Malcolm Howlett - Club Instructors

5th Dan

Malcolm Howlett, known as "Malk" to most, started training in 1983, in a club doing a Kyokushinkai-derived style. He then moved onto Higashi Wado Ryu until he went to College in Stafford in September 1984, whereupon he joined the local KUGB club rather than the Polytechnic club.

Malk started grading again in January 1985 when one Mr. R. Poynton graded him to the dizzy heights of 9th kyu. He continued up through the kyu grades, gaining his shodan under Sensei Enoeda in September 1988, about 2 months after first training with CUKC, having come to Cambridge for work.

A couple of months later he also began training with Dan Lambert in Newmarket, a 4th dan in Goju-ryu. This was quite a change in perspective from the training he was used to and introduced him to aspects of karate that he had not previously appreciated. This continued alongside his training with CUKC, fighting for the club in non-student competitions. He re-graded in Goju-ryu to shodan in 1992, and nidan in 1995. Dan Lambert stopped teaching and training completely in 1995, and for work reasons Malk had to stop regular Goju-ryu training around 1997-98. In 1998 Malk was invited to help teach at Impington Shotokan Karate Club, and took over the running of the adults club in 2001.

Throughout this time Malk has been training with CUKC regularly, as well as teaching, and has been taught by and trained with (and been hit by) a large number of talented karateka in Fenner's Gym over the years. His spare room is full of karate trophies, however it may be because most of these have been won by his wife Lia that he believes that competition is only one small part of karate.

In his words, "the above history rather suggests that my karate is a bit of a mish-mash, and I'm sure that confirmed stylists of whatever persuasion can quite validly find fault with it. Ah well, so be it."