How does the future look

[exile]

You know, this leads to another angle, in my mind. Once, science and magic were kind of bundled together. Of course, science won out. Why? Because they did not engage in all of that secrecy, of course. They published their methods and findings, and knowledge then grew.

It will be the same way with the Martial Arts, I think. Instead of all of these occult aspects (the word "occult" just means "hidden" of course, that's all!), they will be explored, and shared.

I agree, 100%, and that's one of the reasons why I said earlier that I'm optimistic about the future of the MAs. The idea of public accountability under dispassionate scrutiny, the core ethic of science, is increasingly being extended to what was once the private, almost hermetically sealed domain of combat knowledge that the traditional MAs consisted of, at a time, and in cultures, where that kind of privately held knowledge still had authority. Today, in western culture, it doesn't; it has to pay its own way, by demonstrable success under testing (which is what laboratory experiments designed to challenge the predictions of hypotheses are all about). If the hypothesis wants to be taken seriously, it has to make testable predictions, and those predictions have to measure up to observation. We now expect the same thing from MAs that we expect from hypotheses in many other domains of knowledge: they have to measure up under testing. The good side is, an awful lot of traditional MA knowledge does turn out to be supported by sound combat principles, once these are thought through and sorted out.

There is so much good information coming out now, as evidenced by your last post, exile, that the tide is turning. Soon the day will come where knowledge of the fighting arts are freely dispensed, for all to enjoy. I myself find that to be the better way.

Right, this willingness to explore what was previously private knowledge, (tacitly held in trust by a small number of experts who insisted on unquestioning adherence to their system from even advanced students) will in the end, I believe, restore to the TMAs, with interest, the credibility that many seem to believe they've lost as a result of the McDojo/McDojang phenomenon, the excessive focus of many of the classical TMAs on their sport-competitive aspect at the expense of their combat application (which was once the lifeblood of their technical development) and other factors that have eroded their legitimacy in the eyes of their potential audience. Just as we are begining to demand the end of the mystifications that have led all kinds of recent MAs to claim totally unsupported lineages going back two millenia or more, based almost entirely on recycled wishful fantasy-thinking, we're also begining to demand solid justification for why we do what we do in the MAs. It's not just kata; it's basic stuff like, what are the pros and cons of the vertical fist, as vs. the standard twisting fist in karate and TKD/TSD. What are the anatomical arguments for the former, and for the latter? And so on. I think one of the primary signs of this kind of changed perspective is the existence of MartialTalk itself, where these kinds of questions arise and are chewed over from every possible angle.

Then again, I am not the kind of person who has the tolerance for the "popularity contest" way of the Teacher waiting until the student is "worthy" of being taught the deeper meanings -- I am middle aged after all, I would likely be dead before I could persuade a Teacher to go to the depths!

Exactly, this is right in line with what I was just suggesting about `private' knowledge. I think that that might have been acceptable as part of the kind of very hierarchical Asian cultures in which the TMAs originated, but once transplanted to North America and western Europe, our own quite different view about the (non)role of authority in justifying factual claims has led us to very different attitudes not just about training, but about how to think about, and evaluate, the technical content of what it is that we train.

I have been told by people who I believe know that Ed Parker's system has MANY hidden techniques -- every block is a strike, every strike is a block, a defense can be used for more than one attack, and so on.

This is completely in tune with the karate which was in no small degree ancestral to EPAK. Rick Clark, Simon O'Neil and others have argued that the basic, simple `down block' can be unpackaged in a number of ways, including: (i) an upward elbow strike as the combat application of the `chambering phase' of the block; (ii) a downward/spearing elbow strike as the initial part of the `downward blocking' movement of the fist; (iii) a hammerfist strike as the final phase of the `downward blocking' movement. On the other hand, a punch with the left fist with an associated retraction of the right need not be a punch. If the left fist is gripping the attacker's right ear or the right side of his head, and the right fist is gripping the attacker's left ear or the side of his head, or some other point of attachment on the head, the result of the forward movement of the left fist and the retracting movement of the right fist is... a potentially lethal neck twist. So the actual utilization of the kata movements as combat moves is far more versatile than people who take literally the standard `children's labelling', as Itosu called it, of kata movements understand. That's the main reason, I suspect, for much of the point/counterpoint that's gone on in this thread.

Its one thing to simplify the curriculum so that the student will not be overwhelmed. Its quite another thing to water things down just because the student must be deemed "worthy" to dive to the depths.

Perhaps the day is coming when the DEEP Martial Arts will be shared freely, as scientists freely share their information, rather than kept secret, as the magicians kept their knowledge!

I agree wholeheartedly with both of these paragraphs, and take a very hopeful view of the prospect you outline in the second one. And I suspect an increasing number of people are coming to share the same perspective you've sketched here.

 

[Cirdan]

Remember the way you practice? ...is the way you will fight? Kata's have technques that you can use...I agree with this......100%.....BUT NO one fight like how Kata preset forms....You keep practice turning after a punch...because you done it 1000 times (Heian shodan)....What will happen in a real fight?

Did you read any of the previous posts at all? As exile put it, Kata should teach you to KNOW, not REMEMBER. Having trained Kata doesn`t mean you swich of your bain and operate on auto pilot. What will happen in a real fight? After punching i throw my opponent with tai otoshi. This is ONE possibility out of coultless ones.

I will NOT be able to change you mind....nor will you be able to change mines.....

Refusal to admit there are things you don`t know equals inability to learn.

It took me a year of training in a very Kata heavy system to realize I did not know what Kata really are. It took me another six months and a lot of self training and study to get a beginning understanding of the concept and answer the questions that represented themselves about efficiency as a training method etc. Some might have an easier journey, but Kata are not easy. If you analyze Pinan Nidan it is enoufg stuff to take you to a respectable Dan level there alone.

 

[Cirdan]

I view it as learning water safety. When you go in to learn water safety, your instructor isn't going to actually drown you, but he will get you very close. This is the only way you will learn what it's like and how to realistically respond. If you just go though slow choriographed movements in the shallow end only, you will never really know how to properly respond to the stress and unpredictability of a real problem.

Where did anyone say you should train Kata only?? That would take you to a very low level before you stop evolving. An even lower level than if you did ONLY sparring.

Now, if you want to be good at kata, practice kata. That is the primary result of such practice. By practicing kata, you won't build realistic reactions to realistic attacks. You will simply be good at kata.

Being "good" at Kata in my mind would mean mastering the principles and techniques of the form and being able to employ them without thought. Does this require additional training? Yes.

Perhaps you should ask yourself how systems like the Kenjustu schools in old Japan were able to produce martial artists who proved their ability on the field of battle over many many generations. They did spend a LOT of time on Kata.

 

[exile]

Being "good" at Kata in my mind would mean mastering the principles and techniques of the form and being able to employ them without thought. Does this require additional training? Yes.

Now, if you want to be good at kata, practice kata. That is the primary result of such practice. By practicing kata, you won't build realistic reactions to realistic attacks. You will simply be good at kata.

Perhaps you should ask yourself how systems like the Kenjustu schools in old Japan were able to produce martial artists who proved their ability on the field of battle over many many generations. They did spend a LOT of time on Kata.

See, Cirdan, I think Independent_TKD's problem is that, in spite of the fact that he's been involved in previous threads where the distinction has been made, he still hasn't quite absorbed the difference between practicing the performance of the kata, on the one hand, and practicing the combat content of the kata.I've posted the following previously, but this crucial distinction doesn't seem to have sunk in with him even a little bit. But if you're going to talk about kata as combat preparation, positively or negatively, you first have to take that distinction into account, as very well expressed by Bill Burgar in his terrific book, Five Years, One Kata:

The emphasis today is on the performance of kata rather than its practice. To most practitioners today the performance of and the practice of ata are the same thing. What is really meant by "practicing a kata" is "practicing the performance of a kata". In contrast, a deeper practice of a kata involves:

• the full breakdown of the kata into its constituent applications;

• the individual practice of those applications, both alone using powerful visualization techniques,
and with a partner in training drills;

• putting strings of applications into tegumi or flow-drills;

• and also practicing the individual principles that pervade all of the techniques.
​

... if you have been used to practising only the performance of kata for many years (as you may well have done if you have reached nidan or above in traditional style) then you are going to find it hard to adjust to changing your practice. You will need to slow down and break up the kata so that you don't just run through it from start to finish. You must practice each movement in isolation... Remember, practice the content and not the performance.​

(pp. 29, 309; my emphasis). Independent_TKD's remark treat practicing kata as though what you were supposed to practice was the performance of the movement, not the applications (using the part-protection fully noncompliant training protocol that people like Iain Abernethy describes in Bunkai Jutsu and Peyton Quinn in Real Fighting). By the same logic, the way to learn how to solve calculus problems would be to purchase a good calculus textbook and then memorize successive chapters of the book till you could recite them perfectly with your eyes closed! :lol: Does anyone think that this is how you acquire that particular set of math skills? Very unlikely; but when it comes to kata, I_TKD seems be under the same kind of impression that that's what `practicing kata' involves. Once upon a time he might have had the excuse that that, after all, is what karateka are universally told; but that hasn't been the case for a decade or more.

In fact, people who talk about the combat applications of kata have a very specific training regime in mind that those with still_learning's and I_TKD's extremely... partial?... understanding of the combat content of kata ignore completely; Kidswarrior has a very, very nice summary of one version of this regime here. I said something in the earlier thread that seems again relevant here:

Step 1 involves simultaneously learning and practicing the performance of the form and working out the most realistic bunkai possible, but once you've got them, Kidswarrior's summary of Abernethy's steps 2 and 3 involve `destructive testing' with a partner to weed out the impractical applications, and step 4 involves use of the surviving applications under very realistic conditions—conditions way more like actual streetfighting than ordinary kumite in a typical dojo training session. Abernethy, in one of his articles, comments that

The fourth and most neglected stage is to practise applying the techniques, variations and principles of the kata in live practise. The only way to ensure that you will be able to utilise techniques in a live situation is to practise your techniques in live situations. You need to engage in live any-range sparring if you are to make your kata practise worthwhile. No amount of solo practice or drilling the techniques with a compliant partner will give you the skills needed to apply what you have learnt in a live situation... ​

and comments in his book that `it should be a self-evident fact that the only way to become an able fighter is to practise actual fighting!' He is talking here about competence in defensive combat, and although he indicates ways in hissomewhere els book to minimize the hazards of `all-in' fighting, he also mentions, in his April 2007 Black Belt article that

Kata include throws, takedowns, locks, chokes, strangles, groundwork, elbows, knees and so on but few of those moves are permitted in modern karate sparring. There are obvious safety issues surrounding kata-based sparring, especially the more extreme variety [Kidswarrior's Stage 4—exile]. I've bled, broken bones and dislocated joints through my own adventures, so I full appreciate that heavy contact isn't for everyone. Nevertheless, there are many ways to structure it so it's safe, beneficial and relevant.
​

(citation from IA's article on p. 103 of his article in the April 2007 issue of Black Belt)

For Abernethy and others in his group, karate is primarily a jutsu, not a do, and bunkai are the textbook for fighting techniques; realistic simulated combat is the `exercises at the end of the chapter' that, as with any textbook, you have to get good at in order to learn the subjects, as vs. just knowing about the subject.
​

And before still_learning and I_TKD once again announce that no, this is impossible, there can't be any connection between kata and combat, they might take into account the following concluding section to Abernethy's article:

It's essential to gain live experience in applying the fighting tecniques and principles recorded by kata. Without it, all the knowledge you gain from kata study will be theoretical. It's foolish to expect this theoretical knowledge to miraculously become practical knowledge when you need it Kata-based sparring will ensure that you can put theory into practice, and it'll give you firsthand experience in some of the sensations associated with combat.

It's amazing how many karateka have never practiced fighting from a clinch, landing close-range strikes or executing throws. However, all those methods are recorded in the kata they practice in every training session. To the unaided eye, it may look like the exacting solo performance of a kata and the chaotic nature of kata-based sparring are unrelated. Howevever, they're fundamentally the same. One is the theory, and the other is the practice. Both are based on the same combative principles.​

(p. 103, my emphases).

The fact that the samurai practiced kata incessantly in their strictly jutsu training is, as you point out, absolutely central to the whole discussion. They were training for life and death, and they knew very well that the kata embodied the distilled hard-won experience of many generations of professional swordsmen. It was, after all, the survivors who got to instill their superior knowledge in kata that were worth the next generation learning, eh? It's not just history that's written by the victors; usually, the most successful textooks are as well. :wink1:

 

[still learning]

Hello, Again...the future will prove if Kata is worth doing?

Science will prove it's worth or not?

The way you train is the way you will fight!

MMA, boxers, Muay thai, Judo, wrestlers, semi/full contact martial arts, who have actully body contact....have the best training...realistic!

To be sucessful...always copy those that are!) especially in a real fight!

Aloha

 

[exile]

Hello, Again...the future will prove if Kata is worth doing?

Science will prove it's worth or not?

Are these supposed to be questions, statements, or something else? What exactly are you using this particular punctuation to express??

It is definitely the case that the future will prove whether kata are worth doing. The future will also prove whether the sun will rise tomorrow in the east or in the west. There is very little of a factual nature that the future will not prove, probably. And this bears on your previous claims about kata exactly how?

Saying that (or asking whether) the future will prove the combat utility of kata or not, in view of the detailed technical discussion that has taken place so far, is a way of saying nothing, because, as I've already suggested above, (i) you made a statement earlier that kata had no combat relevance, (ii)have just had a ton of evidence piled in front of you, based both on detailed analysis and on the daily fighting experience of people who often have to do it for a living that kata are precisely about real, nasty street combat, so that (iii) the burden of proof is on you to show that the evidence presented doesn't make the case. Since you are clearly unfamiliar with virtually any of this evidence, you're not in a position to do that. Saying/asking these two statements/question is simply a way for you to say something without acknowledging that you have no effective reply to the evidence you've been confronted with. I suspect that that will be pretty clear to everyone who's been reading this thread...

The way you train is the way you will fight!

This is, of course, by now a cliché in the MAs—having won that status because it appears to be completely true. But exactly how does it bear on your response to the critique you've received of your statements about kata? In other words, still_learning, how is this truism relevant to your claims about the martial uselessness of kata?

MMA, boxers, Muay thai, Judo, wrestlers, semi/full contact martial arts, who have actully body contact....have the best training...realistic!

Again, since the training protocol recommended by people who advocate kata analysis for MA training involves—as abundantly documented above—demands full, noncompliant, no-rules contact, it seems as though your earlier claims about kata effectivenss are now being, mmm, camouflaged by a statement which doesn't make any discriminations amongst any MAs with hard-contact training regimes. This is, of course, more of the same, as per the first parts of your post.

To be sucessful...always copy those that are!) especially in a real fight!

Aloha

Aloha. :wink1:

So now, the issue of the future of the MAs looks as though it breaks up into a number of different streams: the question of increased popularity, the question of technical understanding and revived street-effectiveness, the question of mutual influence and mixing of techniques. My own take on the second one of these is that as interest in this aspect of the MAs increases and becomes more sophisticated, there will be a sea-change in the institutional form of the MAs whereby large top-down organizations (of the kind people in the TKD in particular are all too familiar with, but which exist to a lesser extent in other MAs) will, so far as an increasing number of people are concerned, gradually cease to be important; the individual MA school will become the basis of teaching and practice, and curriculum issues will be decided locally. At the same time, loose-knit groups of MA schools will share tecnical and training insights via seminars, symposia and other grass-roots-driven cooperation, based on the desire of members of individual schools to improve their skills and technical breadth. To me, future development of the MAs along these lines would be a Good Thing...

 

[Cirdan]

MMA, boxers, Muay thai, Judo, wrestlers, semi/full contact martial arts, who have actully body contact....have the best training...realistic!

To be sucessful...always copy those that are!) especially in a real fight!

Top level boxers, wrestlers, Muay thai fighters all spend hour upon hour, day upon day, year upon year perfecting their technique. For christ`s sake they even hire experts in physics to analyze their movements and squeeze every tiny last bit out of it. This is tecnical training that studies the depth of movement. Kata is another tool for just the same. Since you mention Judo, they use Kata don`t they?

Don`t copy those who are sucessful. Rather seek what they sought.

 

[still learning]

Hello, Kano taught Kata because he too ....was train to use Kata....because of past experiences. HE taught the way he was taught!
(just following others). kinda like this is the way it was taught to me..so kano added a few Kata's. (by the way...I like the JUDO katas because it is perform with two people or more...NOT ALONE! ..more realistic...and more practical than by one self...who experience NO...contact at all.

Practicing fighting techniques( where there is NO beginning and NO ending..like in a real fight....is different from practicing "KATA"S....most times start in one place and ends at the same place! Preset,never changes, NO partners to get the real feel. Many of the blocks.strikes is very unnatural way to move (so call hidden/secret) techniques?

Why would Sensi teach you a Kata...and say there are hidden meanings that each of us must find on our own? ....What is the truth on this?
Someone shows you how to perform a technique and you do it without knowing what it mean? .....UM? Why? so secret?

Kata's also is practice alone...with NO contacts or true experience of actual strikes, blocks, or feedbacks! (some arts do have two man kata)..most do NOT!

The more you feel strongly of Kata's...the more you will not see the other side (negative)'s. Today the debates on Kata's shows many people who questions Kata effectiveness!

YOU ARE RIGHT....I AM NOT EXPERT...STILL LEARNING...I DO TRUST MY INSTINCTS ON THIS....I CANNOT EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY I BELIEVE THIS...JUST THAT I DO! .....as one gets more experience...one learns to see things differently.

20 years ago...We were taught Kata's....because our Sensi's were taught Kata's...it just was the way of training.....

Beliefs....? this is a tuff one? ...each of us have our own beliefs...in God, in martial arts...in global warning,...and in use of KATAS"

For myself..time has change my beliefs.....my feeling's on it...(kata's)..Lost the faith for the use of Kata's.

I like two man training with actual hits, blocks, strikes,movements,realistic training, with actual contact, takedowns, and locks!

Lot of my beliefs...NOT ALL..comes from Loren Christensen books....which I find is the most modern books written on the martial arts....especially is latest books...............Aloha

PS: Yes! I am not expert....just that my beliefs have change in time...

 

[terryl965]

SL you have alot to learn my friend Kata ot poomsae can be done with your partner in a semi real life practice and if you have never done this to bad, secondly all kata or poomsae do not stop in the same place some do and some don't.If you do not see value in it then there is none for you, one cannot make a man pick up a $100 bill in the middle of the street if he believes it is not there. This is how I see you with Kata or poomsae you see no value, thus there is no value. Remember one can lead a horse to water but cannot make a horse drink.
Have a great day.

 

[MJS]

This post, as well as a few of your other ones, seem to show that you really don't have an understanding of kata. I'm still curious about an answer to the questions I asked you in post #58.

Hello, Kano taught Kata because he too ....was train to use Kata....because of past experiences. HE taught the way he was taught!
(just following others). kinda like this is the way it was taught to me..so kano added a few Kata's. (by the way...I like the JUDO katas because it is perform with two people or more...NOT ALONE! ..more realistic...and more practical than by one self...who experience NO...contact at all.

Are you assuming that people who breakdown kata don't practice it with a partner? Apparently you didn't look at those links I posted a few pages back.

Practicing fighting techniques( where there is NO beginning and NO ending..like in a real fight....is different from practicing "KATA"S....most times start in one place and ends at the same place! Preset,never changes, NO partners to get the real feel. Many of the blocks.strikes is very unnatural way to move (so call hidden/secret) techniques?

Hmm..I recall a few posts back I said you extract the parts of the kata that you would need at the time, to defend yourself. I believe I also said that in a fight you're not going to do the kata as you would in the dojo. Again, I must ask..are you reading any of these posts?

Why would Sensi teach you a Kata...and say there are hidden meanings that each of us must find on our own? ....What is the truth on this?
Someone shows you how to perform a technique and you do it without knowing what it mean? .....UM? Why? so secret?

So...you think that the instructor should do all the work for the student and the student should not work to find things on their own?

Kata's also is practice alone...with NO contacts or true experience of actual strikes, blocks, or feedbacks! (some arts do have two man kata)..most do NOT!

See, now if one understands the kata, you should be able to work it with a partner.

The more you feel strongly of Kata's...the more you will not see the other side (negative)'s. Today the debates on Kata's shows many people who questions Kata effectiveness!

The same can apply to those that don't feel strong about kata.

YOU ARE RIGHT....I AM NOT EXPERT...STILL LEARNING...I DO TRUST MY INSTINCTS ON THIS....I CANNOT EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY I BELIEVE THIS...JUST THAT I DO! .....as one gets more experience...one learns to see things differently.

Just a thought here, but perhaps you could take a lesson from those that are more experienced than you and have worked these applications. You need to keep an open mind though.

 

[still learning]

Hello, IF kata's work so well? ...How come it is use only in the martial arts ?

If prearrange forms helps so well? ...how come other sports, combat groups, or any other groups use them? (NOT talking about practiceing) ..PRE arrange movements over and over and over like Kata'a

Aloha

 

[exile]

Hello, IF kata's work so well? ...How come it is use only in the martial arts ?

If prearrange forms helps so well? ...how come other sports, combat groups, or any other groups use them? (NOT talking about practiceing) ..PRE arrange movements over and over and over like Kata'a

Aloha

You just don't read the posts you get, do you. You were informed that they are used in all manner of activity in Japan as formal patterns that contain instruction on technique. And you just didn't pay the slightest attention....

 

[FearlessFreep]

Hello, IF kata's work so well? ...How come it is use only in the martial arts ?

If prearrange forms helps so well? ...how come other sports, combat groups, or any other groups use them? (NOT talking about practiceing) ..PRE arrange movements over and over and over like Kata'a

Aloha

They are used extensively in music but there we call them "scales"

 

[MJS]

Hello, IF kata's work so well? ...How come it is use only in the martial arts ?

If prearrange forms helps so well? ...how come other sports, combat groups, or any other groups use them? (NOT talking about practiceing) ..PRE arrange movements over and over and over like Kata'a

Aloha

First, we have gone thru this already...many times. If you're not reading the posts, no sense in repeating it. Second, instead of going on the opinion of others, why don't you form your own opinion? Basically, you're saying that because person A says something isn't good, instead of judging for yourself, you're just going to go with what person A says.

Once again...if you look at a boxing combo, if you look at a pin flow series from grappling, while its not called a "kata" in the sense it would be from Kenpo, Shotokan, or TKD, they are patterns, just like a kata.

 

[newGuy12]

There's really nothing more that can be said. Here are two instructors exposing moves in ChunJi (yes, the WHITE BELT) form:

http://www.natkd.com/movies/Seminar_Techniques/Chon-Ji Applications.wmv
http://www.natkd.com/movies/Seminar_Techniques/Chonjiapp2.wmv

Is this not realistic? Of course it is.

Why was this knowledge hidden for so long? That's a question for a whole thread in itself, perhaps.

What matters to me is that this knowledge is not hidden today. Now, there are always people who wish knowledge to be hidden, and there are people who wish it to be exposed, shared, scrutinized.

The latter camp always wins out (that's why "Free Software" -- some call it "open sourced" -- will win the future, embedded systems --> it is peer reviewed).

I'm so excited that I can hardly contain myself.

 

[MJS]

There's really nothing more that can be said.

Yup, I agree. Actually, this thread spun off on a kata tangent. Looking at the OP:

In Martial Art how does the future look from your eyes?

What over the next ten years will help grow the Arts?

Who do you see as the up and coming over the next ten years?

Which styles do you see as being on top in that some time frame?

I think there are other aspects that can be discussed aside from just kata.

 

[exile]

Right on, newGuy. It is a very exciting time to be in the martial arts. In a way, I think the MAs, particularly in NAmerica, have entered their (young) adulthood after what I think of as their adolescence in the 1960s and '70s, when people would believe just about anything and thought that they needed to somehow turn their dojos into mini-museums of Asian culture in order to get their MAs to work. I was there, I remember what it was like. Incredible mystification all around... but what do you expect from kids? :wink1: These day, we are much more demanding: we know that the reasons things work are rooted in facts about the world that aren't culture-dependent. With kata, for example, we don't believe in magical effects of producing the right movements correctly; we understand that whether its Asian TMAs, Western MAs or anything else, there are reasons for these techniques that in the end come down to the way the human body, with its endoskeleton, can move, the way we as organisms are programmed to respond to incoming threats in our visual field, and so on. And now we have access to a vast pool of documents, commentary those documents, debates about technical issues and the like that we could have dreamed of back then, via the internet, online library services, and a host of novel information sources that are just the teaser for what's to come in the next decade. So yes... the future is very bright.

Yup, I agree. Actually, this thread spun off on a kata tangent. Looking at the OP,...I think there are other aspects that can be discussed aside from just kata.

I agree, Mike. I'd really like to hear what people think about the future of MAs' institutional and organizational form, about how competetition (or rejection of it) will enter into the picture (the way the martial art vs. martial sport split will develop, IOW) and so on. My reading on Kata is, there are people who've taken the trouble to learn something about what this particular technical resource offers, and there are others who simply will not, and it's a waste of the first group's time to try to share their knowledge with the second. So definitely, maybe it's time to move on to some of those other important areas, eh? :wink1:

 

[still learning]

Hello, In the future? ....CD's? or on line computer programs, that can hypnotize us for our martial art training.

Brain washing so to speak of....(able to really touch that part effectively!)

Also visualizations techniques will be use more often and more effectively than today. One of the reasons Russia and the East Germans were so successful in the olympics. America training is catching up in this area!

Visualize training! in the future combine with hypnotizing? maybe? in the future?

Aloha