I don't and wouldn't judge any other styles kata. I've judged only Wado and they are as taught, no variations and no add ons.
Judging Forms at Tournaments
- Thread starter Azulx
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I don't and wouldn't judge any other styles kata. I've judged only Wado and they are as taught, no variations and no add ons.
This remind me one time I was judging a Baji form division in a Dallas Kung Fu tournament. Every judges give a guy very high score but I gave him 0 score. All judges asked me why and I told them this guy used a long fist form to compete in a Baji form division and no judges even noticed.
This raise an interested question. What will you do if a Karate guy does his Karate Kata in slow speed and compete in a Taiji form division?
Can you judge a MA style that you know nothing about it?
The whole premise is nonsensical. How can people judge forms they have no knowledge of? If I don't do your style i cannot judge anything that matters about a form.
I can judge one - I'm not sure if that answers whether I should be judging one. If three of us with very different backgounds (Kung Fu, Karate, Aikido) judge forms, what would we judge them on? If we judge on the criteria others have specified here (balance, proper pausing choices, confidence, focus and inten), it seems likely we'll still make some errors, as some movements in Kung Fu may look weak to me, because I don't know their purpose - and probably the reverse is true. Some of the Karate movements may look over-powered to me, and some from Aikido mine may look unfocused to them.
(Note: So far as I know, there aren't any common long-form kata in Aikido, so this is hypothetical.)
In an open tournament, what matters is that you stay consistent throughout.
You accept the competitors version of the kata and you make the deductions based on your observation and opinions of the competitions technique, stances, speed, power, tempo, intensity, etc....
If all the judges stay consistent with their scoring everything is fair.
You accept the competitors version of the kata and you make the deductions based on your observation and opinions of the competitions technique, stances, speed, power, tempo, intensity, etc....
If all the judges stay consistent with their scoring everything is fair.
One of my friends had won the 1st place in Karate form competition many times. He always started with a soft and slow Taiji form. When all the judges were bored to death, he suddenly jumped into the air, did double jumping kick with fast speed and powerful punch until he finished the form.
Yet, I did it for twenty years. And I don't even do forms. I did because I was asked, both by the tournament promoters and the competitors. Mainly because I don't do favorites - and have no preconceived, perhaps subconscious, notion of comparing your forms to mine.
Just as a matter of interest anyone done the Judo katas? My instructor did them for us a while back ( he's an old Judoka) they are interesting, impossible for me when it includes 'kneewalking' ( is there a Japanese name for that? I assume so)
So he was making the form up?
He connected part of the Taiji form and part of the long fist form into one.
The term I learned for that is shikkoo. If it is with techniques it became suwari waza. I don't know if those are the terms used in Judo, though. I used to be quite good at knee-walking movement (as used in NGA), but my big toes are too arthritic for me to do more than a brief demonstration for students (and I pay for that for a few days).
I never even saw the Judo kata in my days in Judo. I don't think my instructor ever used them.
I don't know how common they are, he always said he did 'old style' Judo ie before the Olympic stuff took over. This is some of what he showed us, with him talking us through the part of the other person, there's different sorts of kata, one set with throws and one set with weapons and other self defence techniques.
Headhunter
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Agreed Its ridiculous so basically If I wanted to I could turn up to a shotokan tournament and enter as a black belt (even though I've never trained it) and just throw my hands around and pretend to know what I'm doing and I could get a gold medal....how's that fair in any way.
But if you don't know anything about the form you are looking at then you cannot judge it on anything that is actually relevant to the form and the training that surrounds it.
So then your standards are arbitrary to the art and anyone who wanted to win will have had to play up those arbitrary qualities that may or may not be relevant to it.
So if you are doing patterns that may not be correct and using performance standards that are not related to the form, how is it not just a dance?
You couldn't do that at a one style tournament though, all the judges would be Shotokan dan grades and the katas would all be Shotokan so they'd know immediately that you weren't doing it correctly. The problem is the open competitions where multiple styles compete against each other with judges not knowing whether they are correct or not.
JR 137
Grandmaster
1. What Tez said.
2. The judges have a pretty good idea what TRADITIONAL forms look like. With probably very few exceptions, people judging forms have judged them before and do forms themselves.
3. A judge with any experience and/or MAist could pick out a pretender.
4. I don't any any experience with truly "open" tournaments where you have multiple styles such as karate, Kung Fu, TKD, etc. compete. My experience is with open karate tournaments where competitors are limited to traditional kata. Even if a judge doesn't do that particular kata, he/she has most likely seen it before. Unsu is typically a Shotokan kata. Kyokushin, Isshin Ryu, and many others don't do it. But judges with those backgrounds have most likely seen it several times. I'm not a judge, I've never learned it, yet I know what's supposed to be done. Same for a lot of other kata.
5. Test your theory out
I know text on a screen doesn't convey emotion properly quite often; there's no emotion in my post, just ideas.
There are fairly common principles that underlay effective movements. Balance, use of the entire body to generate power, a kind of "physical logic", etc. Those are things you can look for. You can also assess whether someone knows a form or not; weird pauses in places that don't make sense, restarts... Yes, you can be "fooled" by someone who doesn't stop and rolls through an error. Or wowed by a great performer doing a subpar form. But, y'know... it's a competition based in notable part on esthetics. That's kind of the point, isn't it?
Interesting. I'd heard reference to these before, but never realized how very stylized they were.
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