Training was very, very hard and designed to weed out those who were not really serious about karate practice. Mr. Kisaka's classes were so grueling that on the few occasions he was scheduled to teach at Shuto some of
the senior belts would not show up for class. I was too young and eager to realize that I was being worked to death. Though I may have had some inkling of it the day I punched myself in the stomach with my draw hand and fell to the floor just about unconscious. [Just to expand on this story: I had been punching incorrectly, bringing my draw hand back so that it actually struck me in the solar plexus before coming to rest at my side. I had been corrected several times, but continued to make the error. Then, Enoeda, Sensei stood behind me shouting “Harder! - Harder! - Harder!” every time I punched. I complied to the point that I knocked the wind out of myself. He never even asked if I was hurt. He just waited a few seconds and helped me back to my feet. He demonstrated the proper path for the draw hand and then was off to torment some other poor soul as class continued. I really liked him.]
By high school another interest, gymnastics, was vying for my time. The photo above is of the Great Valley High School Gymnastics Team of 1969. I’m in the back row– third from the right.
In 1968 my family moved to Charlestown Twp., Chester County, PA. No tricks of bus transfers and train rides could get me to Shuto Karate Club from there, so I concentrated on the parallel bars, vaulting long horse and the high bar. That’s not me in the photo to the right, but that’s what I did. The photo is there to point out the man standing to the left under the bar. He was our coach, Mr. Precoprio, and I’m going to call him sensei. Sensei, because he taught me things about the dynamics of the human body that I would have, could have never learned in the dojo. And, by observing him instruct, I learned how to teach a person to perform physical movements in a way that was more understandable to a westerner than the methods I had seen employed by the Japanese in karate class.
