Biography of Master Nga Pham

Nga Pham was born and grew up in Vietnam, graduated from Saigon Law School and moved to United States of America in 1982 after the fall of Saigon.  His first taste of the martial arts was Vovinam, which combines the old and traditional Vietnamese martial arts of wrestling and judo.  He had also practiced the other Vietnamese style named Western Mountain Crane.  After the fall of Saigon, he  practiced Tai Chi Praying Mantis (or Tai Mantis) under my father-in-law who was a direct student of the Head of Tai Mantis during his teaching stay in Vietnam.  He also followed with Tai Mantis training as my father-in-law had been trained.

Nga Pham started training in Isshin-Ryu Karate in 1989 at Dahlgren, Virginia under Sensei Byron Coleman and Sensei George Durling who is Sensei Coleman’s student.  He received his Sho-Dan in 1991, when Master Angi Uezu came to U.S.A.  He achieved the highest score of the group and was promoted by Master Angi Uezu.  During his Ni-Dan period, Sensei Coleman informed him that his movements were executed too slowly.   He recognized that he had to rely on himself to improve and refine his technique.  He stopped practicing Isshin-Ryu Karate and focused training to Uechi-Ryu Karate for a two years period.  He was fortunate to have a talented and good Uechi Ryu sensei.  Although his rank is green belt in Uechi Ryu, he believes he received a very sound and firm foundation in this style.  After refining and re-examing his technique, he placed third at the 2001 Okinawan Rengokai Karate-Do and Kobudo World Championships held in Atlanta, Ga.

Sensei Pham joined Sensei Karl Hovey’s Isshin-Ryu Karate-Do school when Sensei Coleman split from Master Angi Uezu.  He states he was allowed to develop his own thinking and practice, under Master Hovey’s guidance.  His emphasis is to put the flow back into his katas using the Tai Mantis’ concept and power generation from Uechi Ryu. In his on-going quest to understand Isshin-Ryu from the inside, not the outside, he has volunteered to train the Black Belt classmates every Sunday morning since 1996 since his Sensei has such a hectic schedule.  Before training, he informs them of the detailed mechanics behind his instructions so they can decide whether to train or not. He has encouraged Isshin-Ryu stylists to seriously examine the style from a system viewpoint.  His instruction also stresses and details the correlations between the various stances, types of punches and shape of the fist, etc…  There may be some inconsistencies in the manner in which we were taught, and train our students.  He says he is very fortunate to have his classmates - Sensei Mike Morton and Sensei Ron Porter – who share in his thinking and practice of the martial arts and help ensure what he proposed is efficient and effective.

"My thinking about the role of a sensei is to make students better than his or her teacher so the style can benefit from that. Style is bigger than the Sensei."

(Nga Pham)