The name of the club is, as stated above, The Hamilton Bugeikan Karate Club. Bugeikan is, quite simply, Japanese for Martial Arts Club.
We train in a style of Karate called Goju Ryu. Literally translated, this means The Hard and Soft Way. By hard, we generally mean muscle strength, conditioning and fitness; and by Soft, we mean inner strength, concentration, evasion and balance.
This style was brought over from China to Okinawa in the middle of the 1800's by a Martial Artist named Kanryo Higaonna where it developed into a Karate style. But, the techniques within the style originate in the Fu Kien province of China and may even have roots dating back thousands of years.
Karate can generally be divided in to two sorts; Competition Orientated or Traditional. I would like to think that we do neither. Our style is purely self-defence orientated and we have neither adapted the techniques to comply with competition rules, nor have we bought, wholesale, into the Japanese traditions & culture. This leaves us free to be open to new ideas and allows us to adapt each technique to each individual.
What is Karate all about? Even in early training, the skills of the karate student are lethal because it is an all-in fighting system where everything is allowed. I.e., to use every means available to the practitioner in order to overcome by technique, conditioning and training, an assailant or assailants in his fight for life.
This is why karate is based on blows delivered with every part of the body and when a student has mastered all of these effective techniques, he is awarded his 1st Dan Black belt known as shodan, and is, himself, regarded as a sensei or teacher.
During training, a strange paradox seems to emerge. Originally, perhaps, the student takes up the art as an effective self-defence system. Then, as a result of hard training and battles between mind and body, a feeling of inner calm and peace is experienced. The student has reached the point where he has won the fight within himself, and no longer needs to prove that he can fight. In fact, he will often prefer to walk away from trouble. But should that trouble follow him, he will be more than able to deal with it with deadly efficiency.