Our Philosophy

Our Edged Weapons Response evolved as an outgrowth of our karate training. Even as I was working toward my Shodan ranking in GoJu ryu I realized that the hard-style, empty-hand karate techniques were antithetical to knife work. This realization caused me to drift away from those typical disarms and blocks in an effort to find more effective knife-defense techniques. With all due respect GoJu ryu taught me a lot about timing, space, and distancing. Our second karate instructor, Robert Cook sensei, was deeply involved in Silat and Kosho Kempo knife arts which certainly had a positive influence on my style. Our Kosho instructor, Hanshi Bruce Juchnik, is one of the most impressive martial artists I have had the pleasure to train with and his instruction was a formative part of my learning. Hanshi Juchnik is the current Grandmaster of the Kosho Shorei-Ryu Kempo system and much of what I know about stances and movement I owe to this phenomenal martial artist. Having my daughter as a training partner has provided me with honest and immediate feedback about whether a technique works or not. A Nidan in GoJu ryu by age 16, she will not allow any technique to go unchallenged. If it does not perform satisfactorily, then it is either scrapped or modified until it does work. Her ability to ferret out the flaws in a technique is instrumental in the continuing refinement of our style. Throughout this ongoing process we constantly work to simplify all of our techniques and reduce them to the most elemental movements possible.

Yagyu Shinkage Ryu Kenjutsu* has contributed a deeply moral and philosophical base to our training and advanced our conceptual knowledge of the timing, rhythm, and energy of a conflict. In Yagyu Shinkage Ryu the signature technique is Gasshi Uchi, where the defender cuts straight down into his attacker’s cut. His survival depends on the accuracy and timing of his cut as well as Fudoshin, the defender’s immovable spirit. That image represents the ideal that I strive for in my training and teaching. Through this distillation process, we have ended up with an impressively small body of simple techniques, based on some very advanced concepts.

~David Decker ___________________________________________________________

*We have been training in Yagyu Shinkage Ryu for over ten years. Yagyu Shinkage Ryu is a Koryu – old school – system and there is no ranking. There is only one teacher, and whether you have been training for 3 weeks or 30 years, everyone else is a student. Although we teach the Seitei Gata, neither my daughter nor I are qualified to teach Yagyu Shinkage Ryu, and therefore out of respect to Yagyu Nobuharu sensei, Yagyu Koichi sensei, and other senior members of the Yagyu kai, we do not teach this style to anyone.