Masters corner

Since summer has began we've had our usual drop off in class attendance. Summer is a time of vacations as well as swimmming and other activities that get people from inside the house or gym to the lake, beach and other outdoor activities.

Having said that we still have a group of around 15 to 20 that are alway's there eager and ready to learn. We have been working very hard in our cross training in the various arts as it's a must to stay on the frontlines of the Martial Arts industry.

I really want to take my hat off to Grandmaster Pete Mills for having the vision to allow instructors from outside Isshinryu to teach and share their knowledge of the different Martial Arts with his students.

When I first sought out Master Mills to be my Sensei, I had already held Black Belts in Shuri-Te, Torasamado, as well as Isshinryu. At that time I had also spent 5yrs in American Freestyle Karate along with studing Taekwondo and some Tai boxing along with my early amature boxing background.

In the eary 90's we had Bob Hoskin who was a ni-dan under Wally Jay teach some small circle jiu-jitsu. Steve King was also a very good wrestler that had also trained in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu while living in Brazil in the 80's. Steve was most likely the 1st Black Belt in Isshinryu to train with the Gracie's while living in Brazil. When Steve began training with us in the mid 90's, Mike Butcher had already introduced us to the Gracie style of grappling a couple of years before.

By the mid 90's Master Ron Tolliver introduced us to Micheal DePasquale who would later become a great friend as well as teaching us some great close quarter combat street ju-jitsu. I really took to that style of ju-jitsu as I had come from a boxing and Shuri-Te background. I just felt that Shihan DePasquale's system was more suited for self defense than the tournament style jiu-jitsu that was becoming so popular.

I guess it was around 2000 that I came to the reality that if I was going to be a serious Instructor that I was going to have to add the grappling to my training as well as teaching. I had been training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu since around 1992 but had never really took it serious as my mind set was not to go to the ground. I think back now and see that I cheated myself as well as putting myself way behind in my ground training.

In 2005 I began training in Russian Combat Sambo and fell in love with this style of fighting as it incorporates the standing game as well as the ground game and from my point is quite a bit more physical than BJJ.

I look around now and see many schools in the area as well as some of our good friends in the Isshinryu community beginning to incorporate cross training in to their training. I can when I look back honestly say that Grandmaster Mills had pushed us to cross train since the early 1990's, so we've alway's been ahead of the curve.

Now we can look at Master James Ogle and his students success in the cage fighting events and see that Master Mills has led the way in encouraging cross training over the last 18yrs that I've been with him.