Bill Burgar 6th dan has recently taught a small seminar tour ahead of his booklaunch which is scheduled for early 2003. Covering several venues in the south east Bill, who has been reclusive in terms of teaching over the last few years, presented a small fraction of the material in his book. The main theme for the each session was the lessons kata teaches us about mental rehearsal but the subject matter was wide ranging and highly informative.

Bill started each session by introducing himself and giving a small amount of background information about what he has been working on for the last six years. In a highly unusual experiment Bill has studied just one kata for that entire length of time. Most karate-ka who have read that the masters of yester-year practiced just one kata have wondered what that would be like. Well now we have someone who can tell us and the message is fascinating. Most people would find just repeating the same kata over and over again very boring but Bill was at pains to point out that that would be measuring it by our modern standards of practicing the performance of the kata rather than practicing the content. So, far from being the narrow study that most people would think it is it turns out that the principles and training methodologies are wide ranging and cover diverse subjects. Bill is clearly widely read and has put in a great deal of research to build a coherent system around gojushiho kata. He also claims that anyone can do the same either exclusively or alongside their normal dojo training.

The sessions focused on building mental rehearsal (or visualisation) skills which are a key component of kata training. In conjunction with the mental rehearsal training we worked on defending against random attacks that we would expect in self defense situations. Bill called these habitual acts of violence a concept originally put forward by Patrick McCarthy the well known and highly respected karate pioneer and historian. Bill introduced one of his own concepts called possibility sets which is part of his probability theory which is also presented in detail in his book. This is a training methodology which helps to build up the ability to cope with a random attack. Divided into two groups (defenders and attackers), Bill walked along behind the defenders with a notice that only the attackers could see detailing the next attack from a defined set of attacks. In this way the defender had to work on his ability to identify what was happening in order to defend. Bill also mentioned how to be either pre-emptive or proactive in order to give you the edge rather than being reactive.

Layered in with all of the above were practice methods for making the principles of combat habitual. These included programming your mindset, breath control to keep heart rate in check, centring, balance and many others. In some of the sessions participants helped to create their own "mini-kata" which they could take away with them in order to practice both the technical aspects and also the principles.

The only slightly distracting thing about the way Bill presents his material is that he tends to side track himself often many times over which gives you total overload of information. If you are able to take this all in though that is actually a very positive thing and it clearly shows that he has a huge depth of knowledge. To be fair Bill did apologise each time he side tracked and did come back to the point to make sure that we all understood his original point. Bill aims his teaching towards the higher grades and his book is actually aimed at nidan level and above although clearly brown belts and first dans will buy the book too in order to get a sneak preview of the depth and range of material ahead of them. As Bill points out there are many books aimed at lower grades but there is not much information available for more seasoned practitioners.

The seminars were really well received with everyone learning something appropriate to their level. The lower grades picked up some good practical techniques, the brown belts and lower dan ranks learned more training methods for implementing the principles and the senior dan grades saw the interconnectedness of the whole and the training methodologies to implement it. All in all very much worth attending and if the material is just a sub section of what is in the book, it will be very much worth buying when it is available late 2002 or early 2003.

Some comments from course attendees included:

"Bill's class was more along the lines of teaching one to fish and had some good ideas for building up training drills and some good stuff on visualisation for kata practice, particularly useful if one is doing a lot of solo training as I am at the moment."

"Well worth training with Bill if you want to put your thinking cap on and not just march up and down."

"...different, thought provoking and fun..."

  Bill Burgar - www.martialartspublishing.co.uk