Our Curriculum
We follow the Shintani Wado curriculum outlined by Shihan Greg Reid, the technical director of the Wado Karate Association of Canada.
Introduction
If character, honour, loyalty, humility and the many other values that training may develop in a student are the spirit of karate, then technique is the flesh, blood and bones of our art. The spirit must have a body in order to live.
The technical curriculum for the Wado-Kai Karate Association of Canada comes from a direct and unsurpassed lineage of teaching.
It was passed from the late Top Master Hironori Otsuka to Supreme Instructor Masaru Shintani, then from Master Shintani to Shihan Gregory Reid and set out in this format for Wado Canada by Shihan Reid.
Approval for changes, amendments or additions to this curriculum can only come from Shihan Reid.
All karate students should be familiar with the curriculum for their belt level, and all teachers should be intimately familiar with the entire curriculum.
No technique from any other style, school, instructor, seminar, tournament or any other origin may be introduced into a Wado Canada school class unless it is clearly separated and clearly explained as separate from the Wado Canada curriculum.
There can be no exception to this standard so that we may keep our technique, the flesh and blood of our karate, pure.
This curriculum lists the technical knowledge, teaching requirements and amount of time training an adult student is expected to acquire at a given belt rank in the Wado-Kai Karate Association of Canada.
In categories where the techniques are numbered, instructors are to teach the techniques within that category in that order.
This curriculum is a minimum standard that both students and their teacher must strive to achieve. Students, however, are not in any way prohibited from learning techniques beyond their minimum standard if their instructor gives approval.
Technical questions should be addressed to the senior ranks within a given dojo. If questions cannot be answered within a given dojo, or if Wado Canada teachers have any requests regarding exceptions to the curriculum standards, they should be addressed to Shihan Reid, the Technical Director of the Wado-Kai Karate Association of Canada.
Whereas the curriculum for each rank is precisely set, the requirements that each student must complete, to be eligible to grade to the next rank, are multifactorial. The curriculum for each rank is set below.
The various factors involved in the decision to grade a student are described in more detail by the Grading Committee of the association. The times described in “Required Time at this Rank” are guides only.