About

My name is Adam Carter. I am a long-time karate practitioner and instructor, holding the rank of 8th Dan (Hanshi), with over five decades of training, teaching, and continued study.

I began training in karate in the 1970s and have been teaching since the 1980s. That training has spanned multiple teachers, approaches, and environments, and my work has always been grounded in practice rather than theory alone.

My own practice has its roots in Shinjin-ryu Okinawa-te, but it also reflects a broader background developed over time. I use the term Ryukyu Karate Jutsu as a general expression of that work, while Applied Methods describes the way I approach it.

Applied Methods is not a style or system. It is a way of thinking about what is being trained, why it is being trained, what claims are being made, and how well those ideas hold up when context changes.

I am not particularly interested in presenting karate as a product, a performance, or a collection of techniques. My focus has always been on how training holds up when stress, unpredictability, resistance, and consequence are introduced.

Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time questioning what is taught, how it is taught, and what students are being asked to believe. That questioning has not come from theory alone. It has come from long-term practice, teaching responsibility, and direct experience of how quickly certainty can collapse under pressure.

Much of this thinking has been tested, questioned, and refined through Shuri Dojo. The dojo is not the subject of this site, but it has been one of the places where ideas had to withstand reality, because real people were relying on the answers.

Over time, this work has grown into several separate sites, each with a specific purpose: writing, reference material, dojo practice, or archival notes. Rather than combine everything into one place, I prefer to keep those areas distinct but connected.

Karate sits at the center of all of it. Not as something fixed, but as a long-term practice shaped by experience, context, questioning, and continual refinement.

New writing appears on applied-methods.org, where current articles, Notes, and developing ideas are published.

This site serves as a central point for the wider body of work, bringing together material that has developed and been refined over time.”

If you have arrived here, the main page will guide you to the different areas of that work.