Holding Back Information

There are some in martial arts who will not teach you everything they know and not just because you're not good enough to understand or because you can't be trusted not to misuse the knowledge, but rather to keep knowledge to themselves. This would have been common practice in the days of Samurai or early competitive dojos, when trade secrets had to be guarded. But knowledge is still power. Again, the same reason is probably behind it - fear of loosing competitive advantage. The fact that karate is made up of many slightly different factions who split apart to form more groups, each holding tightly to their particular variations, does not help. It was refreshing to hear Jonathan Mottram saying that he would teach anyone everything he knew, but didn't fear this because he would still practice harder than them and be better! More like Jonathan please.