· Training in Islington with the Japanese Sensei, Sugasawa and Suzuki.
· Tim Dixon and Milton O’Garro.
· Fighting at Sobell Centre.
· Fixtures at Harrow school.
· Squad training Sugasawa-style.
Header image: A young F. Sugasawa Sensei. Photo courtesy of Rene Van Amersfoort.
In addition to my trips to Marvic House in London to take lessons with Suzuki Sensei, I found it quite easy to drive to Islington to train with him again at the Michael Sobell Sports centre. The same venue used for previous UKKW Winter Courses.
The training was Mondays and Fridays. I distinctly remember the first one I attended. (Sugasawa Sensei also taught there).
In Islington it was always difficult to find somewhere to park, I guess much more challenging now, but there were always backstreets. I never bothered with the inadequate car park at the sports centre, but somehow Suzuki Sensei always found a parking space for his banged up, semi-derelict Japanese car (I never figured out why he had such a low-grade vehicle). I think the locals might have thought it had been abandoned, as he once told me that he’d returned to it one night to find it had been vandalised, “Somebody broke my front grass” he said to me… I was perplexed, “Oh.. your windscreen!” I replied.
I discovered the space for training down the end of a maze of corridors, in a little side room. Suzuki Sensei was just finishing off a junior class and, together with a bunch of other guys, all in keikogi, we loitered around in the corridors. I noticed everyone was doing preparatory stretching; I was puzzled by this and asked them why they were so eager to limber up, surely, they would then be doing stretching and warming up as part of the class? But no, they told me that Suzuki Sensei said it was a waste of class time, ‘If you want callisthenics, go to an exercise class. We are here to do karate’ was allegedly Suzuki Sensei’s reply to this question previously. A bit of a shock really, as the Summer and Winter courses always featured loads of energetic exercise before we even threw a single technique.
Realising that it was so important to get the best out of the training I developed the habit of writing down everything we did in those sessions; every comment and correction; all the combinations and interpretations of the kata. As I write this, I refer to those notes to jog my memory.
Class regulars.
Over time I got to know many of the regulars at the Sobell Centre; although there were lots of drop-ins there was a pretty secure group of hardcore members. This included Tim Dixon and Milton O’Garro, both of them, sadly, no longer with us.
Tim Dixon passed away very recently, I always thought of him as a good friend and we trained shoulder to shoulder for nigh on forty years. Back in those days I knew him as a very able and committed brown belt, always a challenge to spar with as his reach was way beyond mine, but he was a good match for Milton O’Garro, who was only a few inches shorter.
Milton, a year older than me, was in his prime as a fighter and in my clashes with him I found that I could usually get in on him, but never get out, as he would sucker me into a sweep. I would be congratulating myself that I’d moved inside for a scoring technique, only to find myself on my back looking up at the ceiling.
His fights with Sugasawa Sensei were epic, they seemed to have so much fun with each other. I distinctly remember times when we were sparring and supposed to do turn-arounds, but bouts seemed to go on forever when Sensei was fighting with Milton. On one of these occasions, both my sparring partner and myself had pretty much topped-out on our encounter and our peripheral attention was drawn towards a prolonged exchange going on between Sugasawa Sensei and Milton. It was a joy to behold, technique and timing being stretched to their extremes. Tacitly, my partner and I agreed to pretend to be sparring, but really, we were watching this epic match unfolding. At one point, each of them in-turn managed to pull off a take-down, this was a battle of wills, it just seemed to go on interminably. When they finally finished, I had to resist the urge to simply applaud.
Tim Dixon 1st L, Milton O’Garro 2nd L, at Marvic House.
Photo of Milton and Tim at Marvic House, courtesy of: https://miltonogarro.muchloved.com/
I saw quite a lot of Sugasawa Sensei at the Sobell Centre. One night in particular stands out.
I turned up to find that I was the only student. Just me and Sensei. I expected him to cancel the class, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked me what I wanted to work on? I mentioned that I had been struggling with the kata Bassai. ‘Okay, show me your Bassai’. He was a little coy about teaching it to me directly as I suspect it was outside of his remit – he was really only allowed to teach to a certain level, under an agreement with Suzuki Sensei. But all the same it wasn’t long before he was picking apart my technique.
In other sessions with him there were a number of occasions that things would appear out of nowhere. Looking back on it, these were techniques and approaches that he had been working with in Japan with the Otsuka family. I don’t think he did it consciously, it just kind of happened.