Do We Make Too Much of Kata?

[isshinryuronin]

Our perception of kata has gone thru many stages over the past hundred years and more. When I started karate in the 60's, kata was a simple thing - using basic blocks, kicks and punches (and a chop or two) to fight off a bunch of attackers coming from all directions, just like a good kung fu movie. And there were a few moves we weren't sure what the hell they were. But we were satisfied to remain blissfully ignorant or put some cool philosophical or dramatic meaning to them. Anyway, it didn't matter too much. Afterall, kata wasn't real fighting. The idea of kata was posture, stance, crisp execution and, above all, looking good.

Then, in the 1990's into the early 2000's, a different interpretation began to be revealed. We had it all wrong! Many of those basic moves were really locks and breaks, and that stepping around to face a new attacker was really throwing the old attacker down. The old style of karate was discovered to be close-in combat with a lot of grabbing and twisting. Who knew!

Now we have some sensei jumping in with both feet into the advanced kata application game saying, "If we take this punch and redirect it over there, grab the arm, then, instead of sliding in as the kata shows, just duck and pivot in a 360, take a couple of extra steps and change the elbow into a circular block, we can see this combo is really a double dislocate and backflip body slam." Yes, we've learned that TMA kata is designed to be somewhat flexible, but really?!

Kata was not meant to be complicated. It really is composed of the basics - the basics as taught in the 1800's - basics capable of dispatching a pirate or bandit with minimum risk and maximum efficiency. This translates into simplicity. Occam's razor - the simplest explanation is usually the best. I see kata sort of like kihon (basic drills), but volume 2 containing the other basics that all too often we don't drill put into a combat context. Kata is not a repository of arcane techniques, nor is it simply sport, nor an elementary form of practice. It's just karate.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Why can't it be both?

When you have a basic understanding of what forms teach, you learn basic things. As your understanding matures, so does what you can learn from forms.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

To me, form is like a textbook that teach you how to use the grammar and the vocabulary in that book.

For example a grammar can be

- Attack one leg, then attack another leg.

The nice thing about form is you can expand a grammar to map into many different sentences. There are many different ways to attack the leading leg. There are also many different ways to attack the back leg. Your teacher may just show you one combo, you can come up many combos yourself.

 

[skribs]

I think a lot of it is going to depend on where your kata comes from and how it is trained.

I think there are a lot of benefits and limitations of kata. I think that folks who only focus on one or the other are missing something. Lots of MMA folks like to look down on katas as mcdojo bullshido. Lots of TMA folks like to worship the ground their katas have them walk on.

Someone who says kata is useless is probably as wrong as someone who says kata will teach you how to fight. It's a very good tool for more than just fighting. But it's not going to get you there by itself.

 

[_Simon_]

Good thoughts there @isshinryuronin .

For sure 100% I think it can get overcomplicated. In our dojo we do focus a bit on bunkai/oyo, but equally on solo practice. Some of the applications I will admit do seem a bit complicated or far-fetched, but I see those applications of learning new ways to move your body, learning how to reorient to your opponent or just get the feeling-sense of direct biofeedback from another body rather than a literal realistic application. A way of understanding and feeling something.

There will always be that person that says "wait but you're not covering your face for a potential hit, or you're not guarding your groin, or you're not.... etc etc". That's not the point, and the application was not meant to be the ultimate self defence move that no mortal can defeat haha. It's expressing a certain movement or technique to work with.

For me, I actually don't see bunkai/oyo as being any sort of pinnacle of kata training like some, I think it's valuable but feel we can get too bogged down in the literal. For me the value of kata stems more towards what it teaches and instils in your body, and a tool for developing a type of body intelligence. I get way more from solo kata practice, and it really teaches such incredible principles and ways of moving and using your body. Application is a good way to feel that and is valuable absolutely, I feel there's so much more to kata than a superficial "this move is for if someone does this; if someone does this you do this bunkai". That's way too causal A->B->C. I may be straying off topic potentially haha.

Kata is a vehicle for development, but like you said it doesn't need to be worshipped.

 

[isshinryuronin]

probably as wrong as someone who says kata will teach you how to fight.

Like knowing how to read and write will teach you how to be a poet. It gives you some tools, but inspiration, a sense of rhyme and flow, and artistry is required as well for both skills. Not to mention hard work at your craft.

 

[isshinryuronin]

"this move is for if someone does this; if someone does this you do this bunkai". That's way too causal A->B->C. I may be straying off topic potentially haha.

Excellent issue, this. Though related, I think it can be a topic on its own. Since it has given me an epiphany concerned with this causality, I'll flesh it out in a new thread to see it's worthwhile to share. I'll call it: Preset Bunkai - "If someone does this, you do this." (if you're willing, Simon, to allow your thought and words to be attached to a thread of perhaps questionable value)

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There will always be that person that says "wait but you're not covering your face for a potential hit, or you're not guarding your groin, or you're not.... etc etc".

A well designed form should also consider your opponent's arms/legs position. If you pull/push your opponent's leading arm to jam his own back arm, since he doesn't have the 3rd arm, you don't need to worry any blocking right at that moment.

So, a form should not only teach you how to punch, it should also teach you how to guide your opponent's arms away from your punching path (set up).

Without proper teacher's instruction, the set-up part can be confusing for beginners. A left arm downward block (catch the kicking leg) and a right arm upward block (block a head punch) can be considered as a fancy and useless move for beginners.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Like knowing how to read and write will teach you how to be a poet.

This is why even if you have repeated Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 10,000 times, it still won't make you a play writer. You have to write your own plays to be a play writer.

 

[marvin8]

Like knowing how to read and write will teach you how to be a poet.

Knowing how to read and write may not teach you the principles and fundamentals of writing a novel with well developed characters, a beginning, middle and end.

It gives you some tools, but inspiration, a sense of rhyme and flow, and artistry is required as well for both skills. Not to mention hard work at your craft.

A kata may contain techniques, but leave out principles of rhythm, timing, strategy and tactics possibly by design.

A well designed form should also consider your opponent's arms/legs position. If you pull/push your opponent's leading arm to jam his own back arm, since he doesn't have the 3rd arm, you don't need to worry any blocking right at that moment.

Your opponent can move his hand/arm. A good novel will have alive, well developed characters not dead ones.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Your opponent can move his hand/arm.

This is why a form should contain "downward parry" followed with "upward wrap". If your opponent moves his arm the same direction as your arm is moving, you can reverse your arm motion to meet his arm. Unfortunately, very few forms contain this strategy/principle.

In this video, if his opponent reverses his left hook and changes into upward wrap, he can wrap his opponent's right arm.

 

[drop bear]

Yes. Pretty much.

Kata is shaped weird so that you have to work hard and build kinetic something something.

So when you are doing some wonky thing you are not really learning the secret move. You are learning how to move.

If you are learning the technique. You probably should learn it right.

Therefore bunkai is kind of silly.

 

[drop bear]

So here is a mate of mine doing kata.

But he doesn't fight like that.

 

[_Simon_]

Excellent issue, this. Though related, I think it can be a topic on its own. Since it has given me an epiphany concerned with this causality, I'll flesh it out in a new thread to see it's worthwhile to share. I'll call it: Preset Bunkai - "If someone does this, you do this." (if you're willing, Simon, to allow your thought and words to be attached to a thread of perhaps questionable value)

Of course sounds good

 

[_Simon_]

A well designed form should also consider your opponent's arms/legs position. If you pull/push your opponent's leading arm to jam his own back arm, since he doesn't have the 3rd arm, you don't need to worry any blocking right at that moment.

So, a form should not only teach you how to punch, it should also teach you how to guide your opponent's arms away from your punching path (set up).

Without proper teacher's instruction, the set-up part can be confusing for beginners. A left arm downward block (catch the kicking leg) and a right arm upward block (block a head punch) can be considered as a fancy and useless move for beginners.

True, but I guess what I'm saying is that people absolutise certain sequences. Eg "Ah that'll never work, his head/groin/pinky toe is completely exposed." The sequences weren't meant to cover every single base and infinite hypothetical possibility. It's drilling an expression of a principle. Once you get the hang of that, you allow that feeling and biomechanical sequence to be spontaneously applied in other ways. It won't look 100% like the superficial form of the kata, but it will expressing that idea or principle.

So what you're saying is the form should teach you to not just what, but how to deal with certain things. That is what I'm saying too. But not every sequence can cover every single base. It's working on a specific thing.

 

[Gyakuto]

Kata are just designed to forge balance, coordination, focus etc. In one Karate kata, one is expected to spin clockwise, by 270 degrees, on one leg, kick to the rear while perfectly balanced, before addressing a frontal assailant (can you work out which kata that might be?). It’s practise teaches poise, balance and coordination, all things that make an accomplished practitioner.

Complex bunkai, with intricate this-and-that are concocted as an intellectual exercise for teachers who are a bit long-in-the-tooth and a little bored of the simplicity of Pinan Nidan. It’s navel gazing, an artifice, and those who do fight know that complex movements rarely work in real situations. I read an interview with the founder of Wado Ryu, Hironori Ohtsuka, who suggested there are too many kata in the repertoire and he wished he’d done away with even more of them when devising his school in favour of more two person kata (kihon gumite) which add further complications that require practise and study and are more applicable to fighting than solo kata.

I practise an art that is almost exclusively solo kata, but I’m under no illusion of the efficacy of my swordsmanship and I’m sure a peasant ‘ashigaru’ (conscripted foot soldier, usually a farmer) would summarily hack me to pieces in face to face combat.

 

[Gyakuto]

This is why even if you have repeated Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 10,000 times, it still won't make you a play writer. You have to write your own plays to be a play writer.

Student Renaissance artists learned their craft by copying great master’s paintings and as Voltaire once said, ‘rote learning is the trellis upon which free thinking can grow.’

 

[isshinryuronin]

Kata are just designed to forge balance, coordination, focus etc

While all these things can be gained by practicing kata, its original design was practical self-defense. Over the course of time these corollary benefits overshadowed kata's main combat purpose.

In one Karate kata, one is expected to spin clockwise, by 270 degrees, on one leg, kick to the rear while perfectly balanced, before addressing a frontal assailant

Not practical for self-defense. Might look good in kata competition.

Complex bunkai, with intricate this-and-that are concocted as an intellectual exercise for teachers who are a bit long-in-the-tooth and a little bored of the simplicity of Pinan Nidan. It’s navel gazing, an artifice, and those who do fight know that complex movements rarely work in real situations.

True.

in favour of more two person kata (kihon gumite) which add further complications that require practise and study and are more applicable to fighting than solo kata.

I believe karate solo kata grew out of two-man practice which developed and tested practical application.

 

[Gyakuto]

While all these things can be gained by practicing kata, its original design was practical self-defense.

If solo kata are at all practical, it’s funny how modern combat arts haven’t adopted them into their schedule of practise. They haven’t because they’re not. They’re part of a tradition of which we don’t want to let go.

 

[Gyakuto]

I should qualify all I’m saying: I love kata, I think they’re great to study and refine and wonderful to watch, but I don’t think they’re ‘special training methods’. Many years ago i went to Naha to a stem cell research facility to look at how they did things and in the lab, they had a kata for stem cell culture with all the steps and procedure required for the technique. They don’t have laboratory workers doing that in the West and I’d say our stem cell research is as good as Okinawa’s!

Kata are simply a way of systematising a complex series of movements. Sado/Chanoyu = an elaborate kata.