About Us
The Koryū Experience has been created by me, Chris Wilcox. I've been training in some form of JūJutsu for over 20 years, and in the Koryū style of Motoha Yōshin Ryū for over 14 years, where I was awarded 6th Dan - Shidoin Menkyo Chūden no Maki in 2024.
Motoha Yōshin Ryū is a Menkyo Kaiden branch of the Hontai Yoshin Ryū-Takagi Ryū lineage under Yasumoto Soke) for over 14 years; find out more on my dojo website here.
I've had the amazing opportunity to train our style in Japan three times since 2013, and have always found that Motoha Yōshin Ryū answers all of the questions that my previous styles have left unanswered.
Behind the ettiquette and formal aspect of kata is a huge dose of reality. Awareness that mindset is as important as physical skills, and that the soft 'magic' of the physical skills win out over strength and power.
What to expect from our sessions and experience days
Self-defence has to be focused primarily on avoidance. Raising your awareness of potentially dangerous situations so you can reduce your likelihood of getting involved with them as early as possible - but without creating a fear mindset where everything is a threat and you live on high-alert.
When you can't avoid potential violence, a few hours learning complicated and fine-motorskill-based techniques won't cut it - you will forget them and you won't be able to use them under pressure.
Whether you join me for a small-group self-defence session, a stag or hen do, or a weekend retreat, any self-defence I teach is based around a very small set of techniques that you will be able to apply - setting you up to escape and focusing on redirecting an incoming attack without worry over physical strength or size.
Our longer full-day or weekend events will work on our core principles and introduce you to not only our kata ettiquette and techniques, but further awareness and practice of how what we teach can be applied in reality-based scenarios.
Even if you have trained in martial arts before, the approach of Ko-ryū JūJutsu is most likely something few have experienced, and whilst the vast majority of online videos of older styles tend to focus on demonstration and performance, it is only when you get the opportunity to work with the concepts the videos don't show that you will begin to understand why our soft skills are almost magic, whilst feeling like you have done nothing.
Group photo from my last visit to Japan in 2019, after training in Soke's dojo in Yonago, alongside my own instructor:
(Andy McCormack, Motoha Yōshin Ryū British Sōhonbu-chō, 8th Dan Hanshi, Menkyo Kaiden)