Welcome to the Essex Wado Ryu Karate Web Site

Essex Wado Ryu Karate (E.W.R.K.) is a group of traditional karate clubs that teach the art of Wado Ryu Karate in the Colchester area of Essex.

Chief Instructor is Sensei Alistair Thomson (3rd Dan), a karate practitioner with many years of experience in Wado Ryu and other martial arts.

What is Wado Ryu Karate? Wado Ryu Karate is distinguished from other Japanese karate styles by its unique yielding nature, a form of soft energy blended with sheer, hard force in it's techniques. Besides primary punching and kicking techniques, Wado Ryu students learn how to use body shifting to neutralize or deflect an attack, thereby causing the attacker to lose balance and to become more vulnerable to a counterattack. Wado Ryu Karate was founded by Hironori Ohtsuka Sensei in 1934. Ohtsuka Sensei developed Wado Ryu after studying the Samurai martial art of Jiu-jitsu, and Shotokan (another style of Karate). This combination, according to Ohstuka Sensei, is a softer, more natural means of self-protection. The term Wado Ryu means "Way of Peace and Harmony". This indicates Ohtsuka Sensei's original intention to use training in Wado Ryu as a means of solving problems in a non-violent way. The word Karate means "Empty hand".

Values of Karate.

You may be asking, how does all this "values" stuff work? And why does karate manage to do a better job teaching them?

Again, more than any other sport, Karate gives you the chance to explore your innate powers. You will marvel as you increase in strength, flexibility, endurance, balance, and harmony. Yet this is only the start.

In fact, your physical skills act as a foundation for something much more important: the development of your value skills, mental and spiritual. Not cut off from your physical skills, but intimately connected, even bonded, to them.

These include:-

These are just a few of the values that can be achieved within Karate.

There is a saying in the karate world - "the more you train, the more you gain". The benefits to be gained from martial arts training also continue throughout your life, which may explain why there are many active karate participants in their 50s, 60s and above who are still growing and learning!

Please follow the links at the side and bottom of the page to navigate around the site and learn a little more about us. If you are interested in joining our karate classes, whether as a complete beginner or if you have previous martial arts experience, please feel free to contact us if you need any specific information.

Telephone: 07988 710 824

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