That's true, they don't! I've read that some think that e.g. Naifanchi shodan is a good ground fighting kata, but I think that is over-analysis. In my opinion there's a reason why kata do not teach groundfighting: the idea of self-defence is to "take care" of your opponent as quickly and efficiently as you can. In that situation you don't go to ground and start wrestling with him, especially since he might have some friends nearby.
Exactly
exile,
I have read Abernethy's articles and downloaded his free e-books.
He is on the flip side of what I mentioned in my opinion. A kata extremist!! Claiming that EVERYTHING is contained within kata is a far stretch. Kata does not contain groundfighting(I've never seen a ground kata),nor does it contain farmer burns wrestling, nor does it contain ufc style submission holds,lol. He has some good applications,but no doubt that a majority of them can be thrown out with the bathwater and have no relation to the kata he claims.
I don't know which side is worse. The kata blocking multi-opponents, or the kata-groundfighters,lol.
Kata is what it is, it has good fighting applications, it doesn't need anything added to it to make it seem more legit, or deadly, or complete.
Just my opinion.
BTW, funny how kata never contained groundfighting before 1991.
Guys—don't jump to conclusions about what IA is saying. His chapter `Karate on the ground' in
Bunkai Jutsu makes it clear that the groundfighting techs he's extracting from the katas are not submission moves as in BJJ or judo; they are destruction moves designed to allow the karateka to get
off the ground before his attacker, and what they typically consist of is the same kind of locks, pins and hyperextensions, along with strikes, that are taught in the kata, just rotated 90º so that you apply them horizontally rather than vertically. Biomechanically, they work the same way. As he says,
That is not to say that there are not groundfighting techniques in the kata. Pinan Godan executes a cross strangle to a thrown opponent who is now on the floor. Kushanku coontains a takedown into a floor-fighting neck crank, etc. but these are exceptions rather than the rule. The katas perfer to demonstrate their grappling principles from a vertical position. This is because being vertical is the preferred option and the katas always encourage the correct strategy.
In IA's DVD on the Pinan katas, he demonstrates particularaly clearly how joint-breaking techniques that follow directly from the kata, applied vertically, can be applied with little modification on the ground. He has a whole book,
Karate's Grappling Methods which shows how familiar kata control+strike scenarios can be applies either vertically or horizontally, and he offers citations from some of the early karate masters, such as Egami and Motobu, making it clear that throws and unbalancig movements designed to take the attacker to the ground, and then finishing him off there, were considered part of karate from the very beginning.
The problem I think is that `groundfighting' has come to mean, techniques for perpetuating a fight on the ground. But the kind of applications of kata that IA has in mind are not about continuing the fight on the ground, but about damaging the opponent while he is on the ground and you are in close contact with him, so that you can regain your feet as early as possible. The groundfighting strategy here is not that of judo, wrestling, or other martial arts/sports in which the ground is the agreed-upon venue for the combat, but rather the same one-strike/one kill (or incapacitation, anyway) approach—basically, seek to disable the attacker with a terminal strike at the very earliest chance, with every move either constituting that strike or setting it up—that the kata contain and exhibit in the vertical dimension. IA hardly thinks, as his writing makes clear, that BJJ is part of kata; the two systems have fundamentally different strategic plans, so it would be surprising if their tactics looked anything like each other. But what he's saying is, kata strategy and tactics can be applied with little modification in either plane, and he demonstrates this at length in his work.
