the images of Grasshopper receiving his wisdom and his secret training at the Shoulin temple; and how Kwai Chang Caine would reluctantly dispose of clumsy, ignorant and uncouth cowboy adversaries during his banishment in America. For me, these could not have been made up stories – they had to be the truth!

 

About a year went by (a very long time in the life of a young boy) and I discovered that there was a Judo club at my school in the south of England. I didn’t know that Judo wasn’t what Kwai Chang Caine was doing and I nagged and nagged until my mother relented and let me join the club. That was where I met my very first teacher…

 

Mrs Penny

Mrs Penny (no idea what her first name was) was a rather plump, short woman dressed in her Judo suit. She must have been in her late ‘20’s and I have vague memories of her being blonde. The class would begin by us having to stack all the desks and chairs at the side of one of the classrooms and then go and get all the mats, located quite far away in our school bus shelter, and transport them back on a cart. It took about 3-4 trips to get all the mats.

 

We would then spend about an hour learning some break-falls, holds and throws and would finish off doing some light sparring (randori). Then it was mats away and put back the desks and chairs time again.

 

I trained with her for about a year; graded three times and got to yellow belt with 4-mons (stripes). I remember asking her when we would learn a shoulder throw and was very disappointed when she claimed that there was no such thing. All we did were leg and hip throws. But, I got over it and I really loved the classes - which was why I was absolutely gutted when she left and the club closed.

It took about 6-months before the club re-opened and this time it was with our new teacher: Mr Johns.

 

Mr Johns

Again, I have no idea what his first name was. We only knew our teachers (and each other for that matter) by surnames.

Mr Johns was a retired navy P.E. instructor hired to teach us P.E. as part of the school curriculum. He also ran an after school gymnastics class and our judo class – my brother and I joined both.

 

Mr Johns was a short, fit-looking, balding man in his late 50’s who chain smoked – even during classes. He told us, during one of our first classes, that everything we had learned up till now was rubbish, and that we were no longer allowed to wear the belts that we had earned.

In fact, he was going to devise his own grading system and what we would be learning was not Judo, but Ju-Jitsu. I had never heard of it, but I didn’t care, I couldn’t wait.

 

The grading system was comprised of different coloured sashes that we were allowed to wear around our waists. The first grade was a red sash; followed by a purple sash and the last grade was a gold sash. He instigated exactly the same grading system for his gymnastics class and he awarded himself a gold sash in both.

 

When ever we were awarded a sash, we were also allowed to wear a corresponding coloured badge on our school uniforms – it was great.

The gymnastics class was certainly the real deal, but what he taught us in our Ju-Jitsu lessons was a home made concoction based on the navy’s un-armed combat classes. The only techniques he knew were a hip throw, a leg throw, a hold down, a leg lock, an arm lock, a handful of knife defence techniques and a couple of break-falls. He was a complete fraud. But it didn’t matter – we practiced these techniques over and over again, while he smoked, every week for about two years and always finished off with some light sparring, while he smoked. We became really good at what we had learned. A large proportion of his lessons were him talking about his heroic deeds (all of which must have been complete lies), while he smoked and we took them all as gospel.

 

One day, after school, Mr Johns had arranged a big combined gymnastics and ju-jitsu demonstration for our parents. The gymnastics demo was first where each of us performed one event. The judo demonstration followed and we each performed one technique. I was devastated because he forgot to include my technique in the programme – the hip throw. Anyway, it all finished as a finale with everyone involved in the demonstration singing a song (I’ll never forget it – it was a very old song called “Keep your sunny side up”) accompanied by our music teacher on the piano.

 

One of the parents in the know must have complained to the school that what we were doing was not judo, as very shortly afterwards Mr Johns was fired and the club closed. I missed him and the classes – he was a very colourful character – a fraud, but a very colourful character!

 

Shortly afterwards, I changed school to attend Portsmouth Grammar School. After a year of rugby and cricket, both of which I hated, we were allowed to choose from a range of sports. I chose judo, of course. This time, our teacher was Eric Hanley.

 

 

Eric Hanley

Eric was the genuine article. He was 23-years old and a recognised instructor with the British Judo Association. He was a first kyu brown belt and missed out on his black belt due to serious ligament injuries in both knees –he refused to accept the honorary black belt that would have been available to him.

 

He used to turn up to our school in a very run down Bedford van containing all the mats, which we used to have to lay out before the start of class. It was a very big mat with wooden boarders and a proper canvass covering and it took a good 20-minutes to put together.

As I was nearly 15, I had to learn as an adult and we learned from the full international judo syllabus of throws, hold-downs, arm-locks and strangles/chokes. The sparring was according to international rules and was gruelling.

 

Eric was a professional coach and ran clubs at several different schools. He also ran a club outside school one evening a week and my brother and I both joined.

 

Eric was an absolutely outstanding coach and he treated us all as adults and equals, unlike any other teacher at what was quite an abusive private school culture.

 

His own club was even better as we mixed with other adults, most of whom were a lot older than us and it was the very first time that I experienced that very special feeling of belonging – looking back on my life, it is clear to me that this was a crucial period for the development of my own identity, as well as my martial arts.

 

I liked Eric’s style and it is one that I have tried to emulate ever since. He wasn’t a “know it all”, he never claimed to be the best and he didn’t demand anything from his students. We could put in maximum effort during our training if we wanted to or we could cruise if we wanted to – what ever we felt like at the time. He promoted self discipline and never enforced discipline. Above all, his club was as much a social interaction as it was a martial arts journey.

 

All gradings were held externally by the British Judo Association and occurred in our region about 2 – 3 times per year. A pre-requisite for these gradings were that you had to have passed your theory grading at your club – and Eric would sign off our grading books as soon as we had demonstrated competence in the relevant techniques. Then at the external gradings, all hopefuls were lined up one grade at a time and were given two fights. You had to win at least one of these fights to be awarded the next grade. If you won both your fights, you were then allowed to line up with the next grades and given two more fights against people in that grade group. If you won both of those, you would be lined up with the next grade group and given two more fights. So, in theory, it was possible to advance from white belt to brown belt at a single grading – and I actually saw this happen on a couple of occasions.

 

As I was so young, I only ever won a fight roughly on every second grade – so my advancement was slow – I had to overcome the disappointment of failing every second grade.

 

We also competed at a club level and went across to France on several occasions. And we competed nationally – my highest claim to fame was winning a bronze medal at the Hampshire Championships in 1979.

 

Eric didn’t just teach techniques, but also tactics, especially in ground-work; something that no other teacher had done for me to date. This is also something that I have tried to emulate in my own teaching and it is still fairly rare in my experience.

 

I continued training with Eric until I left for Sweden in 1982 at the age of 19. Eric became a great friend and ended up being the best man at my wedding in 1985. He was always a strong fundamentalist Christian, a source of much intense debate between us, and sadly, I lost contact with him shortly after my wedding when he retired from Judo. I miss him.

 

1979 was the year that I left Portsmouth Grammar School and attended Price’s College, a public 6th form college in the south of England. It was a co-educational school and it was a great relief and change from the abusive culture I had grown used to. It was there that I came into contact with other martial arts students, two in particular being Wa Kwai Lam and Julian Fletcher. Wa trained in Praying Mantis style of Kung Fu and Julian trained in Goju Ryu karate at a local club called the Bugeikan.

 

We met and trained at lunch times, went to the gym together to pull some weights and met on many weekends exchanging ideas on techniques and tactics. I learned quite a bit from Wa, who was very fast and quite acrobatic. He, in turn, learned never to grab hold of me, as he would always end up on his ass. And, as your typical teenaged boys do, full of testosterone: we would prove our manliness by breaking roofing slates with our bare knuckles. We did this often and we actually became quite good at it. We also proudly sported the scars on our knuckles in order to try to impress the girls – it seemed to work for Wa, but not for Julian or I.

 

Eventually, Wa got quite frustrated trying to teach me his Kung Fu techniques as I really had no idea how to do the basics properly. He told me that I should join a proper club and start from the beginning.

 

And that is when I decided to join Julian’s club at the Bugeikan. Julian joined my judo club. It was the end of 1979 and the teacher was Rick Woodhams.

 

Rick Woodhams

At the time, Rick was in his mid 40’s; a lean fit looking character who was fairly quietly spoken but very abrupt in manner – seemed to be a fairly sour and bad-tempered character. He as a 3rd Dan at the time and had trained under a fairly famous instructor called Mark Bishop.

His club was quite big with quite a few instructors: Kevin Fox (1st Dan), his number 1; Kelvin Reeve (1st Dan) and Dave Morris (1st Kyu) were the main ones. I turned up sporadically (judo still being my main interest) for the next two years but certainly got a fairly good handle on the basics.

 

It was a very nice crowd of people and the training was quite hard. There was much more enforced discipline than what I was used to and I was quite argumentative about some of the grappling techniques, as I knew from my judo experience that the way they were advocating things would have no chance to work in practice. Rick did not like that, and hated when I demonstrated how I would do it – something that he later banned me from doing.

 

I didn’t have a lot to do with Rick at the time and was normally grouped in with the mass of beginners repeating basic drills.

Eventually, in the middle of 1982, I left both Rick’s club and Eric’s judo club to live in Sweden. It was there that I met my future wife, Helena, who instantly showed a fascination over my martial arts demonstrations. She and I became an item and together, we decided to find a club to join. I was pretty keen to try to find a Chinese martial arts club as I was still pretty inspired by my times with my friend Wa, and I am sure that the images of David Caradine still had an influence.

 

After looking around in the papers, we saw an advert for the White Crane Kung Fu association and we went along to have a look. It looked great and we signed up straight away. It was lead by Hassan Sidibaba.

 

Hassan Sidibaba

Hassan was a tall, athletic and extremely fit 23-year old. He had an American mother and a Moroccan father. He looked a lot older than he was and he  had heaps of trophies that he claimed that he had won in all sorts of different world tournaments (we later found out was completely bogus – he apparently still owed money for them at the local trophy shop). He also claimed to be the head martial arts trainer for the Swedish military – also not true.

 

We believed him, of course – at first – who would question a kung fu master? He had a beautiful studio dojo complete with all the accessories: whole wall mirrors everywhere; luxury changing rooms with showers and saunas.

 

He also had a small shop selling martial arts uniforms and equipment to members and we were all forced to buy new uniforms every time he decided we should wear something different. The training fees were very expensive and he had three groups of 20 students training twice a week.

 

The training was very very harsh in all respects. The bit I really didn’t enjoy was the fact that we often started by going for a run around the streets of Stockholm, stopping by the quayside and going through some warm-up exercises to his drill-sergeant-like commands: I was very self-conscious about being stared at by all the passers by. He must have used this as part of his marketing campaign – martial arts were very much in vogue at the time.

 

Helena and I became very fit indeed within a very short space of time; and very flexible – I went from being fairly stiff in my legs to being able to do splits in every direction within 6-months. Helena was the same: the stretching routines were insane!

 

 Both Helena and I started to get suspicious, after a few months, that all was not kosher with Hassan’s club: firstly, he would encourage the younger students to go looking for and join in street fights at nights and he used to revel in their stories in the changing rooms. Secondly, there were no katas, only pad-work, basics and full-contact sparring. When I questioned this, he suddenly introduced katas during the next session and they were very obviously made up on the spot. And, lastly, the thing that clinched it for us was when he beat up a student for not paying attention during the warm-up. He was really hurt. We had had enough and left.

 

It didn’t take us long to find a replacement. We went to the largest martial arts club in Stockholm, run by Louis Lin.

 

Louis Lin

Louis Lin was a Chinese Wu Shu master from Taiwan – he was the genuine article and had appeared in a minor role in one of the Bruce Lee films. His Swedish wife, Yvonne Lin, was a world Wu Shu champion and ran her own dojo – she was the author of many women’s self defence books and was quite famous in Stockholm.

 

Louis Lin was a very pleasant personality, very modest and unassuming. He spoke no Swedish and we enjoyed chatting with him in English. On those occasions that we did see him perform, it was stunningly beautiful. He was very athletic but also graceful in his movements.

 

Now, when I say his club was big – I mean huge!! I have never since seen anything like it. On the top floor, he had a large martial arts accessories shop and all his offices. In the basement, he had two very large fully equipped and fully mirrored dojos side by side, a cafeteria, and multiple changing rooms and locker rooms complete with showers and saunas.

 

Each group of students trained twice a week and were called a-group; b-group, c-group etc. Helena and I were in t-group. That is how big it was. He had heaps of instructors and it was rare that we got the same instructor twice in a row. The training was every bit as demanding as White Crane, but it was far more good natured – and they trained authentic Chinese katas.

 

We also joined the Tai Chi classes once a week, which meant that we got personal tuition from Louis Lin himself.

 

The club was so big that it felt like one big conveyor belt and we were all quite anonymous there – no socialising went on after training, and the training was so intense and hard that we certainly didn’t socialise during training – so we actually didn’t make any friends there at all.

But both Helena and I loved the training, and what we learned most certainly got absorbed and, in part, has gone to make up what we teach today. We were there until the end of 1984 when Helena and I moved back to England.

 

We moved to England in order to kill two stones with one bird J. Helena wanted to see more of the world, and we both felt the need to get educated. Helena enrolled in a two-year travel, tourism and business studies course, and I enrolled in an Optometry course.

 

We lived at my parents’ old house in Hampshire (they lived in Saudi Arabia), I commuted to Uni in London everyday and Helena studied in Portsmouth. We both joined the Bugeikan Karate Club at the end of 1984, this time at Kevin Fox’s club.

 

Kevin Fox

Kevin and his family was, is and remains one of our very best friends. We joined Kevin’s club originally for two reasons – firstly because he knew the tai chi sword routine and both Helena and I wanted to learn it; and secondly because his club ran on a Sunday morning, which suited us very well as we were studying so much during the week.

 

Kevin was always lean and fit, and I judged him to be by far the best exponent in the whole of the Bugeikan group of clubs – better even than the head instructor, Rick. Kevin, Helena and I soon became close friends and as such, Kevin was always harder on us than anyone else. He did not want to be seen to be giving his mates an easy ride – we must have thought it a bit unfair at the time, but we soon realised that we were much better off for it.

 

Kevin was always a natural – he could just do it, often without knowing how or why. I, on the other hand, was definitely not a natural and kept asking how and why, which used to irritate the hell out of him. The most common phrase at the club was “Just shut up, Guss, and do it!!!!”

 

And did it we did. We trained almost religiously over the next five years. I was still very argumentative regarding anything connected with grappling, groundwork or locking techniques and also regarding strategy – but on the whole, we listened, learned and practised.

Although Kevin was our main teacher, we very soon started training with the other clubs at the Bugeikan:

 

Mondays and Fridays was Malcolm Courts’ and Kevin Salter’s club at the Fareham Leisure Centre – Malcolm, or Mac as we called him, was a superb karateka. He was wiry, strong and bony and nobody liked punching him as his blocks left bruises that took weeks to disappear. Mac was a 3rd Dan and also later gained a 3rd Dan in a hard style of Aikido. His Aikido techniques were fascinating and a lot of fun to learn. Mac approached martial arts in a very sceptical manner and we both learned a hell of a lot from him.

 

Tuesdays was at Dick Dear’s and George Seagar’s Club, also in Fareham but at one of the local schools. Dick and George were a little older and had decades of experience in karate. They had a far more laid back approach which was most refreshing – great guys!

 

Thursdays was at Rick’s club at the Locks Heath Leisure Centre. Most instructors turned up to train there and, normally, they took turns to take the training. Rick restricted himself to teaching beginners for some reason and we didn’t have a hell of a lot to do with him.

Sunday mornings was at Kevin Fox’s Club – probably the hardest of all the sessions, especially if we were hung-over from going out on Saturday night.

 

Helena and I practiced together every spare minute when we weren’t either training or studying…or socialising, of course.

After every training session, we would meet up at the pub and put the world to right over a beer or twelve. Socialisation was a big part of the club – the karate club was our social life at that time. We lived, ate and breathed Karate.

 

We finally gained our 1st Dan black belts in 1988. It was a great feeling and the high took months to subside. Helena and I immediately opened up a club at the Rowner School in Gosport on Wednesday nights. We ran the sessions hard and incorporated a lot of our previous martial arts experiences into our trainings. We finally handed over the club to Kevin when we returned to Sweden in the beginning of 1989.

 

We held back on opening a club in Sweden and decided instead to train at one of the local Goju Ryu clubs in Stockholm under Hiromi Suzuki.

 

Hiromi Suzuki

Hiromi Suzuki ran a café during the days and his karate club during the nights. He had his own dojo next to his café and had quite a large group of students. The atmosphere there was rather formal and un-relaxed, very different to what we were used to. It was a typically Japanese style of dojo in décor and Suzuki, himself, would stand outside the dojo and smoke while one of his students took the warm up – after which, he would stub out and take over. He was clearly very good at what he did, which was evident just by watching him demonstrate or teach but he more or less totally ignored us and probably found our presence a bit of an irritation. He was only really interested in competition and spent a lot of time with his teams.

 

It didn’t take us long to decide that this was not for us, and the only way that we would get the sort of training we wanted was to open up our own club again and do it ourselves. This is what we did, and the Bugeikan was born in Stockholm in the beginning of 1990.

 

Kevin Fox broke away from the Bugeikan in England due to his lack of confidence in Rick and founded the Federation of Goju Ryu Karate together with two other ex-Bugeikan instructors called Dave Morris and Mike Clarke. Together with Mac, they were introduced to Itchikawa’s style of Goju Ryu through an instructor in London called Chris Clifford with whom they trained for a number of years. This influence completely changed the direction of their training a change that Kevin was partially able to impart to us during his many visits to Sweden. Hence, our own direction also completely changed during this period.

 

This, together with the many short courses we attended, run by some outstanding martial artists, went to form the foundation of what we now train today.

 

To finish off, I would like to mention the teachers that have had the greatest impact on what can be recognised as the martial arts we train today – us! We were lucky to have each other to bounce ideas off, critique what we had learned and to continuously correct one another.

 

Helena Wilkinson

Helena has always been a natural. She picked up moves more or less instantaneously whereas I always had to work hard to develop the co-ordination. Her moves have a unique flowing quality and she has a great eye for form and stance discipline.

 

Guss Wilkinson

My own attributes include a near photographic memory for techniques and an understanding of the nuts and bolts and mechanics of techniques, hard-wired into me from my early days in Judo. This has allowed us to help students customise their karate to optimise their effectiveness to their own individual physical make-ups.

 

Together, we have re-invented the wheel, totally reverse engineering all the katas and bunkai to create what we now consider to be a no-nonsense, completely self-defence orientated style of karate. We have always complemented each other and we have used our complementary skills to experiment and refine our art in a way that would not have been possible had we not been a couple: sharing the same passionate interest for our hobby.