By Adam Dolleris, Shidoin, 1st Kyu Yakami Shinsei-ryu, 1st Dan Bujutsu Kodosoku-kai Jikitai Karate-do, 1st Dan Bujutsu Kodosoku-kai Gensei-ryu Karate-do, Team instructor

When I came home from my gap year trip, it quickly became very clear to me that I was in much worse shape than I had expected. But most of all how much I had missed in 6 months.

First OBC I had expected to be able to keep up at a reasonable level, but it quickly became clear that I had much more work to do than first thought.

Kimu Sensei, as always, knows how to make sure you see the things you are missing, which in my case was almost everything, but most of all my attitude. It was made clear by small corrections along the way in OBC 5 with Iai and kenjutsu 3, both of these courses show your attitude very much, while Kimu Sensei sees everyone's faults. And it was also this course I learned that I came to hear a lot about me taking a 6 month break, better known as the Zanzibar form.

It has been made clear from the start that OBC exists to get everyone on the same level, but that also requires you to be ready for it.

I thought I was ready but didn't give 100% and therefore it may have taken me longer to get back to the good KataFIT form I had before I took a break from karate.

Slowly, however, it began to make sense. However, there were still things that were not quite as before.

At OBC 6 TF3 and JJ3, it dawned on me that I was actually a little bit scared because I wasn't good enough to join, I haven't experienced that before. But with a fantastic review of everything that was done, I slowly found the rhythm and the feeling of not being good enough anymore slowly disappeared. But to improve you have to keep training. If this is not done you cannot improve, so it was only when the local OBC6 review was finished that I felt that my fear of not being good enough was gone.

After this point I felt better mentally, but physically lagged a bit. And then it's good that OBC 4 gives you the recipe for making a fantastically good KataFIT.

But when you finally start training like I did the year before and find out that maybe the form wasn't lacking that much after all, and maybe this was just what we call it at SB, holding "BURT" sitting on the shoulder and wanting to go back to Zanzibar , then there is not much else to do but go "all in" on getting better. And as I so fantastically learned again at OBC 4, you have to be good to yourself. (It doesn't always go well)

When we come to OBC 3, it is time to collect everything you have learned over the last few years in using what you have with you in your luggage, good weather gear to handle the various challenges you might encounter on your way. And OBC 3 is perfect to help you with this.

I learned a lot about myself at this part of OBC and some of the things I learned were just things I had forgotten I needed to work on. And that is exactly what OBC helps you with, to get your training and not least yourself back on track.

OBC 1 and 2 consist of fantastic courses that all give the essence of what we do in our training (Ken 1, Kotachi 1 etc.). So being able to understand these courses comes at all sorts of different levels. I am sure that we have all seen something different in the course and that everyone has had their own experiences after OBC 1 and 2.

If we didn't have OBC I don't think it was possible for me to get back in shape for graduation in just 1 year.

But still, I now feel more ready for graduation than I have felt in a long time. The Zanzibar shape is on the way out and I'm definitely on the way to a really good KataFIT shape, but I'm still looking forward to hearing the next time my trip to Zanzibar is mentioned by Kimu Sensei, because I'm almost sure those comments won't go particularly well far away.