I didn't learn there was a relatively strong full-contact culture in Isshin-Ryu until long after I left. We didn't associate with any organizations that did, obviously, but then I think my dojo was a unique place. Strictly apolitical, they USED to spar full-contact back in the day. And by that I mean the early 90's. Apparently once Mark became a student of Sherman Harrill's he realized the inefficient error of his ways, shunned full-contact because the new skills he and his students were acquiring became, in his words, "too deadly".

Did you ever get to see this full-contact Isshin Ryu ?

how come crappy krotty instructors always pull the tough bravado card, challenging you to challenge them, and then when you do, you get no response? I had my old instructor telling me there was no way in the world he'd fight me, because he'd "have to hurt me." This being after the numerous speeches from him and those above him about how if anyone doubts their ability, they are more than free to man up and test them. I even showed up at the school with friend and video camera in hand, and he already left supposedly once he heard I was on my way.

I didn't learn there was a relatively strong full-contact culture in Isshin-Ryu until long after I left. We didn't associate with any organizations that did, obviously, but then I think my dojo was a unique place. Strictly apolitical, they USED to spar full-contact back in the day. And by that I mean the early 90's. Apparently once Mark became a student of Sherman Harrill's he realized the inefficient error of his ways, shunned full-contact because the new skills he and his students were acquiring became, in his words, "too deadly".

I haven't been on the internet much lately (a - I'm in Iraq, b - my laptop's HD died, and I'm waiting on the mail to replace it...). Just saw this thread, and saw reference to Mr. Harrill.

I knew "Uncle Sherm" back in the mid to late 80's. He and my teacher were close friends, and some of our students ended up being his students, too. Toward that end, one of our senior students went to study with, and eventually succeeded, Mr. Harrill - John Kerker. John is a dear friend of mine, with whom I try to study every time either he or I are in town together (he in Tacoma, me in Omaha).

I don't know who this "Mark" guy is, nor do I know what he taught in his dojo. What I do know is that, after interacting with Uncle Sherm a hundred years ago, training alongside John in our school as well as attending the seminars he picked up after Uncle Sherm died, neither one of them were people with whom I'd choose to deliberately ****...

I've seen that there is a strong tendency in some Isshin-ryu dojos to concentrate on kata only. I've actually heard a senior Isshin-ryu instructor say that the bunkai training Uncle Sherm, and later John, taught to other Isshinryu people "had it's place," and that place was at seminars (implying it wasn't stuff to work on in the regular daily curriculum - which is contrary to what Uncle Sherm and John both teach).

Neither Mr. Harrill, nor Mr. Kerker shun hard contact. It's standard practice, and to my knowledge it always has been. I ought to know, since I've been "punished" by Uncle Sherm and John alike during class time at one point or another over the years.

Though your indictment of Mark's dojo may be accurate (I can't say, nor do I care), I will stand up for the material both Mr. Harrill and Mr. Kerker taught/teach.

For what it's worth...

Pubic Dojo. That should be the name of a band.

To be honest, you were a very uncoordinated youth, and easily hurt. Your choosing to leave before attaining an age where I could train you as an adult is unfortunate. I'm sure your current opinion would be considerably different.

I was particularily disappointed in your comments calling Mr. Harrill's techniques "parlor tricks" (not to mention calling Sheila a "*****" unworthy of her black belt. BTW, she thought you were gay). I was under the impression that your one experience with the man was a positive one. I'm sorry I ever invited you now, because you obviously didn't learn a damn thing.

Nothing shows integrity like senseis talking **** amongst themselves about their 16 year old students.

Hhonto - Isshin-Ryu and Isshin-ryu Kusarigamajutsu are totally different. Isshin-Ryu is an Oakanwan Karate a blend of Shorin-Ryu and Goju-Ryu. The other is a Japanese weapon style that includes a curved bladed with a ball and chain, not real fimilar with it. Im pretty sure when Isshin-ryu karate founder named his style it had nothing to do with this. Isshin-ryu tranlates Is or Ich meaning one or whole Shin means heart/mind and ryu means style or way.

Kwoww - yes that video shows Isshin-Ryu karate matches. Isshin-ryu does have grappling and most schoold practice sparring along with ground fighting.

Boyd - I posted this on the 3rd part didnt know there was a 4th til tonight when I got to digging through this site, so Ill cut/paste my post here.

First let me say this was a well written story. Next let me say that I am sorry that your experience with Isshin-Ryu started or ended like this.

I am 33 and have studied Isshin-Ryu since I was 15. When I turned 15 and was able to drive I set my mind that I was going to study martial arts, but wasnt sure about type or style. I went to 10-12 different schools and styles. Everything form Judo to TKD and Kung Fu to Freestyle Karate. Then I happened across the school I now attend which happened to be Isshin-Ryu. I will say this that I dont think it was so much the style but the instructor. At all the other schools I felt like I was being feed a big line of crap, I was one of those people that I had to see to believe. Ive always like fighting and growing up my brothers and friends would always fight. We bought boxing gloves and beat the crap out of each other and would wrestle and stick fight. I learned early that the choke was a valuable tool in a fight. Ive always been stout even at 15 so I approached my deisre to learn martial arts very skeptical. I had to believe that the person I was going to study under could do what they said and most the time that ment showing me. Let me just say, this man impressed me. Nothing fancy; as a matter of fact he always said 'its the basics that will win for you'. We trained hard, very hard. He was a newer instructor himself and his school was a rough place. Nothing but young men and grown men there, I was probably the younger students now that I look back on it everyone was 15 to early 30s. Seemed every night someone was going to get stitches or medical attention. After the first few months my mother actually started to make me quite, she couldnt believe how rough it was. But Im sure she looks back now and is thankful for every thing, as am I.

Presently I live about an hour away from my Dojo and I drive past atleast 3 other Isshin-Ryu schools and Im guessing atleast 8-10 other style Dojo's. I regulary go to other schools ,including other styles but I have yet to find a place I felt I could learn more. Even to this day if I did meet another instructor or find another style that I felt was superior I would be there in a heart beat.

During my time in the military I served with the 1st Ranger Bat in Savannah GA and am currently a Go-dan (5thdegree) in Isshin-Ryu there is nothing soft about me or my way of thinking.

Id advise you not to give up on Isshin-Ryu as a whole but would advise you to look more at the instructor instead of the style. If you are ever in the east Tennessee area feel free to send me a PM and Id be glad to meet and discuss martial arts with you or even agreed to a friendly match withyour choice of rules which could include grappling; or feel free to PM me here and we can discuss your journey, because that is what life is a journey.

People get involved in martial arts for different reasons, and different styles and different instructors are focues in different areas. But you being a young man I know where your heart and mind are and that is the Fight and I dont believe there is anything wrong with that, because if most people are speaking truth this is what leads the majority of us to martial arts. So seek out an instructor that understands this, but this is not to say that over the course of your life/training that the reasons you train will not alter.

Best of luck with what ever you do.

This is not a chest beating post, but in the defense of Isshin-ryu I have an open offer to anyone that is in the Knoxville, TN area. If youd like to experience Isshin-ryu first hand befor making a judgment call Id be glad to meet, match, spar, or talk with you about this style. I dont claim to be a bad ass nor do I think I am capable of beating everyone, but I am confident enuff to say that once you experience real karate Im sure your views will change.

MMA is great and actually Isshin Ryu is an example of early MMA ideaology. The founder had alot of inovative ideas and joined many different styles and ideas of fighting. Explain to me how a 5ft tall 120lb man could handle and impress combat harden marines that were much larger than he?

Ground fighting is great and a valuable tool in a fight, but it also has many short comings. Its a good approach to sport fighting like found in the UFC where there are rules and its 1vs1 but will come up very short in certain real world situations. Ground fighting tends to be more for the younger guys and will not be of much use once youth has left them, also another short coming is multiple attackers. Im not saying that if one studies karate that will make you be able to defeat multiple people at once but it is a alot better stratgy than being on the ground balled up with one while the other kicks the crap out of you. That being said ground fighting still has some very stong points and Id suggest anyone that is interested in being a well rounded fighter or well rounded self defense guy be well studied in atleast the basics. Ground fighting as we see it in the UFC is still sport fighting and alot of things go out the window in a real situation.

Point sparring has many good things to be had as a training tool (conditioning, timing and distance), but also has many downfalls(false sense of reality), like any type sport fighting or fighting where rules or restrictions are involved one needs to understand that they outcome could be very different when simple things like biting and eye gouging are allowed, not saying tha the ground fighter isnt going to be able to do this also, just saying that if you dont train these targets and instill them in your mind they will not be the first things you use in a real fight.

In the military they used to say "if you not cheating, your not tring hard enuff.' In a real fight there is not rules and no rules means no one is cheating, the winner is the one that walks away.

Ive seen guy spit tobaco juice in a guys eyes then kick him in the nuts, then proceed to beat and kick the crap out of him. Some people that witnessed this said he was a dirty figher, I said No he was just the smarter figher.

Stratgey is something that comes into play in a real fight that is diminished in sport fighting like UFC. Sure they have a stratgey but it is limited. I often ask this question to people. DO you believe that a weaker, less skilled fighter can win against a better fighter? Most people want to say yes but very few can understand how in reality this can happen. I tell them stratgey. To me this is where the instructor is more important than the style. You need an instructor that understands real fighting and is able to pass this along and give students different ideas and ways of approaching things.

Most fights never happen pretty or as planned, an alot of times its the fighters ability to adapt and overcome that can mean a win or lose.

Back to the main issue of the post. Id say that most martial arts schools are jokes. Some styles more so that others, not because of the style so much but because of unqualified people caliming to be instructors. Similar to religion, most of the time you have the blind leading the blind.

Over the years of traveling and visiting different schools and styles Id dare say that 80-90% of most martial art schools are crap. It is up to the seeker to seek out the 'real deal' and not settle for the first place or most convient pleace to train, if your serious.

For a man to impress me he has to do more than talk me to death or whoop me with his mouth, because I found early off that most people can talk a good talk, but in my case it takes seeing for me to be believing.

Fighting and talking are 2 different things if someone is good at one rarely are they good at the other.

All that being said, schoold, instructors and styles will only take you so far the rest is up to you. Martial arts is a tools its up to you to use it. If you have a gun and someone attacks you its still up to you to put that tool to use, just the possesion of it or the knowledge that you have it in hand will not get the job done. Some amount of balls is still required.

awesome, we're in grade school again.

hahaha someone needs to totally direct sensai to this story just to get him heated all over again.


Have no doubt that Sensei knows about this story and he has read it.
But he has most likely decided to take the high road in not replying to this type of BS story from someone that does not understand the true reason why he trains his students the way he does. If Boyd would have spent more time in tring to understand what the Martial Arts is all about and stopped worring about his friends trying to sexually assaulted him maybe he would have learned how to stop them with his Karate training.

Also remember the e-mail from Sensei he said
"I have no desire to enter into a war of words or threats with you, or waste any more time in this stupid forum. My time is better spent on the makiwara. If you wish to back up anything you've said, you know where to find me. My guess is, I'll never hear from you other than an email or idle threats online."

And that is most likely what happen with Boyd all he could do is post his story and make online comments about his training, he knows where the dojo is but I bet you that he never manned-up to go back there.

Have no doubt that Sensei knows about this story and he has read it.
But he has most likely decided to take the high road in not replying to this type of BS story from someone that does not understand the true reason why he trains his students the way he does. If Boyd would have spent more time in tring to understand what the Martial Arts is all about and stopped worring about his friends trying to sexually assaulted him maybe he would have learned how to stop them with his Karate training.

Also remember the e-mail from Sensei he said
"I have no desire to enter into a war of words or threats with you, or waste any more time in this stupid forum. My time is better spent on the makiwara. If you wish to back up anything you've said, you know where to find me. My guess is, I'll never hear from you other than an email or idle threats online."

And that is most likely what happen with Boyd all he could do is post his story and make online comments about his training, he knows where the dojo is but I bet you that he never manned-up to go back there.

Dude, fighting my sensei would've been my dream match, both from a strictly personal standpoint and the general love I hold in my heart for beating up karateka. Maybe you missed it, but I sent him back an email asking where and when our battle royale could occur. He never got back to me.

For years I secretly hoped he would, too. Being a prick and begging him for a fight years after I left could create some potentially awkward situations, so as a nod to the fact that karate did NOT rot my social skills, I left the ball in his court.

A couple days ago I became extremely bored and Googled "radunz isshinryu" to see if they'd ever put up a website. This article is the first thing Google returns, just above the school's official bulletin. At the same time, Phrost showed me that, indeed, Mark has a Myspace, though apparently not even Tom wants to be his friend. And it was seeing that the full sadness of the situation hit me.

He's 54 years old. In less than a decade he'll be a senior citizen. Even if I didn't have the enormous benefit of real training over his mastubatory bullshido, the simple fact remains that the fight couldn't happen because he's over half a century old.

Frankly, though, I'm curious as to why you'd accuse me of not "manning up" and just storm his dojo. Have you considered how much less smooth that scenario would play out in real life than in your imagination? The guy barely made class when I stopped going. Can you imagine bursting into his dojo with my Sprawl shorts and camera crew only to find out he left fifteen minutes ago?


But he has most likely decided to take the high road in not replying to this type of BS story from someone that does not understand the true reason why he trains his students the way he does. If Boyd would have spent more time in tring to understand what the Martial Arts is all about and stopped worring about his friends trying to sexually assaulted him maybe he would have learned how to stop them with his Karate training.

And what the hell is this even supposed to mean?

The problem with Dojo Storming is that someone is likely to call the police leaving Boyd in legal jepordy.

FYI Nobody's home, the last time Bullshido was involved in such an event, both parties signed legal releases before the meeting, agreed to have the match videotaped, and had a ref present. The fight took place in a standard boxing ring.

I don't represent Boyd, and he views me with some justification as being a humorless jerk, but before volunteering your master for a fight you should ask yourself whether you have his authority to arrange such a contest, and if you do, why you will not do so in a manner that is commonly used by professionals, and serious amaturs.

Seriously, maybe we here at Bullshido are just spoiled by Sirc and MJS, but these trolls are WEAK.

The problem with Dojo Storming is that someone is likely to call the police leaving Boyd in legal jepordy.

FYI Nobody's home, the last time Bullshido was involved in such an event, both parties signed legal releases before the meeting, agreed to have the match videotaped, and had a ref present. The fight took place in a standard boxing ring.

I don't represent Boyd, and he views me with some justification as being a humorless jerk, but before volunteering your master for a fight you should ask yourself whether you have his authority to arrange such a contest, and if you do, why you will not do so in a manner that is commonly used by professionals, and serious amaturs.

I was not volunteering anybody for a fight, all I was stating was what was quoted in the post and I bet that he never when back to the dojo to back up his words and all he would do was write e-mails and internet post about it.

But he has most likely decided to take the high road in not replying to this type of BS story from someone that does not understand the true reason why he trains his students the way he does.

So what might that "hidden secret" true reason be? Or is it so secret that it can't be openly discussed?

I knew Mr. Harrill, and I know Mr. Kerker. I know what Isshin-ryu is capable of conveying to its students, at least as Mr. Harrill and Mr. Kerker teach it. That doesn't mean that all Isshin-ryu teachers are capable of conveying the same information, nor that their students will "get it" in the same way the instructors may have at the hands of their teachers.

Everyone should let it be and move on...

So what might that "hidden secret" true reason be? Or is it so secret that it can't be openly discussed?

I knew Mr. Harrill, and I know Mr. Kerker. I know what Isshin-ryu is capable of conveying to its students, at least as Mr. Harrill and Mr. Kerker teach it. That doesn't mean that all Isshin-ryu teachers are capable of conveying the same information, nor that their students will "get it" in the same way the instructors may have at the hands of their teachers.

Everyone should let it be and move on...

You are so correct, not all students "get it"

There are no "hidden secrets" most Sensei teach there students more as they become a trusted student, the more time you spend the more you learn and it can not be learned in two years. It does not sound like Boyd was too trusted, maybe because he was so interested in wanting to learn to fight maybe Mark Radunz did not trust him and thought that conveying this type of information to someone like this would not be a good thing to do.

Who knows I was not there, just reading the post

You are so correct, not all students "get it"

There are no "hidden secrets" most Sensei teach there students more as they become a trusted student, the more time you spend the more you learn and it can not be learned in two years.

2~ years after I walked into a muay thai class I was ranked 12th in the world, won three title belts, and can absolutely tool on most people put in front of me (especially karate people)

Doesnt say much for karate if you can't learn jack **** in 2 years, does it?

2~ years after I walked into a muay thai class I was ranked 12th in the world, won three title belts, and can absolutely tool on most people put in front of me (especially karate people)

My point is simply this -

If the style is valid, the student will learn. Independent of the "trusted student" nonsense of non-Asian teachers trying to "out Asian the Asians" with their pseudo-kung-fu-masta BS, if the student does the work and the curriculum is valid there will be demonstrable results. That doesn't necessarily imply the technical data is wholly invalid if the student can't perform, it may be the result of the method that technical data is taught/trained. This argument is ancient, so I won't pursue it further.

Bottom line up front - if a student participates in a given class for a significant period of time, and the student is still unable to perform in a manner consistent with the style's claims after said period of time, either a) the student is not doing the necessary work (the fault of the student), b) the method of instruction is lacking in some particulars (the fault of the teacher), or c) the style just sucks to begin with, and no work on the part of the student or teacher is going to change that (the fault of TKD).

Can this die now?


Doesnt say much for karate if you can't learn jack **** in 2 years, does it?

And there you have it...