Garry was born in Salford, Manchester on the 21st of April 1960. He was first introduced to Karate in 1972 at KNK Karate Club, Ardwick, Manchester. He took his Kyu gradings under Sensei Sherry. Garry graded to first Dan on 14th March 1976 under Sensei Enoeda.
His introduction to Karate competition was in the last BKCC All Styles Championships in 1977. Garry was selected as a member of the first Junior KUGB Squad and competed at the 1980 European Senior and Junior Championships held in Bregenz, Austria, at which he won 1st place in the Junior Team Kata and also 1st place in the Senior Kata. He was also part of the Team Kumite winners. His list of achievements also include 1st place in Kata and Kumite in the Shotokan Cup and EKB All Styles Kumite Champion in 1987. Garry was also a KUGB team member that won the EKB in 1985-88 inclusive. He is very proud of the fact that he was a member of the team that for many years dominated European Championships.
The highlight of his career was being a member of the team that won the 1990 World Shotokan Championships held in Sunderland.
As a fighter, Garry was very aware of his compact build and worked extremely hard on his speed and timing. Being very agile, he would maximize his kicking ability by making use of Mawashi-geri Chudan and spinning Ushiro-Mawashi-geri.
As an Instructor, Garry's personal sense of fulfilment was achieved in 1988 when his club team Poynton SKC, won the KUGB National Championships after reaching 3rd place in the 2 preceding years.
Sensei Ian Ingram
Ian started training in January 2004 at the age of seventeen at Tamworth SKC under the excellent instruction of senseis Rob and Lin Welsh and sensei Paul Archer. He experienced some disruption to his training whilst he was at university, where there was no available KUGB club, and his decision to continue his postgraduate studies in Manchester in 2009 was strongly influenced by the knowledge that there was a good quality karate club in the area. Ian started training with sensei Harford in Salford as soon as he arrived in Manchester gaining his shodan in April 2011 and his instructors qualification shortly afterwards.
In addition to normal training Ian attends as many KUGB black and brown belt courses as possible as well as Central and Northern region courses. He has also trained at the Lancaster karate summer school every year since 2005. Ian has competed in the Central and Northern regional championships as well as the National Championships and Student Championships on several occasions. To date his best competition result has been a silver medal as part of the Manchester University kumite team at the 2011 Student Championships.
