My Gishi Ryu Karate Years

In 2012, due to a change in my engineering career, I moved to Saint Louis Park, Minnesota.  This unfortunately meant closing my Hutchinson school.  Rather creating a new school, I decided to resume to being a student of a new art, to resharpen my skills.  This lead me to training at two wonderful schools: Avatar Martial Arts Association under Sifu Luis Quiroz, and One Kung Fu under Sifu Casey Fryer.  These fine gentlemen and martial artists had a lot to teach me.  Ultimately they helped me figure out that I needed to return to my core - karate.

I made two resolutions for 2014.  Firstly, start a community of martial artists like I had at DCU|MAC and continue to visit at RMAF and SMAF.  This lead to the creation of Twin Cities Martial Arts Group.  In one short year the group has exceeded my expectation.  It has grown into a monthly seminar with a core group of recurring members and new participants every month.  It has attracted martial artists with decades of experience, yet who are still interested in learning from others.  The group also allowed me to tap directly into what make's my karate distinctive.

The second goal was to resume the teaching of Seito with direct students of my own.  After my usual annual trips to the Seikawa Dojo, SMAF, RMAF and the recurring TCMA events, I realised what a lot of my friends has been telling me.  My style was distinctive enough to need it's own name.  What settled it for my is watching my sempai, William Burdock, teach.  I saw Sensei Burdock and his students working their Seito and saw it was different than my own.  To me, Seito is the art we (Will and I) learned from O-Sensei Burke and will always be what is taught at the Seikawa Dojo.  It will always be the core of what I do, but I cannot teach my students like Sensei Burdock.  He has earned the right to continue to improve and evolve the Seito we both learned at the home dojo.

What I do is different ... this was apparent to everyone else, but not me!  I reset my goal, to teach my version of karate.  The one I had developed through the past twenty-some years.  The one that others couldn't name: "You do karate, right?", "What style of karate is that?". "You don't look like someone who does karate."  I had joked that it was Mi-Ku-Ryu (Mick's way).  But that didn't honour the journey I had taken. 

When Sensei Tristan Chermack, founder of Spirit Aikido and fellow member of TWMA Group invited me to teach at his 2015 friendship seminar, I unveiled the name of my style.

In May of 2015, I started a new dojo, where I now teach Gishi Ryu Karate.

The path forward ...,