On Sunday 22 December 2024 JKS Llanbedr DC Karate Club will once again host Matt Price Sensei, 7th Dan JKS.
Matt Price started karate in 1982 around the age of 9 as his parents were keen for him to do something more productive than just watching TV, which he was very good at. At age 11 he moved to Harrogate and became a member of the Harrogate Shotokan Karate Club. He was a green belt at the time and had been told on leaving his old club that he was one of the worst karate students that they had ever had. The Harrogate Shotokan Karate Club dojo was very supportive, one of the instructors at the time was Nick Midgely sensei who is still training hard and is one of Matt’s top assistant instructors today.
Matt joined the infamous Leeds Shotokan Karate Club under the guidance of Bob Rhodes sensei at the age of 13. He would get the train from Harrogate to Leeds at least 3 times a week and had to put up with a lot of banter and beatings being the posh skinny boy from Harrogate.
At 15 years old he was asked to join the KUGB (Karate Union of Great Britain) Junior England Squad and by the age of 16, he was fighting for the Leeds senior kumite (fighting) team.
Matt’s first International success came at the European Shotokan Karate Championships in Monaco 1992, where he took the individual kumite Bronze and was part of the winning junior team.
By 1999 Matt was captaining the famous KUGB team and winning many national and international titles. In 2002 he became only the fourth person in the history of the KUGB to become Grand Champion by winning both the kata (set form) and kumite (fighting) on the same day at the National Championships.
2006 saw Matt taking the title of Individual European Champion at the ESKA Championships in Lucerne, Switzerland. The first British competitor to do this since 1989. During this time he was also competing under Sensei Ticky Donovan OBE as part of the English All-Style team and added WKF International medals to his collection.
In 2007 Matt captained the KUGB Senior Men’s team to Gold at the World Shotokan Karate Association championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Matt retired from competition in 2008 and dedicated himself to studying all aspects of Shotokan Karate. He’s a full-time instructor and along with good friend Nick Heald sensei heads the famous Leeds Karate Academy and also runs the Harrogate Shotokan Karate Club.
Matt has written many articles for Shotokan Karate Magazine and Ippon Magazine and has had a highly regarded instructional kumite DVD series. He is now working alongside his great friend’s British Olympic Karate Coach Paul Newby sensei and Ben Richardson sensei, who is one of my assistant JKS National Coaches, on the Kumite Coach platform.
Matt is currently the head national squad coach for JKS England and an EKF coach gaining his WKF (World Karate Federation) coaches accreditation in Dubai in 2016.
In September 2016 he coached the JKS England team to 2nd place at the JKS World Championships and again in Dublin in 2019, this time only losing out to Japan by one medal.
In 2013 Matt was runner-up at the UK Coach of the Year awards losing out to Welsh Rugby coach Warren Gatland CBE. In 2016 he was inducted into the Martial Arts Illustrated Hall Of Fame and in 2017 awarded the Martial Arts Illustrated Lifetime Achievement award.
Matt, under normal circumstances, travels to Japan at least twice a year to train at the JKS Hombu (headquarters) Dojo with Kagawa Shihan 9thDan WKF Technical Adviser.
9 times KUGB National Champion
KUGB Grand Champion
European Individual Kumite Champion
World Team Champion
16 x Grand Slam Kumite Champion
2 x Voted European Competitor of the Year
Graded 6th Dan in Japan
MAI Hall of Fame
MAI Lifetime Achievement Award.
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