Don’t get annoyed at your poor memory

You never know what's going to turn out to be a real diamond during training, so you'd better pay attention to everything!

I was speaking to a highly respected Sensei called Steve Rowe a few years ago at a seminar he was hosting. He said to me that he doubted the value of teaching such seminars because it was impossible to teach enough in just a few hours to make a meaningful difference to anyone’s martial arts. Ironically, I found his seminar tremendously enlightening and inspiring, and whilst I have certainly forgotten most of the specific drills and exercises he taught on that day, I am certain that I shall carry with me his  principles of a narrow guard and using power transference through your stance until the day I die, or until the unlikely event that they are replaced by even more potent principles.


Occasionally, I attend a seminar and afterwards students complain that there was too much to remember. I know the feeling. After a particularly good seminar, your head can be pounding with all that new knowledge, and you almost wish that you had been shown less!

But the truth is, you don’t need to remember everything. You only need to take away one thing to make the event worthwhile. When I attended the World Cup in Birmingham in 2003, the main thing that I took away was the need to counter-attack in my kumite. At the World Cup in Sydney in 2005, I was reminded of the need to bide my time as a counter-attacker, and about the value of relaxation and snappiness during kata. At a recent session with Sensei Joe, although he told me many, many things, the main thing that I can really remember is about the value in using my hips to initiate movements. It’s not hugely complicated, but it can be applied to vast areas of my karate, and has fundamentally changed my thinking on the nature of movement.

So often, the things that have elevated my understanding on a key karate issue, have only ever been said once in all the years I've been training, so what if I missed that class or that seminar, or if I wasn't paying attention?


So, when you go to a seminar or an event, don’t try to remember everything. Rather, you should pay close attention for the one or two comments that may change your whole way of thinking. To learn something new at a seminar is terrific, but to be inspired is the greatest benefit of all!