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About
About the club
Liverpool Karate Shuhari was established by Keith Farrell in 2025.
We draw our inspiration from the traditional katas, practising these skills in a modern and effective fashion. To achieve this, we use solo drills and paired drills, as well as padwork, sparring games, and wrestling.
Karate is a great form of physical exercise and helps with mental well-being. A large part of the purpose of this club is to provide these benefits for modern people who lead difficult lives and who need a bit more exercise, mental stability, and friendship!
Adults and teenagers are welcome to join the club. No matter your age or current health, we can use karate to help you learn more about yourself and to become fitter and healthier.
About the name
In Japanese martial arts, the concept of shu-ha-ri refers to the process of learning, consolidation, and mastery.
In the stage of shu, practitioners follow a particular method, learning the shapes and movements, largely copying and working on what the instructor teaches. This is largely the stage of the kyu grades (who wear the coloured belts).
In the stage of ha, practitioners begin to follow less of a rules-based approach, start to experiment more, and gradually understand better how to make your practice your own. This is largely the stage of the dan grades (who wear the black belts).
In the stage of ri, practitioners have usually broken free from the shackles of rigid thinking and codified shapes, and have the skills and knowledge to conduct their practice in an evolving fashion that suits their own evolving needs, as well as sharing relevant and helpful information with others. There is no single grade level at which this stage is typically achieved, nor a single threshold of years of practice by which time it can be achieved; people who continue to practise in a thoughtful way may find themselves in this stage, and it can take different people a different length of time to achieve.
We teach our beginners in the shu stage, we guide our practitioners in the ha stage, and we all hope to reach the ri stage in time.
About the style
People often ask about which style a karate practitioner follows. Is it Shotokan or Kyokushin? Goju-ryu or Shito-ryu? In this club, we do not follow a single large organisation with a strict praxis or stylistic method.
The chief instructor has previously trained in Shoto Budo (a derivative of Shotokai, which itself is a derivative of Shotokan) and Kyokushin (which is partially informed by Shotokan and Goju-ryu) – as well as modern fencing, archery, and historical fencing. From these varied experiences, and by reading from a wide range of sources and styles, no single organisation or style quite matches what we hope to achieve here.
Therefore, our style has been developed by our chief instructor in a way that allows us to draw inspiration and ideas from the katas that were used to transmit karate through the centuries, while doing our modern practice in a way that makes sense according to modern sport science and pedagogy.
About the instructor
Keith Farrell has been training karate since 1998. He wears a 3rd Dan awarded by the Shoto Budo organisation, and has also trained Kyokushin. Furthermore, he has been teaching HEMA professionally for more than a decade. His main interest is understanding historical martial arts through the lens of modern teaching and training methods.