Shihan Jeff Whybrow came for a quick visit in April 2002, and gave us a few lessons in tournament techniques.

From time to time, on a very irregular basis, the IFKKA may host a seminar taught by instructors from another martial arts system. This may seem strange to some people, especially to those from styles of martial arts that are very exclusive in their attitude to training i.e. "our system is perfect, and you need not, indeed, may not, train in any other martial arts." Even Kyokushin in some quarters subscribes to that attitude, and I have heard of mudansha getting expelled for participating in a non-Kyokushin tournament!

Under the IFKKA, however, we encourage our students to learn about other styles. After all, how was Kyokushin itself formed? After the hard training sessions in the original Oyama dojo behind Rikkyo University, Sosai and his senior students used to analyse the methods of the guests who had been training that day or week, and decided whether they would adopt a particular technique or combination or kata into the system the at was slowly evolving into Kyokushin.

Consider this. Mas Oyama himself was trained early on in Kenpo, and later trained in Shotokan and Goju-ryu, while also picking up qualifications in Judo, and no doubt picked up a a fair smattering of others. From this, and the abovementioned "adoptions", and his own mind and experiences, he finally synthesised Kyokushin.

Consider then that it was highly unlikely that he ever taught any one person all that he, Mas Oyama, ever learned during his life of training. Consider also that anyone he taught was probably also unable to pass on everything he knew, and his students in turn could only glean a portion of his knowledge etc.... How much, or how little of Mas Oyama's knowledge, eventually gets to you?

If each one of these passes on even as much as 95% of what he knows, by the time you get to the 10th generation, which many of us probably are already, we're down to about 60% of the original knowledge, minus also the collective life experiences of all these instructors before us.

What can we do? Go and do a bit of learning of our own. Either go to train at other dojo, or have them come and give seminars at ours.

From time to time, we also give closed seminars just for our students. These might be on particular subjects that they need to know for their next grading, or just a special topic that cannot be covered in general classes. We also hold officiating seminars before our tournament to bring people back up to speed on their judging and refereeing skills.