GKR is a traditional style that draws from the best of a number of martial arts styles, to create a new type of karate which is both easy to learn, yet highly functional.
It is one of, if not the largest single-membership martial arts style in the world, and a GKR membership bought inAustralia, will get you into any GKR club in the world. This is in stark contrast to some styles, where membership is regional, local, or even on a club-by-club basis.
Go-Kan-Ryu (GKR) karate was founded in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1984 by Robert B. Sullivan, and has since expanded across Australia and overseas to New Zealand, England and the United States.
Robert first took up martial arts aged 17 in 1964. He lived in New South Wales, Australia, where he was a police cadet. He started training with Merv Oakley, a 1st Dan black belt who had just returned from Japan and had started a dojo (karate training gym) in Sydney. As a young man, Robert Sullivan was very impressed by what he saw and learned. He describes the training as "simplistic but strong". This aspect has gone on to become the basis of Sullivan's own GKR karate style, which foregoes show-stopping flashy moves in favour of easier to perform, but effective basic techniques.
In 1971 Robert Sullivan lived in Japan where he received advanced tuition from a number of now-famous Japanese martial arts founders. After travelling to California, where Robert taught karate for about a year, he returned to Australia and in 1984, he founded the Go Kan Ryu Karate Do.
Robert Sullivan is a strong believer in traditional teaching methods, and that means constant and extensive practice of the basics. You can enter any GKR class in the world, and the students are likely to start the class with a workout of the basic punches, kicks and blocks.
GKR's club badge includes six kanji (Japanese characters), that serve as a mission statement, reminding its members about the style's intent. These kanji have multiple meanings depending upon their context. For example, the word "Kan" may mean "total" or "complete", or it can also mean "academy". Similarly, "ryu" could be taken to mean "system" or "school".
The translation for "Go Kan Ryu Karate Do" is "Hard Total System Empty Hand Way of". Translating Japanese grammar into English, we get something like, "Total System of the Hard Way of the Empty Hand". By the way, that's "hard" as in the opposite to "soft", rather than "hard" as in "difficult" or "macho". In other words, GKR is designed to be a complete and robust no-weapons fighting style.
GKR Karate currently has in excess of 100,000 members across the world, making it one of the fastest-growing styles in the world.
