Enfield Shotokan Karate Shinboku Kai was founded in 1986 by Tony
Heywood sensei as a small, friendly, politically independent karate club. ESKSK was originally a purely Shotokan
club for the first decade of its existance. In past years the club has been fortunate enough to have students
train with renound instructors such as Kanazawa, Tomiyama, Ochi, Kato and Takahashi amongst others. The club
has benefitted from the friendships that Heywood sensei made in his time training in Japan.
Whilst the fundamentals of Shotokan are still taught as a foundation
to all students, Heywood sensei realised that to ignore the efficacy of other martial arts was unwise. ESKSK instuctors' lessons from
masters of other disciplines such as Vince Morris (Kyusho Jitsu), Leon Jay (Small Circle Ju Jiutsu), Hideo Tamayose
(Ryukyu Kobudo), Rainer Seibert (Kobudo Kwai), John Hasell (Yamanni Ryu Bo Jitsu), Bob Spoor (Muay Thai) and
Pat McCarthy amongst others forced a major change in the syllabus. The emphasis shifted from thoughtless
repetition of air-moves that had been amended for the aesthetic reasons of tournament kata, to constant re-evaluation of
techniques and controlled application onto real partners.
The omission of the word 'Shotokan' from the club name
in 2000 came as an overdue gesture to reflect the effort of the clubs members to reject the xenophobia so prevalent within
the Shotokan world and to welcome the ideology and techniques of practitioners of other styles of karate. Whilst the
Kata studied are those of the Shotokan style, simply doing the moves is insufficient to grade, knowledge of meanings
and fluency in application is a pre-requisite. From the moment students enter the dojo the purpose of KSK is to
make karate live.
More recently associations have been made with sister clubs in Euston
(University of London) and London Bridge (Guy's Campus, King's College London). Students are expected to train on at least two days of the week.
