Get back to the basics

Every martial art seems to have a seminar circuit that goes around the country/world on a regular basis.  The AJKA-I is no different.  With two highly proficient and successful Sensei at the top of the organization; Edmond Otis Sensei and Leslie Safar Sensei, you can always expect to gain great insight into Shotokan by training under them.  The problem, however, is that the more immature among us attend these seminars thinking they will learn some new, flashy and fancy technique to add to their repertoire.  While this can occasionally be the case, the fact of the matter is that these Sensei are advancing in age, and cannot perform the flashier technique as easily.  More than this simple fact of life, however, is the fact that as the body ages, the mind learns to become sharper when pushed to do so.  What does the advanced karate-ka do at this point?  They fall back on the simplest and most fundamental aspects of karate training: distance, timing and the most basic kihon.  At the most recent training camp I attended with Sensei Otis, a lot large amount of time was spent on practicing basic body dynamics: expansion/contraction and rotation.  These body dynamics were then applied to the most basic of karate technique: kizami-zuki, gyaku-zuki and mae-geri.  These are the bread and butter of any successful karate-ka.

That being said, this all came to mind having read an article on GrappleArts.com about a newly made BJJ black belt having a private lesson with a high-level BJJ instructor.  His request was to learn more about the most basic techniques, and how to execute them in an advanced fashion.  This is the main benefit of the seminar circuit, and something that shouldn't be forgotten in daily training.  Go in the dojo and train the fancy stuff, but remember it is the basics that ground all technique from kata to kumite.  The article is linked below:

http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2014/02/a-blackbelts-private-lesson-with-a-jiu-jitsu-master-by-mark-mullen/