Judging Forms at an Open Tournament

[dancingalone]

I usually don't do the sport thing. Not recently anyway. I quite enjoyed point sparring as a teenager doing tae kwon do, but I have fallen away from these gatherings over the years since what I train and teach don't really fit the tournament scene.

Regardless, my friend was holding a small friendship/intra-school competition and he asked me to attend to help judge some rings. I was the head judge in the brown/black belt forms division.

I saw a variety of Korean and Japanese forms, including renditions of Bassai, Hwa Rang, Chung Mu, even a Palgwe #7 which I've seldomly seen personally. I walked around and tried to see the beginner and intermediate forms too since I love patterns.

Some observations I took away:

• It was funny to me to see so many competitors stretch out their kiai/kihaps almost like they were giving birth.
• Robotic forms rule the day as do high kicks
• Almost everyone picks up their back foot by at least 3 inches when moving in a front stance. This was a big no-no when I was learning TKD and karate... has this changed?
• No such thing exists as uniformity. People from different schools perform the patterns with sometimes significant chambering and spacing differences.

I enjoyed the experience tremendously but I've confirmed that my practice of karate and tae kwon do is a relatively isolated place. Good or bad, I cannot say, but I will start taking my students occasionally to at least observe these tournaments in good fun and so they can see what other people are doing.

 

[StudentCarl]

I've seen this too. I'm less surprised to see variation at the lower belts due to less practice and less understanding.

At the higher levels what I find curious is that variation seems to come from memorizing ("that's how I was taught"), rather than tested technique. Rather than a pure traditionalist trying to do it as the creator of the form intended, my perspective is functional. I certainly don't claim enough experience to make changes, but I don't agree with "that's how we do it here" as a valid reason. My master is always willing to answer when I ask why we do a technique a certain way, and the reasons are technique based and solid.

I think the robot comment is more accurate than maybe we realize. Not only do too many just go through the motions, I doubt most have studied the techniques to learn what stance, hip, focus, push/pull, etc. should be used. Real understanding is not the same as having done a technique 10,000 times, since you can do it poorly that many times too.

 

[dancingalone]

At the higher levels what I find curious is that variation seems to come from memorizing ("that's how I was taught"), rather than tested technique. Rather than a pure traditionalist trying to do it as the creator of the form intended, my perspective is functional. I certainly don't claim enough experience to make changes, but I don't agree with "that's how we do it here" as a valid reason. My master is always willing to answer when I ask why we do a technique a certain way, and the reasons are technique based and solid.

I am not big on dogma either. There are tremendous variations in even the pinan karate kata when you view how they are performed by different karate or tsd/tkd styles. Hopefully, each school has a good explanation for why they do them the way they do. On balance, most probably do if you speak to a senior practitioner.

I think the robot comment is more accurate than maybe we realize. Not only do too many just go through the motions, I doubt most have studied the techniques to learn what stance, hip, focus, push/pull, etc. should be used. Real understanding is not the same as having done a technique 10,000 times, since you can do it poorly that many times too.

I really think that's just the way forms are taught now, especially in 'American' TKD systems. Youtube is filled with examples of senior TKD black belts, 4th-6th dans, emphasizing a 1-1-1-1 staccato tempo with full power on every technique.

 

[WC_lun]

As an observation, if you teach like an assebly line, where everyone learns the same thing, the same way, you will get many students who do not understand and it will show.

 

[dancingalone]

As an observation, if you teach like an assebly line, where everyone learns the same thing, the same way, you will get many students who do not understand and it will show.

No, there's nothing wrong with an 'assembly line' approach itself for teaching. That has been proven numerous times in business management studies in training workers. Training people en masse is an excellent solution for small, repeatable tasks.

Applied to martial arts instruction, thus, line drilling for short combinations like front kick, reverse punch is a good introduction for beginners. When they 'master' the basic motion, one can move them onto hitting pads and then heavy bags with the same combination. If they practice the movement with enough good repetitions on all these target tools, it becomes grooved into their muscle memory, and it will likely be a spontaneous reaction when they are ready for free sparring. This is a refinement process, still based on small, repeatable steps, still applicable to small or large amounts of students, and thus in 'assembly line' fashion.

With regard to learning kata, my thought is that the instruction skipped a few steps of the refinement process. The first step to learning any form is to memorize the moves in a 1-1-1-1 fashion, hopefully with the footwork aspect included. Next, you learn fluidity as some of the moves are combined and performed in near-simultaneous timing. Next, you add any breathing or muscular tension subtleties. You end with the most minute details like postural facing or hand positional detailing.

People with robotic forms probably learned or were taught everything in the first step and never passed through the further stages. That would be a flaw in the implementation of the teaching method and not the method itself.

You might have another, more holistic way of instruction. That is fine. There is more than one way to skin a cat and I have certainly learned, taught, and thrived under multiple ways of organizing instruction.

 

[Nomad]

It's sad that timing and rhythm seem to be so poorly understood, at least by those you witnessed. IMO, it is one of the things that sets a great kata performance apart from an ok one.

Especially if the rhythm and timing stems from a knowledge of where the natural pauses in the kata (eg different sequence of moves designed to deal with a different opponent or different attack) fall.

The fluidity partially flows from the rhythm, and partially creates the rhythm of the kata, so it doesn't feel like a staccato performance.

In the karate I've studied, a strong emphasis was placed on maintaining contact with the ground while moving in the kata. Of course, this is much easier in theory than in practice.

Stretching out a kiai shows that the competitor really doesn't understand why they're yelling, or the purpose of it, and is trying to compensate for this by just being loud.

 

[Earl Weiss]

I see a difference in those with a strong ITF connection and those without. Typicaly tose without have a 1-1-1-1 rythm. They have no clue that various speads are specified for certain moves and combibnations of moves. Those designations do not neccessarily have "Intuitive" meanings so you need to learn how they are defined for the system. Speeds include: Regular, Fast, Slow, Continuous, connecting, and there is even one coined by teachers not listed in the text often referred to as "Natural Motion" which some might consider a "Soft" type motion. This is for techniques that would be a block/grab as opposed to a block/damage or block/deflect.