The tension was increasing in the week leading up to Black Belt Christmas Camp 2011. The weather had been dark which had affected the mood strongly.

Not that we were angry, but the self-pity and gloomy thoughts played a trick you didn't quite want to be around. This could clearly be seen in the training the black belts had had in the autumn leading up to the camp. At the same time, the year had been rather turbulent, for me, with a lot of traveling in a new job and the opening of a new school.

Even though there had been pressure, I still felt ready to learn something new and exciting from Kimu Sensei again. This brown and black belt camp focused on correct fundamentals. Correct base is the foundation of all martial arts. If the foundation is not built correctly, kumite cannot be built and possibly kata on top. You can also say that if you don't understand the purpose of a correct basis, then you won't learn to understand kumite or kata at all - it will just be a series of movements without much meaning.

In the first lesson, the different leg positions were reviewed. Benefits and minor benefits and the purpose of training them. When you have been training some form of martial arts for many years, you have probably heard legendary stories about martial arts masters who have performed some spectacular training to develop their techniques.

In karate, there are stories of karate masters standing in Kiba-Dachi (in some karate systems called the horse stance - because you look like someone sitting on the back of a horse) on a ridge in a stiff headwind to train the leg position. Fantastic story, you think, and what can you use it for? After all, it is old training and certainly not something that cannot be done with modern methods. It must probably be possible to do this by sitting down with your legs, possibly. on a line and then stand in front of a wind machine?

Yes and no. In principle, you can do the same thing that way. But, and there is a big but here, the difference is that the karate master trained with nature and the whims it can bring. Whereas many modern training methods often become static and uniform. In nature, you never know what you will encounter. A stiff wind can come with different gusts and with different influences from different directions, and you must therefore always be alert and ready in all directions. In the same way, you can see that, for example, kumite and kata in modern karate have become static and uniform. The same rules apply in the tournaments and all the participants have the same goal. Of course, I know that there can be differences between the rules, but no matter what, it's still rules that set limits.

In the old karate that we train in Shindenkan, the training methods are the old but adapted to modern life. That is we train with a focus on the same as in the old days, but we do it from the outside of modern life and society.

Now for many years I have trained basic leg positions, but every time we have been to a camp with Yamana-Itotani Sensei (Red; alias Kimu Sensei), I leave with knowledge that somehow always opens up a new dies on the road to development. Of course, that also happened this time. There were things that I knew well about the orders but that I hadn't really seen with the same common thread and in the context we trained at the camp. It is absolutely fantastic to see and learn coherence in techniques that you have trained for many years. It's also a little annoying to find out that it's not actually rocket science, but almost logic that it's connected like that.

Friday's training ended at 19.10 after which there were approx. 20 minutes to bathe and eat the food he brought. When it was exactly 19.30 we started the evening's ryugi tasks, which then developed into a ryuha task. That is all the theory we came up with in our assignments we had to transform into a show that was to be shown the next day during the Christmas camp for the whole organization. Since we were 4 groups, each show could not last more than 90 seconds. And I have to say that you can get very far in 90 seconds.

As. It was 11.01pm, it was time to get home and try to get some sleep so that you were ready for the next day's hardships. I actually think it was 02:00 before I fell asleep completely and it wasn't really a deep sleep, because everything you've trained during the day is rummaging around in your head and when it was 05:00 I was wide awake and ready for another round of training.

Saturday's training started with a review of the presentations all the groups had produced. This type of training has two purposes, which deal with presentation technique, but to a large extent also ok leadership development. Because it is connected like steps on a staircase. Which is fantastic because kihon-kumite and kata do exactly that too. I wonder if there isn't a common thread here 🙂

When most groups had been "grilled" in the good way, it was time for kihon training again. When you train kihon, you cannot avoid Tai-Seigyo, which is control of the body's movements. Friday had also been marked by tai-seigyo and you quickly found out that you are actually able to move parts of the body that should actually be locked.

It may well be that there wasn't that much movement to start with, but as you get it trained, the movements become more and more frequent. We are of course talking about parts of the upper body here which for most people is a massive mass with very few moving joints. But not in Shindenkan, where the upper body has all the joints you need. In fact, it applies to all kinds of body parts – imagination is very important – as long as it's in a sober way 🙂

When you have now trained kihon for many hours, it is fantastic that you can subsequently try the effect in kumite - if you have trained it correctly. This camp was no exception. We tested, for our own sake, whether the principles of the kihon were embodied in our bodies. It must also be said that it must also be incorporated in the mind at the same time, since body and mind are connected like steps on a staircase.

Again a thought about a common thread 🙂 and perhaps also a thought that Led Zeppelin did not exist in vain. Because if you follow the steps of the stairs – then it's going to be like "a stairway to heaven".

As the clock approached 12.00, the end of the camp also approached. That is for some it did, but for the chief instructors, there was still some way to go. When they have trained for two days and are about to be physically and mentally used up, they have to show that they are still ready to give up. They do this by teaching all the participants at this year's Christmas camp. Here we are talking about the 200 participants who come to have a good experience and learn from some of the most delicious and delicious head instructors in the Kingdom of Denmark.

Yes, the jante law does not exist in Shindenkan that you know.