How does the future look

[terryl965]

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?

[MJS]

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

I would imagine people will continue to train and spread the various arts to others.


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

I suppose the above answer applies here as well. There are many people out there dedicated to the arts. Its those people who pass the arts on to others, their students pass it on, etc.


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

People or arts? People: I really have no idea. I mean, look at something like the Ultimate Fighter. That show is about up and coming fighters. Many of them have moved on to actually have a chance to fight in the UFC.

Arts: Way too many to choose from. :)


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

Thats debateable. Again, too many to pick from. Depending on how well known your art is, how well you spread the art, any number of them can be on top.

[terryl965]

Mike I about the UFC but beside them who else?

[Darth F.Takeda]

MMA is going to hurt Traditional arts in the perception of the average person.

People are allready of a mind that if you cant use it in the Octagon, it's not real.

Unless a big name UFC fighter runs afoul of a traditional artist and is killed by the artist. I think that will happen someday, these guys think they are the be all end all of fighting, they come across a Fillipino master and it's going to be lesson time.

RBSD will continue to get bigger.

Trad schools are going to have to add a RBSD flavour to their arts, if they want to atract serious SD students.

I'll just continue to meld JJJ,Judo and BJJ with FMA/IMA and not worry to much about everything else.

[Steel Tiger]

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

The future of the martial arts is very strong. I can see in the resurgence of interest in the history of the arts and the new developments in mixing and fusing arts as keeping the arts strong and vibrant for decades to come. We may see some new arts emerging as well.



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

As much as some believe that TKD has lost its roots, I think that it and modern Wushu will keep martial arts in the general consciousness. Again, the current fondness for the history and roots of the arts will combine with the mass movements to keep smaller arts alive. We are not losing diversity in the arts. We are, in fact, increasing diversity as arts from different regions re-emerge.



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

The people I see coming to be personalities in the arts are those from what I consider the three main growth areas of the arts - TKD, modern Wushu, and MMA. Unfortunately, while I can see these being the growth areas, they are also those areas of the arts that are leaving behind their roots to an extent.



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

TKD has Olympic competition to offer as an incentive, so it is going to stay big for a long time. The Chinese government is seriously pushing modern Wushu as the future of CMAs, and have made it such a huge beast that it will cater to just about anybody. MMA offers a taste of realism. European arts are re-emerging and are finding a wide and enthusiastic audience.

It seems to me that traditional CMAs and JMAs are being overwhelmed and some major effort is going to be needed to keep them strong.

[grydth]

At least regionally, from what I see of my daughters' Goju-Ryu karate school, I'd expect continued growth. There's a really strong cadre of people, an enthusiastic attitude around the dojo.... and I am aware of others like this one. I see them thriving, and deservedly so, through the next decade in central New York.

Nationally, I fear Tai Chi is about to suffer the same fadish fame as befell Yoga and Pilates. This is no blessing, and most of the sheeple crowding us off the floor will be gone as soon as the next hot activity is announced. A plague of locusts, grumbles me....

The worst possible scenario is political interference. A barrage of crime or terrorism, a little media frenzy..... and we could wind up with other versions of New York's fundamentally irrational law on martial arts weapons. Whether its right wing repression or a left wing nanny state, there is always the threat of politicians telling us to: hand in our katanas before we put someone's eye out... stop that aikido before you break your neck....terrorists went to that karate dojo...you don't need FMA to defend yourself.... sorry, liability concerns prohibit that extreme Tai Chi.... stop teaching violence - after all, it's for the children.:barf:

[stone_dragone]

I think that youtube and other internet video outlets will continue to bring certain skillsets and styles to the public eye. In the 50's through the mid 80's books and a few magazines were the main media outlet for supplementing training.

80's to 90's saw a major increase in VHS (and later DVD's) as the primary supplementation method.

The 21st century will continue to see the Internet as a growing supplemental information source...I pray the day never comes that the internet, video or books become the Primary source of instruction, however.

[HKphooey]

I think things will come full circle. People will want to go back to some traditional values and history.

[exile]

I see the future of the MAs as brighter than it has been in a long time. Here's my thinking:

a brilliant group of historically very well-informed, non-authoritarian and experimentally-minded TMAists has emerged in the western world, centered in the UK but rapidly expanding elsewhere, who have (i) rediscovered the CQ street-defense roots of the TMAs and the crucial role of forms in encoding, in somewhat covert form, sensible and effective combat techniques, (ii) worked out realistic, non-compliant combat-sparring protocols for allowing practitioners to hone their fighting skills against untrained violent assailants with a minimum of time spent in hospital ERs, and (iii) have learned to write in a lucid, logically satisfying way that fully motivates their historical perspective (based on detailed knowledge of sources and a refusal to indulge in, or tolerate, a romantic mystification of the TMAs fed by mythmongering and legendary history) and logical analyses of kihon movements and the relationship between these movements on the one hand and combat moves on the other. The members of this group do serious research—empirically-based observations feeding formation of general principles—whose ultimate goal is the reduction of the bewildering variety of MA techs to the interaction of overarching strategies with biomechanical specifics. Once these principles are learned and fully understood, and the biomechanical conditions we have to work with given human skeletal and neurological facts, many tactical outcomes can be deduced directly from the formal patterns (kata, hyungs, hsings) of the TMAs. If these methods of application (derived from the forms by general principles and a systematic approach to interpreting pattern movements according to these principles) are trained under intensely realistic conditions as per (ii) above, the result will be confident, effective fighters capable of defending themselves as well in the 21st century as the small, elite group of Asian MAists who gave us the TMAs were able to do in the 19th and early 20th.

This realization has already led to a tremendous resurgence of interest in bunkai for TMA forms, and has provided both livelihoods and pulpits for MAists such as Iain Abernethy, Bill Burgar, Rick Clark, Patrick McCarthy, Stuart Anslow, Simon O'Neil and increasingly many others to both carry out their research and teaching in this area and to publicize their findings to a wider audience. The focus on various MAs, whether the CMAs, `traditional' karate, `old school' TKD/TSD, and others, will I think eventually lead to a profound break between the tournament competition-centered activities of a large group of MA institutions and practitioners, on the one hand, and the CQ SD-based training of a smaller, but equally devoted group of practitioners who see their arts as expressions of jutsu, rather than athletic performance or spectacle. And this latter group, I believe, will continue to grow well into the long-term future.

So, somewhat uncharacteristically, I'm completely optimistic about the future of the MAs... :)

[still learning]

Hello, First! The populations of the world today is a little over 6.3 billion people...in the next 10,20 years this fiqure will increase to over 9 billion people.

From what I understand? ....our resources will be decease of water, food, and other natural resources. NOT sure if the world populations have enought food, water & shelter? ...in 2018,2028

Due to overcrowding.....expect more violence, need to fight to keep what you have in the future?

I know this is NOT what you meant? ......Crimes in American will grow and more parole's more crime? ...never ending and always repeating...FBI statis shows 70% of crimes are committed by repeat offenders...who are getting out on paroles so easy now days.......keep training!

Aloha (Hawaii's population is a little over 1.3 million people living on 7 islands...and getting crowded too....) see map for size? ...very small place!

[MJS]

Mike I about the UFC but beside them who else?

If I had to guess, I'd have to say that the arts that have a high rate of competition will continue to move forward. Of course, this isn't to say that arts that don't put competing on a high scale, will fail.

[Kacey]

Hello, First! The populations of the world today is a little over 6.3 billion people...in the next 10,20 years this fiqure will increase to over 9 billion people.

From what I understand? ....our resources will be decease of water, food, and other natural resources. NOT sure if the world populations have enought food, water & shelter? ...in 2018,2028

Due to overcrowding.....expect more violence, need to fight to keep what you have in the future?

I know this is NOT what you meant? ......Crimes in American will grow and more parole's more crime? ...never ending and always repeating...FBI statis shows 70% of crimes are committed by repeat offenders...who are getting out on paroles so easy now days.......keep training!

Aloha (Hawaii's population is a little over 1.3 million people living on 7 islands...and getting crowded too....) see map for size? ...very small place!

Um.... what does this have to do with the original question about the future of Martial Arts? Is there a correlation here that I'm missing?

[Darth F.Takeda]

Um.... what does this have to do with the original question about the future of Martial Arts? Is there a correlation here that I'm missing?


To me he is pointing out the increasing need to study the arts in the future,it's going to get harder to posses weapons in some places in the future.

I do have a feeling I will make a decent living in the future teaching the over civilized how to dismantle his fellow man.

[newGuy12]

Right. In the coming police state, weapons will be confiscated.

Furthermore, the Arts will concentrate more on reality, to protect oneself. The harshness that lies ahead will make this necessary.

If it gets very bad, perhaps people will band together in "ryus" to protect each other!

[newGuy12]

The worst possible scenario is political interference. A barrage of crime or terrorism, a little media frenzy..... and we could wind up with other versions of New York's fundamentally irrational law on martial arts weapons. Whether its right wing repression or a left wing nanny state, there is always the threat of politicians telling us to: hand in our katanas before we put someone's eye out... stop that aikido before you break your neck....terrorists went to that karate dojo...you don't need FMA to defend yourself.... sorry, liability concerns prohibit that extreme Tai Chi.... stop teaching violence - after all, it's for the children.:barf:

Man, oh Man. If that's not the truth, I don't know what is!

[tellner]

We're in an unprecedented situation. Whatever you want you can find. Unless you try very hard you can't remain isolated. One of the good things is that this sort of ferment is the time when people get creative. It's also a time when deadwood gets pruned and things get tested. The ones that don't have it or can't adapt go away. The ones that had something real or can learn to make their stuff work against new challenges survive or at least contribute to the next cycle.

New doesn't mean good. Old doesn't mean good. Tradition is just stories and habits that have a patina from being handled for a long time. If they serve a useful purpose then G-d willing and the river don't rise some of it will be incorporated into whatever comes next. If they don't or the means and ends have parted ways the tradition is worthless and will die off like almost every martial arts style has.

The "traditionalists" pooh-pooh MMA. "What we do is too deadly, too pure, too steeped in the dust of centuries to sully itself with those crude brawlers. They'll come around, wear white pajamas, bellow the dojo kun and do our katas some day. Honest."

Today's knuckle draggers say "If you're so hot let's throw you into a cage with a twenty five year old Body Nazi who boxes and wrestles. You won't last a minute because your **** is weak."

What can you say to either set of fanatics? They've both got a glimmer or two of truth, and at least the Octagonal Revisionists are willing to walk their talk. But the flip side of the coin "How do you know if you haven't tried it?" is "Why reinvent the wheel every twenty years? We've already got a diagram and can throw in the idea of an axle, a brake and putting four of them around a box with a horse hitched up in front."

The traditional uses of old field-expedient weapons like the kama, nunchaku, oar and turtle-shell-and-big-knife is fading away. It's a shame that most of it won't be preserved. The idea of turning everyday objects into weapons is part of the martial arts world. It's just the particular objects that change. The shotel is the descendant of the kopesh. It's obscure and almost forgotten because we don't harvest teff with sickles anymore and live in the age of the AK-47. The Japanese don't spend as much time kneeling as they used to. In another generation one can expect that even Aikido will have de-emphasized the knee-walking portion of the program.

In the past the real advances have come during times of change and of increased interaction between cultures which didn't previously run into each other. Japan before the "Floating World" era was a nasty brutal place with wars, bandits and deadly squabbles between the nobility. A lot of important advances were made in the sciences of war. For the next few centuries afterwards there weren't wars, and civil unrest was put down efficiently. Then came the Black Ships. The times demanded a different school of fighting for a different era. Takeda gave way to Ueshiba. Juken Jutsu became more important.

The traditionalists piped up once. The new arts as exemplified by breech-loading guns turned them into hash before they could even get into bow range.

Bruce Lee and Edward William Barton-Wright were the MMA of their day. Traditional Arab and Russian martial arts came up against the superior skills of the Mongols with predictable results. What took their place was something different that was more applicable to the new conditions. Crusaders adopted Islamic arms and armor in the desert because the alternative was heatstroke.

Traditional Ju Jutsu met the new Kano Ju Jutsu (Judo) and was soundly thrashed. Of course Kano was already conversant in several older styles and used them as important parts of his new Art. When Judo traveled to Brazil it was adopted by the Gracie family and became a huge part of their family style. For a few years the Gracies reigned supreme. Then people started learning their tricks and how to counter them. The movement they started (this time around) has already changed; drop into the guard and wait for the other guy to make a mistake doesn't work nearly as well as it used to. But BJJ/GJJ will be a large part of what comes next.

That's the way the world works. That's (Lamarckian) evolution in action.

Right now we're in an unsettled period. The world has shrunk. The American Ascendancy is falling apart. If you want to find obscure European or African or Chinese-Indonesian martial arts you can do it.

It will be good for MA in general. The tropes are easy to recognize - the gi, the bowing, the Octagon, the mount. spinning kicks and so on. But it's also the age of the reality check. You can't get away with passing off horse apples as Golden Delicious anymore. People learn.

So here's what I think we're going to see...

There will be more martial arts in evidence everywhere. We'll see a lot of good stuff disappear in the same way that Sumatrans drink Nescafe and the Ethiopians are cutting down the scions of the original coffee bushes to plant khat; it's what all the cool kids do, and the cheap crap from Vietnam is cornering the market. Of course MMA and other reality-based sports and fighting systems will travel as well. The shift towards them will continue in new areas. People who do things simply because of tradition will find themselves marginalized. The world is changing, and "we've always done it this way, so sit down and shut up" doesn't push the same buttons it used to.

Along with that will be an increased market for Reality-Based Self Defense of one sort or another. Not that long ago everyone had the X-block, upward block, downward block and set-piece disarms. That was all you needed to know about knife defense. It turned out not to be true. And besides, the FMA showed up both in the sense of arriving and in the sense of showing up others' deficiencies. Eight or nine years ago almost nobody was talking about working on the ground. Now it is de rigeur. I don't see that changing. Multiple attackers is the next great marketing and "We always had that" frontier. Down the road it might be group tactics, but that's a long way away.

As the world, at least the English speaking part of it, has moved towards a more politically repressive and control-happy system there will be increasing calls for regulation and monitoring of anyone involved in what is seen as effective combatives. There will be plenty for the military and police. Arts which stress loyalty, patriotism, obedience and respect for authority will be smiled upon. Anything that teaches people to think for themselves or gives deadly skills to those un-vetted by the Powers that Be will be under increasing pressure.

I see science - exercise physiology, sports medicine and the like having more influence on training at least for the self defenser and the serious martial athlete (another effect of the growth of MMA sporting events).

The Mixed Martial Arts sports scene will continue to gain market share and total adherents. It's beginning to tap into the River of Money big time. There will be fads and fashions, but I can't see the mix of kickboxing and wrestling in the larger sense losing ground to much of anything in the near future. WWE will suffer. Small loss. Boxing will continue to circle the drain and wonder why.

Weapons arts like FMA and Silat will continue a slow steady growth. I don't see them getting all that big.

To the extent that they help people learn some of the older training methods like kata will get a boost. Since most teachers frankly never past step one or two in their understanding of how to use patterned movement it will be short-lived. Technique, form and training methods that are too culture-specific or done "just because" won't last long. Look for them to be modified and for the older stuff to provide sizzle for the practical sausage.

[MarkBarlow]

The only certainty is that something new and shiny will catch the public's attention. That's not to say that the current "hot" style isn't viable, just that fads come and go.
Since I began training in the 70s I've seen kung fu, jeet kune do, arnis/escrima, ninjutsu and BJJ all proclaimed to be the best thing since sliced bread. The m.a. media, whether it's magazines or the Web, have to promote some art above the rest. Where's the fun is saying that all arts have strengths and weaknesses and it's up to the individual to decide what works best for them? Heck no, pick a martial art and say that a white belt in this art can whip a black belt in any other martial art!

In the early 70s, it was not at all unusual to see karate/tkd schools offering kung fu and I'm sure that the TV show KUNG FU had nothing to do with it. It's the same way with BJJ. Pick up a phone book and look under Martial Arts and it's even money that at least one karate or tkd school in your area is also offer BJJ, whether the instructor is qualified or not.

Eventually, the fad dies down and something new takes its place. I'm still hoping to find someone to teach me Combat Tai Chi.

[grydth]

The only certainty is that something new and shiny will catch the public's attention. That's not to say that the current "hot" style isn't viable, just that fads come and go.
Since I began training in the 70s I've seen kung fu, jeet kune do, arnis/escrima, ninjutsu and BJJ all proclaimed to be the best thing since sliced bread. The m.a. media, whether it's magazines or the Web, have to promote some art above the rest. Where's the fun is saying that all arts have strengths and weaknesses and it's up to the individual to decide what works best for them? Heck no, pick a martial art and say that a white belt in this art can whip a black belt in any other martial art!

In the early 70s, it was not at all unusual to see karate/tkd schools offering kung fu and I'm sure that the TV show KUNG FU had nothing to do with it. It's the same way with BJJ. Pick up a phone book and look under Martial Arts and it's even money that at least one karate or tkd school in your area is also offer BJJ, whether the instructor is qualified or not.

Eventually, the fad dies down and something new takes its place. I'm still hoping to find someone to teach me Combat Tai Chi.

Do you feel these fads are of any benefit to the MA.... or simply something inevitable to be endured? I am dreading Tai Chi becoming a new fad.

Don't want to divert the thread, but I'd beware of anyone offering "Combat Tai Chi" to new students. The only way I received instruction in the martial applications - and it was bruising instruction - was to study the form for about a year, pass a proficiency test, wait and practice solo several months, go through the form again - from the beginning - to polish every posture.... only then would the sifu teach self defense applications.

[Steel Tiger]

Do you feel these fads are of any benefit to the MA.... or simply something inevitable to be endured? I am dreading Tai Chi becoming a new fad.

Don't want to divert the thread, but I'd beware of anyone offering "Combat Tai Chi" to new students. The only way I received instruction in the martial applications - and it was bruising instruction - was to study the form for about a year, pass a proficiency test, wait and practice solo several months, go through the form again - from the beginning - to polish every posture.... only then would the sifu teach self defense applications.

I actually think we are living in the Tai Chi fad now. It is running parallel to the reality-based competition fad. Unfortunately the Tai Chi fad is driven by the new age community and I can only see that growing in the future. Real taiji may really suffer from this and the strange emphasis coming from the Chinese government with regard to taiji in modern Wushu.

[still learning]

Um.... what does this have to do with the original question about the future of Martial Arts? Is there a correlation here that I'm missing?

Hello, The more people around you? the more chances we will need to learn some kind of martial art to protect ourselves.

In a small town...mostly likely less troubles,bullies,bad guys....in a major city the problems increase's.

In a crowded world? .....problems will increase as the populations grow! There fore more people would want to learn.

2nd....traditional martial art will fall back? ...because people want to learn REAL self-defence that works....and be train in a very short period of time! (New wave of training/learning will be found)

Like old computers? .....the old ways will be obsolete.....because the NEW ways of learning things faster will be found!

3. Kata's will NO longer be USE because they found it is not a great training tool! (see seals training, Krav Magv,Kick boxing,MMA's etc)

4, You ask what I thinK? ....The future of Martial arts will change to be a shorter and more effective, with real real robots,and similations training from computers- like Airlines training in the box!

5.Hopefully crime and bad guys will have stricter sentences in the future?

6. Some people will still keep some tradition ways (just a few).....Many will change to the NEW WAVE!

[tshadowchaser]

On the dark side of seeing tomorrow, I see more and more schools with names that have been inventedted and mixed ( chinese, filipino, japanese all togeather) along with the self appointed high ranks.
I see a future where it will be hard to tell who realy studied and has knowledge from those that open up wschools with little knowledge in any one system other than a fews months here and there.

I see the need for more selfdefence classes vs actual hard long tme study of an art

I see, as has been said befor, every 5 -10 years a new fad that is the only thing anyone should study because it is the end all of al the martial arts ( at least for that day, LOL)


I see prices of training going so high that the average or below middle classs can no long study

I see more legistration being made against those who practice the martial arts because of idiots and thugs who commit crimes with little or no real knowledge of the arts but they saw it in a movie or bougth a some martial looking equipment somewhere

[exile]

Kata's will NO longer be USE because they found it is not a great training tool! (see seals training, Krav Magv,Kick boxing,MMA's etc)


Katas are a great training tool if you use them to train with. The British Combat Association is the MA federation which is most devoted to application of TMAs to practical street defense, and among their most active members are people like Iain Abernethy and Stuart Anslow, who advocate reality-based training built entirely on the combat principles encoded in katas. Who is the `they' you allude to who `found it is not a great training tool'?

There are so many threads around on the way in which kata encode realistic fighting strategies, and how to parse kata for that purpose, that it seems bizarre that this point can still come up on MT. Check out... say, just this (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53903) and this (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29821) thread, for starters.

The basic, fundamental, simple point, still_learning, is this: katas are not a training method in themselves. They are a choreographic manual of MA principles expressed as movement sequences which are adaptable as distinct tactics to a wide variety of up-against-the-wall street defense situations; a training method, in contrast, is a way of (i) extracting the combat applications of a particular set of movements—of subsequences of the kata, in other words; and (ii) developing conditioned fighting reflexes by specific training protocols allowing practitioners to apply the technical resources revealed in (i) to live, unscripted, violent combat. Kata embody a skill set; training methods are what you use in order to develop automatic responses applying that skill set. The content of a branch of mathematics is a different kind of thing from the teaching methods used to give students the ability to use that branch of mathematics. There is French, and then there is how you go about teaching French; there are many, many approaches to language teaching methods, some much more effective than others, but it's the same language you are trying to teach in all cases.

Learning how to decode kata and compile them into their separate combat scenarios corresponded to a level of knowledge reserved in traditional karate for extremely advanced, gifted and trustworthy students; kasai no genri is the Japanese expression for the general method of decoding kata into sets of effective combat sequences. On their own, as members of the BCA have demonstrated, kata contain some of the most devestating CQ techniques ever devised. Geoff Thompson, a sixth dan Shotokan karateka and probably the most experienced and authoritative professional streetfighter in the UK (bouncer and club security in Coventry, one of the nastier bar/club scenes in Britain, for more than a decade) writes that


To those of us who have really studied—and I do mean really studied—the art of karate, its potency (though often hidden at a glance) has always been... obvious. When I first studied arts like western boxing, wrestling, judo, Thai, etc., and when I first started to teach those arts within my (Shotokan) karate curriculum, I was more than a little surprised... when my peers accused me of `abandoning karate' and teaching techniques peripheral to the syllabus. Surprised because the techniques were actually in the karate katas (but not taught in the syllabus)...'

(Foreword to Iain Abernethy's Karate's Grappling Methods, UK: Neth Publishing, 2000, p. i.) So don't blame the kata for the shortcomings of the dojos and dojangs who won't teach the multitude of effective tecniques that are there, latent just below the surface of the kata, or won't do so in a realistic `alive' way. There is no defense system on the face of the earth that will be effective if it's not taught in as street-realistic a way as possible. And yes, that includes SEALs training, Krav Maga... any of it.

[grydth]

I actually think we are living in the Tai Chi fad now. It is running parallel to the reality-based competition fad. Unfortunately the Tai Chi fad is driven by the new age community and I can only see that growing in the future. Real taiji may really suffer from this and the strange emphasis coming from the Chinese government with regard to taiji in modern Wushu.

I believe we can divide the potentially negative outside forces into three clear types: governments, New Agers and fashionistas.

I wish now is as bad as it will get here with Tai Chi as a fad..... but there's an awful lot of miles between Canberra and central New York. Fads and movements may well be different in our two countries, in both type and timing.

The New Age movement struck Tai Chi in the USA years ago (not to mention the neutered and demartialized abomination known as Tai Chi Chi). I started a thread on New Age some time ago, and was initially shocked by the volume and vehemence of the negative reaction.

To me, though, the long term attempt by the New Ager's to co opt the art is separate and distinct from the media driven mass market fads, the "what's hot, what's not" type of fads that drive the fashionable sheeple to and fro. These latter individuals are shallow - and very temporary - intruders who will be gone as soon as the style gurus tell the herd to move along. They are but a passing, though great, annoyance.

[grydth]

On the dark side of seeing tomorrow, I see more and more schools with names that have been inventedted and mixed ( chinese, filipino, japanese all togeather) along with the self appointed high ranks.
I see a future where it will be hard to tell who realy studied and has knowledge from those that open up wschools with little knowledge in any one system other than a fews months here and there.

I see the need for more selfdefence classes vs actual hard long tme study of an art

I see, as has been said befor, every 5 -10 years a new fad that is the only thing anyone should study because it is the end all of al the martial arts ( at least for that day, LOL)


I see prices of training going so high that the average or below middle classs can no long study

I see more legistration being made against those who practice the martial arts because of idiots and thugs who commit crimes with little or no real knowledge of the arts but they saw it in a movie or bougth a some martial looking equipment somewhere

Speaking of 'reinvented and pushed together' for a vision of a monstrous future - I am lately seeing these classes offered around here that purport to be mixtures of pilates, yoga, Tai Chi and various other ingredients.

Now, who is creating these Frankenstein monsters? Elders in established syatems with decades of experience in martial arts - - - or thirty-something's with a smattering of training (at best) who are hoping to cash in as 'fitness guru's'?

What benefits will anyone get from this martial pot roast? To me they look like scams offering little benefit and potential for actual harm.

[Steel Tiger]

Katas are a great training tool if you use them to train with. The British Combat Association is the MA federation which is most devoted to application of TMAs to practical street defense, and among their most active members are people like Iain Abernethy and Stuart Anslow, who advocate reality-based training built entirely on the combat principles encoded in katas. Who is the `they' you allude to who `found it is not a great training tool'?

I think that the current intense investigation of the essential nature of kata will actually lead to a redevelopment of interest. It will run concurrently with MMA-style pragmatism, but it will continue and grow stronger.

[still learning]

HELLO, The question was ask about the future of martial arts? and I really believe Kata's purpose will change or be just for traditional training.

In a real fight? who fights like KATA"S...? .....Watch mix martial artist? Do they train in KATA"S ? Boxing? is Kata better than getting into the ring and box!

Muay thai? ....do they do alot of Kata's? (like the traditional Heian kata's)?

It is easy to believe what has being taught to you....( I have a Black belt in Shotokan/Goju Karate...and I had to learn Heian Katas........from two different schools while growing up. Today I do Kempo and we have kata's to learn, only because our Professor wants us to learn them (just a few)..but is NOT the main part of our training.

IF Kata's was very effective? ....All the military armies in the world will be having their soldiers doing Kata every day.....Kata is a preset forms...real fights do not have rules or forms....anything goes!

These are my thoughts on this about the future of KATA's .....LOOK at other sports...would Kata's be the best way to train? ....tennis, golf,bowling,football,rugby,basketball,westling,bo xing, etc? ....REAL practice is the best way to train....not imaginary forms that is preset!

Time will prove this belief of Kata's effectiveness and purpose! Only the future will know? The best way to learn how to fight for real? ...is to fight for real! anything less is not the real thing? ...ask any soldier who being to war? ....training like real is NOT the same as real?

Many of us practice gun defence....in a safe place with partners that we trust.......Easy to take away the gun and destory our attacker.....
(when a person points a real gun and threatens you in the streets? ....it will be different for sure ?...your reactions...? and thinking will be different?

....Kata's a lost art? ...in the future? maybe ...maybe not? ....let's see what the future brings..............Just my thoughts and feelings on this...Aloha

PS: When I learn defensive driving? ....NO Kata....yet I learned!

[Cirdan]

IF Kata's was very effective? ....All the military armies in the world will be having their soldiers doing Kata every day.....

They do.

[terryl965]

Still Learning let me ask you this question if Kata's Poomsae or forms are worthless, why do we teach them? The answer is simple if you really understand all the application in them, there is more self defense movement in a Kata, poomsae or form then you probaly understand.

I'm not trying to start a fight but usually when someone says they are useless what they really mean is they do not understand all the application and then once I teach them it they have a whole different lunderstanding of them. Maybe you just need to be tought all the application to fully understand.

Then on the other hand maybe you do know them but do not see the value they bring.

[MJS]

HELLO, The question was ask about the future of martial arts? and I really believe Kata's purpose will change or be just for traditional training.

In a real fight? who fights like KATA"S...? .....Watch mix martial artist? Do they train in KATA"S ? Boxing? is Kata better than getting into the ring and box!

Muay thai? ....do they do alot of Kata's? (like the traditional Heian kata's)?

It is easy to believe what has being taught to you....( I have a Black belt in Shotokan/Goju Karate...and I had to learn Heian Katas........from two different schools while growing up. Today I do Kempo and we have kata's to learn, only because our Professor wants us to learn them (just a few)..but is NOT the main part of our training.

IF Kata's was very effective? ....All the military armies in the world will be having their soldiers doing Kata every day.....Kata is a preset forms...real fights do not have rules or forms....anything goes!

These are my thoughts on this about the future of KATA's .....LOOK at other sports...would Kata's be the best way to train? ....tennis, golf,bowling,football,rugby,basketball,westling,bo xing, etc? ....REAL practice is the best way to train....not imaginary forms that is preset!

Time will prove this belief of Kata's effectiveness and purpose! Only the future will know? The best way to learn how to fight for real? ...is to fight for real! anything less is not the real thing? ...ask any soldier who being to war? ....training like real is NOT the same as real?

Many of us practice gun defence....in a safe place with partners that we trust.......Easy to take away the gun and destory our attacker.....
(when a person points a real gun and threatens you in the streets? ....it will be different for sure ?...your reactions...? and thinking will be different?

....Kata's a lost art? ...in the future? maybe ...maybe not? ....let's see what the future brings..............Just my thoughts and feelings on this...Aloha

PS: When I learn defensive driving? ....NO Kata....yet I learned!

You are making an apples to oranges debate here. Seems like you're also guilty of falling into that same category as people who watch youtube and base an arts effectiveness off that, as well as feel that if it doesn't 'work in the ring' then its useless.

I think the future will hold the same things that people are doing today. They will gear their art towards their goals. Kata is no good because the military isn't doing it? Umm...ok. Actually, if you think about it, kata is nothing more than a compilation of techniques put together in a series of preset moves. And boxing does have kata....its called:

jab, cross, hook
jab, jab, uppercut
hook low, hook high

The list can go on and on. Their 'kata' is their combos. They are preset patterns of punches. And they draw what they need according to whats presented to them at the time. Just like a kata, if you really understand it, you can draw out certain moves that'll aid you.

I find it interesting how people can dismiss things because this person or that art or whatever doesnt do them. Just because one person can't make something work, does not mean the next guy can't either. There are techniques in the Kenpo system, that I personally am not fond of. But because I'm not fond of them, doesn't mean I still don't teach them. Perhaps someone else will find that tech. to be their bread and butter move.

Mike

[exile]

HELLO, The question was ask about the future of martial arts? and I really believe Kata's purpose will change or be just for traditional training.

In a real fight? who fights like KATA"S...? .....Watch mix martial artist? Do they train in KATA"S ? Boxing? is Kata better than getting into the ring and box!

Ask a professional boxer, or a high-ranking amateur, if they learned to box effectively by just `getting into the ring and box'.

Look... Combat Hapkido does not have katas. And it is, as Gm. Pelligrini has explained repeatedly, strictly a practical fighting system. But if you look at many of the TKD hyungs, based in most cases very literally on the Shotokan katas, you see in the kata movements themselves many of the same combat patterns: deflect/trap/strike; pin/throw... in subsequences of standard kata.

Funny you should bring up the Pinan/Heian kata: I have three books and a long detailed DVD sitting on my desk in front of me now, each of which goes through the Pinans movement by movement and shows exactly how these are applicable to standard street-attack movements. The analyses by Iain Abernethy on his DVD are I think particularly effective. I hate to have to say it, but it sounds to me as though your views of kata are based on your having missed the past ten years or so of detailed research by experts on practical combat use of TMAs, guys like Geoff Thompson, Peter Consterdine, Peyton Quinn and others, who have been involved in hundreds of violent encounters in the course of their careers and who have a very good idea of what works and doesn't. You apparently weren't reading with sufficient care what Thompson said in the passage I quoted from him in my prior post, or you'd have noticed that you already have and answer to your question: he fights like the kata. Did you miss the part where he points out that the effective techniques that have emerged in `western boxing, wrestling, judo, Thai boxing etc.' are built into the kata themselves already??

If you genuinely are `still learning', then I think you'd want to acquaint yourself with the huge, deep recent literature, based on first-hand hard experimental work, that has developed since the end of the 1990s on the combat methods encoded in kata. And I think you'd try to base your view of kata on something other than the now obsolete literal-minded assumption that the kata are to be taken literally: that a `block' is really a block, that a retracted fist is really a chambering move, that a crane stance is really a way of standing there (as vs. a knee kick to an assailant's forcibly lowered head/upper body, as a result of the previous kata moves). Try to take in some new information on the subject, before jumping to conclusions which ignore some of the best thinking that's ever been done on the technical side of the MAs. Take the idea of `still learning' seriously, and give some attention to, e.g., the following: Iain Abernethy's Karate's Grappling Methods, Bunkai Jutsu: the Practical Application of Karate Kata, and his free e-books on the combat system inherent in the Pinan/Heian set, available here (http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_home.asp) (note the further link at the very top of the page)—as well as his detailed DVD on the same topic; Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder's The Way of Kata—they're talking fighting applications of Okinawan Goju Ryu kata, which should be of interest to you; Bill Burgar's Five Years, One Kata, about the wealth of combat scenario he was able to extract from Gojushiho after studying only that one kata, exclusively, for five years; and maybe one of the other ind-depth study of the fighting applications of the Pinan/Heians... say, Gennosuke Higaki's Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi. And that's just for starters. If you truly want to be `still learning', then you have to pay attention to the new knowledge that the current generation of karateka and KMAists have discovered about the true meaning and intentions behind the form of the kata—why they are that particular sequence of moves, rather than something different.

And you also should look at some of the work that's been done on how the system encoded in the kata should be practiced for real-time use. They are not the same thing. Kata contain, e.g., a demonstration of how an arm pin followed by an elbow strike to the face can be `cashed out' as a finishing neck twist, bringing the attacker to the ground hard (the danger is that he will never get up again); but to learn how to actually get your own body to implement that series of forcing moves, so that the attacker, as noncompliant as he is, has no choice about what happens next, you have to move with precise balance, timing and accuracy, not `remembering' what to do but knowing what to do. That is something independent of the combat scenario you're training; it's a matter of internalizing the movements so that you can do them in real time under the chaotic conditions of a real fight—which is what the last chapter in Abernethy's Bunkai Jutsu, or his free e-book on Appled Karate (also available at his website), or Peyton Quinn's Real Fighting: Adrenaline Stress Conditioning through Scenario-Based Training, maybe the gold-standard work on this subject.

Or you can ignore all this work. It won't matter to progressive TMAists who see in it the real future of the MAs, and who will work hard to develop the analytic skills and combat abilities that the sources I've cited inspire them to pursue. In his classic short monograph The Pavement Arena, Geoff Thompson points out,


[I]...for the karateka wishing to pursue knowledge of self-defense, kata are a treasure trove of hidden techniques that can be adapted directly to a street situation... it's a matter of perspective— if you want to see them as unrealistic and impractical you will. If however you are perceptive enough to see, you will find that they offer enormous benefits to the street-oriented.

A word to the wise, eh? And if you choose to disregard it, well, it won't hurt anyone else... the point is, the future of the MAs as effective fighting systems hardly entails throwing away the stored, encrypted knowledge provided by the past simply because we're unable, through lack of cleverness or deliberate blindness, to unlock the secrets that are waiting there, as Thompson says, to be discovered, does it? Again, I'd suggest you look over the MT threads I gave you the links to in my previous posts; if you do, you'll notice that the kind of claims you've made about kata have been made before, and have been refuted in detail. But again, if you choose not to, it won't hurt anyone but you.

[CoryKS]

I think MA will explode into a full-blown mainstream activity. There are three factors that I believe will contribute to this:

1) An increase in high-profile rape/abduction cases in the national media inc. the internet;

2) The growing use of MA-themed workout programs being adopted by health clubs. Many facilities incorporate the punching/kicking combos popularized by Tae-bo or capoeira-based programs;

3) Media exposure through programs like UFC, Ultimate Fighter, Tapout, and the like; and

4) Availability of information about the various styles through the internet;

Ok, four things. ;) It comes down to exposure. Used to be that martial arts was something that was hidden behind a tinted window or a garish sign in a low-rent neighborhood, but more people than ever are being exposed to it. They see that it's fun in the workout classes. They see how it works on television. And they see that there is a need for it through the news.

[MarkBarlow]

Do you feel these fads are of any benefit to the MA.... or simply something inevitable to be endured? I am dreading Tai Chi becoming a new fad.

Don't want to divert the thread, but I'd beware of anyone offering "Combat Tai Chi" to new students. .

Sorry, I forget that not everyone has my sense of humor...I've never heard of Combat Tai Chi and if anyone starts teaching it they owe me a percentage for thinking up the name.

I think fads bring in lots of new students and a few will remain. In that aspect it's positive. On the other hand, it brings in students with unrealistic expectations. Some poor kid has watched a few shows claiming that an art can be "mastered" in a week and than used effectively against a trained student of the same art. After a week in the dojo, they're upset that they aren't the equal of someone who's been training for 5 or 6 years and they become convinced it's all a scam. They leave looking for the next "ultimate" martial art.

[still learning]

Hello, Kata's this is just my opinion on it use! ...I see things differently than most here on this topic!

Time or in the Future..10,20,50, years from now? ...we will see it's progress in the martial arts?

As more scientific studies are done....to prove its worth or not?

Just my opinion of the use of Kata's, it may have a place in the Martial art world....BUT NO where else....is done like this for training! (preset forms)..like a dance number by the books!

There will always be two side, or more to every beliefs?) these are my beliefs and minds only....on Kata's!

Aloha

PS: Boxing jab, jab, cross etc...is NOT A KATA..and is NOT call KATA or practice like a KATA? ...not too sure how to explain the difference here? HELP!

[Blindside]

PS: Boxing jab, jab, cross etc...is NOT A KATA..and is NOT call KATA or practice like a KATA? ...not too sure how to explain the difference here? HELP!

They do kata in kabuki and taiko, it is a demonstrated sequences of moves to show correct posture, position, balance, etc.

So a jab, cross, hook is a kata, just a really short one. A coach can watch and say "watch your dip in your left shoulder, you are telegraphing the hook," "snap that jab back faster, and don't drop it early." Sound something like a critique of a karate kata? It does to me.

Lamont

[exile]

Hello, Kata's this is just my opinion on it use! ...I see things differently than most here on this topic!

Time or in the Future..10,20,50, years from now? ...we will see it's progress in the martial arts?

As more scientific studies are done....to prove its worth or not?

Just my opinion of the use of Kata's, it may have a place in the Martial art world....BUT NO where else....is done like this for training! (preset forms)..like a dance number by the books!

There will always be two side, or more to every beliefs?)these are my beliefs and minds only....on Kata's!


There may be two or more sides to every idea, sure. I may believe the earth goes 'round the sun, and you may believe that sun goes 'round the earth. I may believe that illnesses are caused by microorganisms and you may believe they're caused by evil spirits. And so on... my point is that there is a huge body of evidence which contradicts your opinions and beliefs. Now, you may (and apparently would prefer to) disregard the evidence, and as Geoff Thompson pointed out, if you refuse to look at the actual combat content of katas, you'll go on seeing them the way you do. My post, really, wasn't so much aimed at convincing you—I'm not, I have to say, all that concerned about your personal beliefs—as making clear to readers who have open minds on the subject and could go either way on the issue why they'd be much closer to the real picture if they rejected your position and adopted the one I advocated.

Reiterating that you believe what you believe is unncecessary. I'm quite happy for you to go on believing what you believe. My objective is just to explain to people why what you believe is unjustified and contradicted by current research and experimental practices, and how they'd benefit by investigating the issue of kata from a much different point of view.

[MJS]

PS: Boxing jab, jab, cross etc...is NOT A KATA..and is NOT call KATA or practice like a KATA? ...not too sure how to explain the difference here? HELP!

I'll agree with part of this. It is not called a kata per se, however, it is a preset pattern of movements, just like a Karate, TKD, or Kenpo kata. Someone who trains in a TMA, ie: TKD, Kenpo, etc., go thru kata practice. Obviously, when you use the kata for self defense, you break it down, and apply various parts, depending on what attack you're presented with.

A boxer has a number of combos. They are preset. Depending on what openings are present at the time, will dictate what combo he throws. He also does shadowboxing. Like a MA kata, he is picturing an imaginary opponent in front of him, while he goes thru the motions.

In essence, the boxing combos can be lumped into the same category as a MA kata, although its not specifically called that.

[MJS]

Just my opinion of the use of Kata's, it may have a place in the Martial art world....BUT NO where else....is done like this for training! (preset forms)..like a dance number by the books!

Again, a kata is simply a series of techniques put together. You seem to be under this misconception that when breaking down a kata, you need to do it by the book, if you wanted to use it for self defense. That is simply not the case.

I think you should take a look at this thread, specifically the first post.
http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53026

View those youtube clips. You'll see a few moves of a kata, and then those same moves applied with an opponent. Looks like self defense to me.

Mike

[still learning]

Hello, You may have to look at the defination of Kata's VS, practicing movements like "jab, jab,duck, cross" is NOT call a Kata! Yes they can be preset training movements

BUT IS NOT CALL a Kata? ....Muay Thai practice many preset movements in the rings BUT IS NOT CALLED A Kata?

One day you will see the difference and know the difference....practicing is NOT A KATA? .....

PLease tell me your meaning and difference between the two thoughts of practicing technques and KATA training? I know they are almost the same....there is a difference "hence" call two different things......

Many times when we are taughts certain things? ...we believe it to be true? ..Kata....will the future...show it truth to our training? or is there a better way?

Again...this is my feelings.....on this Aloha

Marching bands practicing formations....this is NOT CALL a KATAS?

[exile]

Hello, You may have to look at the defination of Kata's VS, practicing movements like "jab, jab,duck, cross" is NOT call a Kata! Yes they can be preset training movements

BUT IS NOT CALL a Kata? ....Muay Thai practice many preset movements in the rings BUT IS NOT CALLED A Kata?

Why would it be called a kata, s_L?? The word `kata' is Japanese. Why on earth would American and European boxers use the Japanese word for `formal pattern', when English speaking boxers, for example, have their own expression—`combo drill'—in their own language for something similar? Are you seriously suggesting that a Western combat system should use Japanese terminology? Whatever for???


One day you will see the difference and know the difference....practicing is NOT A KATA? .....

I don't find this completely coherent... but to the extent that I can make sense of it, no, practicing is not a kata. A MA kata is a formal pattern of movements which embodies certain combat techniques. A musical score is a formal pattern of note sequences which embodies certain tonal relationships. And so on. Practicing, on the other hand, is a series of actions which constitute a performance of the combat techniques, correctly understood through intelligent, realistic bunkai, or the translation of musical notation into the manipulation of strings, or keys of a piano, or... to produce actual sounds that realize the patterns of notes and chords embodied in the score. And so on. So what follows from any of this?


PLease tell me your meaning and difference between the two thoughts of practicing technques and KATA training? I know they are almost the same....there is a difference "hence" call two different things......

Many times when we are taughts certain things? ...we believe it to be true? ..Kata....will the future...show it truth to our training? or is there a better way?

Again...this is my feelings.....on this Aloha

Marching bands practicing formations....this is NOT CALL a KATAS?

I'm sorry, s_l, but this verges on being incomprehensible. I can't figure out if you're trying to tell us something or ask us something. I'll tell you this, though: the work kata in Japanese means, basically, `formal pattern'. There are kata for flower arrangement and for the tea ceremony, among other arts. That's all that kata means: formal patterns. We MAists are familiar with the formal patterns for certain Japanse MAs, no? But the meaning of the word is more general: an abstract formal pattern, that is realized in practice.

As far as what the rest of what you're trying to say is... I have to admit: I'm pretty much baffled. I don't think you appreciate how hard it is to follow your prose, much of the time.

[newGuy12]

I can't take it any more. I have to agree with 'still_learning'. Surely a kata is more than just a combination of motions.

Isn't that why "finger set" is called "finger set" and not "finger kata"?

American Kenpo has forms and sets. They are not the same. Surely what I type here is true. I feel as though I am going crazy. Surely I am a sane man. Tell me. When the Kenpo student does "Thrusting Wings", it is a combination, not a form. I don't mean to raise a stink, but surely, people, surely this must be true, or else why would different words be used?


By the way, I would love to see the techniques in the hyungs brought to light. I'm sure that there are MANY fascinating applications, that I don't know about (they are not taught!).

You people know that I am new. I just can't keep from jumping in. I saw a video just today. It was Dan Insanto! He was talking about Chaun FA. He domonstrated a beginning of a Chinese form. It was very flowery, as one might expect.

Then... he showed the motion on another human being.

OH! --> He just did Obscure Claw! I "know" (at least know to some superficial level) that technique, but I did not see it until Mr. Insanto brought it to light!

I was amazed!

Yes, I bet there are LOADS of little gems in those forms. Just loads!

[MJS]

Hello, You may have to look at the defination of Kata's VS, practicing movements like "jab, jab,duck, cross" is NOT call a Kata! Yes they can be preset training movements

BUT IS NOT CALL a Kata? ....Muay Thai practice many preset movements in the rings BUT IS NOT CALLED A Kata?

One day you will see the difference and know the difference....practicing is NOT A KATA? .....

PLease tell me your meaning and difference between the two thoughts of practicing technques and KATA training? I know they are almost the same....there is a difference "hence" call two different things......

Many times when we are taughts certain things? ...we believe it to be true? ..Kata....will the future...show it truth to our training? or is there a better way?

Again...this is my feelings.....on this Aloha

Marching bands practicing formations....this is NOT CALL a KATAS?

I think theres still some confusion here. Did you read my posts at all?? As I said, while they're not called kata, I said that they (the boxing combos) are preset patterns just like a kata. A kata is a preset series of movements. Boxing combos, again, while they're not called kata, are preset movements. When I grapple, I work on a pinflow series. I transition from one position to the next. Ex: Guard, side mount, etc. Again, its not called a kata, but its a preset pattern of movements, just like a Karate kata.

Different name, similar meaning.

[MJS]

Judo Kata
http://judoinfo.com/katamenu.htm

Kata
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata

Kata (型 or 形, literally: "form"? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Japanese)) is a Japanese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language) word describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practiced either solo or in pairs.

Once again, while punches are not called kata, they are a choreographed pattern of movements.

[Cirdan]

Kata, form, pattern, drill.. they are all the same thing; a series of movements designed to teach techniques building upon core principles of whatever art you are doing.

Here is a typical drill I used to run my riflemen trough when I was in the army: Soldier equipped with standard gear and five clips with one round each starts the drill on one knee behind cover. On "go" he emerges from cover, advances ten yards, drops to the ground, rolls, loads his weapon and fires at the target. He then changes clips and fires another round. Repeat last step three more times. Drill over, inspect the weapon (and target). End.

This may seem very simple and even unrealistic(why would a soldier carry only one round in each clip?) but it takes you trough some very very important movements. Changing the clip must be done in a specific way to take as little time as possible while staying as close to the ground as possible. Each clip is taken from a different position on the belt, requiering different grips on the wepon. Breathing must be controlled etc. After many many times doing this drill you will KNOW how to do this and to adapt, not needing to REMEMBER it.

If this is not a kata, tell me why.

[Brother John]

People will realize that they're typing more about kicks, punches, locks and maneuvers than actually doing them. They'll look at their hands and realize that the only calouses left are on the tips of their fingers and the base of their palm where their typing hands rest on the desk. They'll stand up and resolve to DO more martial arts than TALK martial arts....
and they'll follow through.


The martial arts world would be re-born...


if that happened.

Your Brother
John

[Independent_TKD]

Boxing jab, jab, cross etc...is NOT A KATA..and is NOT call KATA or practice like a KATA? ...not too sure how to explain the difference here? HELP!

Still Learning, you are absolutely correct about kata. No matter how much evidence you present, you will never convince the die hards. Kata are only useful as an artistic element like dance, nothing more.

I choose not to emphasize forms. The typical response from TMA is that I don't understand the hidden meanings in the forms. At this point I just laugh. I practice several martial arts, but I still teach TKD. Forms are not required for promotion. Student can learn them if they choose.

If other practicioners want to devote such large amounts of valuable training time to kata, that's on them. But no matter what, they will never see your point of view on this.

[MarkBarlow]

Kata can be useful to explore intricate details of techniques. Mark Burton refers to kata as technique in a perfect world, the attack is expected and known beforehand, the response is practiced and relaxed. It allows a student to gain a deeper understanding of why he's doing particular moves.

The older I get, the more respect I have for it. Kata practice allows middle aged or older students to train with a degree of intensity that randori or sparring provided earlier. I'm about to turn 50 and can't/won't bang heads as often as I did 30/20/10 years ago. Doing kata, I can still toss and get tossed with power and speed but with greater safety. It's not a complete replacement for randori but it supplements the training. On the other hand, too great an emphasis on randori leaves gaps that kata can fill. A balance is ideal.

[exile]

Still Learning, you are absolutely correct about kata. No matter how much evidence you present, you will never convince the die hards. Kata are only useful as an artistic element like dance, nothing more.


Die hards like the people who actually know how to carry out bunkai, and apply them in combat situations? Like Geoff Thompson, Lawrence Kane, and Peter Consterdine, who have been involved in several hundered violent physical conflict each as part of their security careers, and stress the role of kata in encoding effective combat scenarios? Guys like Iain Abernethy, who can show in detail how every subsequence of the Pinan katas has combat application? Guys like the ones who I gave substantial references to, with a sample of the relevant work, in my post here (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=863570)?

See, the problem is, I_TKD, the only evidence on the table right now is from the people who have demonstrated, in their research and their applied careers, the utility of kata. Neither you nore S_L have done anything more than said, no, it's no use. Your arguments suggest someone who claims that a certain mathematical technique can't possibly solve a given physics problem.

`But look', someone says, `in this paper, So-and-so solves exactly that problem with that technique'

`No, no', you intone, `it can't be done, it's just hopeless...'

`And six other people have done the same thing with similar problems', the other guys protests. `Look, here are the references...'

`No, no, can't be done...'

It's always the same. We present evidence to back our arguments, and all you guys come back with is, nope, sorry, can't be done... :lol:

That's OK. You've made up your mind, and we won't try to confuse you with facts! :)

[Independent_TKD]

Neither you nore S_L have done anything

Now I am not famous or well known, but I (like many others with a similar perspective) have done plenty in out training to prove this view. I don't have to go out and write a book about it. Take the long forward stance seen in most kata systems (as just one example).

Never once have I assumed that stance in sparring or in self-defense while executing a rigid middle block or other stilted technique. In all of the real fights I've seen, I have never seen anything remotely similar to kata movement effectively employed. It just will not work in a real confrontation. I've learned this the hard way. If you don't want to believe that, there's nothing I can say.

It's like a kid who wants to learn basketball. You get him on the court and insist he run down the court with his back stiff and straight, dribbling with his elbows. This make absolutely no sense. The kid should practice exactly (or as close to it as is safe) how he will be expected to perform in the game.

Art for art sake is fine. I just have a problem with instructors claiming that kata are some how essential to learning a martial art or self-defense. They aren't. The physical combative techniques are essential. The kata and forms are simply artistic expressions. If you were attacked in real life, could you honestly say that you would employ kata? Of course not. You would rely on the techniques you use in sparring and self-defense. That fact alone proves my point clearly.

[still learning]

Still Learning, you are absolutely correct about kata. No matter how much evidence you present, you will never convince the die hards. Kata are only useful as an artistic element like dance, nothing more.

I choose not to emphasize forms. The typical response from TMA is that I don't understand the hidden meanings in the forms. At this point I just laugh. I practice several martial arts, but I still teach TKD. Forms are not required for promotion. Student can learn them if they choose.

If other practicioners want to devote such large amounts of valuable training time to kata, that's on them. But no matter what, they will never see your point of view on this.

Hello, Thank-you......Aloha

[Cirdan]

Never once have I assumed that stance in sparring or in self-defense while executing a rigid middle block or other stilted technique. In all of the real fights I've seen, I have never seen anything remotely similar to kata movement effectively employed. It just will not work in a real confrontation. I've learned this the hard way. If you don't want to believe that, there's nothing I can say.


I`ve used things I learned from Kata quite sucessfully in self defense. If you don`t want to believe this there is nothing I can do since I do not have a stick of dynamite to open your closed mind. Perhaps Kata is not for you anyway.

Kata is a tool, a great one if understood and used properly. However it is not a requirement to envolve as a student of the arts. One of the two styles I train in myself does not use Kata, the other emphasize it over all other all other aspects of the art. The well known line "Your skill should flow from the Kata" does not mean Kata are uber-deadly strings of techniques. Kata are designed to teach important principles of movement, balance, rooting, entering etc which when understood and made part of your every move will enable you to adapt to any situation. Stating that Kata are stiff and useless is very false, they should be just the oposite.

[terryl965]

Now I am not famous or well known, but I (like many others with a similar perspective) have done plenty in out training to prove this view. I don't have to go out and write a book about it. Take the long forward stance seen in most kata systems (as just one example).

Never once have I assumed that stance in sparring or in self-defense while executing a rigid middle block or other stilted technique. In all of the real fights I've seen, I have never seen anything remotely similar to kata movement effectively employed. It just will not work in a real confrontation. I've learned this the hard way. If you don't want to believe that, there's nothing I can say.

It's like a kid who wants to learn basketball. You get him on the court and insist he run down the court with his back stiff and straight, dribbling with his elbows. This make absolutely no sense. The kid should practice exactly (or as close to it as is safe) how he will be expected to perform in the game.

Art for art sake is fine. I just have a problem with instructors claiming that kata are some how essential to learning a martial art or self-defense. They aren't. The physical combative techniques are essential. The kata and forms are simply artistic expressions. If you were attacked in real life, could you honestly say that you would employ kata? Of course not. You would rely on the techniques you use in sparring and self-defense. That fact alone proves my point clearly.


I have to chime in here Ok, Kata can not teach you self defense: are you kidding me. Kata has so many SD principles in them, PLEASE take the time to understand what Kata's will do and will not do. I have been oer sea's to train and here in the states what Kata does is make you think what each and every techniques can do for you in any stituation.. I really on what works for me and if you really solely on your Sd and sparring techs. then you are mis-informed about that as well. Sparring techs. are just that for sparring nobody hits anybody with everything they have when sparring or in tournaments so it is worthless in real life and PLEASE again do not give me this crap you only do real life SD. Because if that is the case do you prsctice against a real loaded gun Hell no that would be like a stupid thing to do.

Now if you cannot see the value in Kata's then that is fine but do not say what you do not know. I beleive Kata is the foundation to one SD techs. and you can see them in every aspect of people when they spar or do SD movements.

This is facts and not in anyway opinion.:asian:

Have a wonderful day.http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Independent_TKD]

do not give me this crap you only do real life SD

That's why I said you get as "close to it as is safe". Even with the Bulletman, you aren't going to break the guy's knee. Be realistic.

Guys, I'm trying to be sensible and this argument can go round and round forever. Here is my last comments on this board:

If you want to be a dancer, you dance. If you want to be a good painter, you pant. True, you cannot actually fight full contact with no regard for your training partners safety. But, you should always make your training as realistic as is safely possible.

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.

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.

End

[MarkBarlow]

I'm more than willing to admit that some people may not receive a benefit from kata (for whatever reason) but it would be nice to have that benefit of the doubt granted back to me. If I say kata helps me, who can say it doesn't?
I've got 31+ years of training, studied under some fantastic teachers and traveled all over North America, Great Britain and the Carribbean to teach and train so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to say I might have gotten something out of some aspect of training that you missed. If your training focused on different aspects of self defense than mine, I'm sure you've got insights I don't. Just don't be disrespectful of what helps me.

[MJS]

Still Learning, you are absolutely correct about kata. No matter how much evidence you present, you will never convince the die hards. Kata are only useful as an artistic element like dance, nothing more.

I choose not to emphasize forms. The typical response from TMA is that I don't understand the hidden meanings in the forms. At this point I just laugh. I practice several martial arts, but I still teach TKD. Forms are not required for promotion. Student can learn them if they choose.

If other practicioners want to devote such large amounts of valuable training time to kata, that's on them. But no matter what, they will never see your point of view on this.

Well, others have chimed in, but hey, I may as well too. Its been my experience, that the majority of people who dismiss kata, is because they don't understand the meaning of it, look at it like a dance, such as yourself, and feel its useless. I was the same way for a while. My first instructor taught kata, but didn't have a clue as to what the meaning of it was. A typical conversation went like this:

Me: "What are we doing with this move here?"
Instructor: :"Well, we do this move because...because thats the way its done."

Doesnt sound like a good explaination to me.


Art for art sake is fine. I just have a problem with instructors claiming that kata are some how essential to learning a martial art or self-defense. They aren't. The physical combative techniques are essential. The kata and forms are simply artistic expressions. If you were attacked in real life, could you honestly say that you would employ kata? Of course not. You would rely on the techniques you use in sparring and self-defense. That fact alone proves my point clearly.

Hmmm...we may never get attacked with a gun or knife, but yet we still train those defenses right? As for employing kata if attacked in real life...no, you're not going to act out the kata as if you would in the dojo, however, as I said, if one understands the applications, maybe, just maybe, they can be extracted and used.

Keep in mind, just like punches, kicks, SD, etc., kata, are just one piece of the puzzle. If you choose to not put much faith in it, thats fine. However, is it fair to do your students a dis-service because you don't like them? Maybe one of your students may find them useful to them.

[exile]

Now I am not famous or well known, but I (like many others with a similar perspective) have done plenty in out training to prove this view.

You've done plenty to prove that something that others have actually done isn't possible?? Your training proves a negative claim—that because you haven't figured out how something could work, it therefore can't work? :lol:


I don't have to go out and write a book about it. Take the long forward stance seen in most kata systems (as just one example).

Never once have I assumed that stance in sparring or in self-defense while executing a rigid middle block or other stilted technique.

This makes my point exactly, both about kata interpretation and about your evident unfamiliarity with the past ten years of research on kata analysis. In a kata, a `long forward stance' encodes projection of your weight into a lock, or pin, or some other pivot point where you've forcibly controlled your attacker. With even a slight bit of familiarity with bunkai analysis, you would recognize that the application of weight forward and downward in such a situation, which forces the attacker's lower body downward and into range of your `down block' (downward hammerfist strikes) or `middle knifehand blocks' (now knifehand strikes to the attacker's lowered, exposed throat), is part of familiar, brutal street-effective techs that have nothing to do with poses, and everything to do with leverage to drive a trapped, controlled attacker to the ground. But since you do not have that familiarity, you take the standard kata description, the one that Itosu himself described as the `children's kata', as literally true. See... oh, hell, see all or any of the stuff I referred you to in my previous posts, so that you can finally get some idea of how it's really done.

And if you were to write the book that you say you wouldn't have to, what would be in it? What could be in it, except your report of your own failure to discover any combat utility in kata? How on earth could you possibly show, in a book of any length, that such utility did not exist? And if someone presents a detailed description of kata applications showing that such applications do in fact exist, isn't the burden of proof then on you to show what's wrong with their analysis? Yet you haven't shown anything of the sort; in fact, I_TKD, you haven't presented a single argument, a single bit of actual evidence, other than some vague appeals to supposedly self-evident facts that in reality represent just another restatement of your own opinion, with no external support. Read on...


In all of the real fights I've seen, I have never seen anything remotely similar to kata movement effectively employed. It just will not work in a real confrontation. I've learned this the hard way. If you don't want to believe that, there's nothing I can say.

I believe you, because what you say makes it clear that you have the view of kata that the people who've written about realistic bunkai, people like Abernethy, Thompson, Kane & Wilder, Patrick McCarthy and Rick Clark, hold up as an example of the unfortunate effect of the `children's interpretation' of karate kata (and as Stuart Anslow and Simon O'Neil further demonstrate, of TKD hyungs as well). You are reflecting the view of stances that Okinawan schoolchildren were taught, under Itosu's deliberate disguising of the application of kata, which he himself in his later writing acknowledged and defended as appropriate for children. But he also observed that adults had the responsiblity to learn the true applications and use of these moves, including the `stances', and Abernethy has a whole chapter in his book Bunkai Jutsu about how stances correspond to forcing projections of weight, pivots in kata actually encode the twisting components of throws, and so on. And you are altogether unfamiliar with any/I] of this work, quite clearly.


It's like a kid who wants to learn basketball. You get him on the court and insist he run down the court with his back stiff and straight, dribbling with his elbows. This make absolutely no sense. The kid should practice exactly (or as close to it as is safe) how he will be expected to perform in the game.

No. It's not like that at all. It's more like, [I]you are given a sentence in Pig Latin, and you insist on looking up `amscray', `irlgay' and `ookbay' or whatever in the dictionary and not finding the words there, and then trying to tell this kid that Pig Latin is just a series of meaningless noises. And the kid is laughing his head off at you.


Art for art sake is fine. I just have a problem with instructors claiming that kata are some how essential to learning a martial art or self-defense. They aren't. The physical combative techniques are essential. The kata and forms are simply artistic expressions. If you were attacked in real life, could you honestly say that you would employ kata?

You bet I would. I'd employ the tactics I've trained, based on kata, to follow up a throat counterstrike to an attacker's grab (`rising block') with a kick to the knees (`middle kick') followed by a hairpull or earpull to pull the attacker's head down into range where I coud deliver a palm-heel strike to his face or jaw. That combat sequence is implict in Palgwe Ee Jang, btw. You've been doing TKD for how long? It shouldn't be news to you, and wouldn't be, if you were familiar with O'Neil's analysis of the fighting scenarios implicit in Taegeuk Il Jang, lifted in much of its content from that Palgwe. Or with Abernethy's or Kane & Wilder's versions of the kaisai no genri, referring to the theory of kata decoding that was known, from way back, to be the final level of training sophistication in dojo MA education. All of these guys present, defend and illustrate no-nonsense rules of kata-to-combat interpretation, rules you very clearly haven't encountered before. And yet you project complete certainty that such rules don't exist. Exactly like the guy who claims that a certain mathematical method cannot solve a particular problem in mechanics, when the application of the method to yield just that solution has, unbeknownst to him, been in print (in several different versions, and repeatedly confirmed) for ten years or so, just as I was saying in previous post.


Of course not. You would rely on the techniques you use in sparring and self-defense. That fact alone proves my point clearly.

Your technique here is to state what would happen according to your own—unfortunately pretty incomplete—understanding of the katas, and then cite this scenario as a fact. But it's not a fact; it's your own restatement of your own point of view, uninformed by the last decade of combat-oriented work on kata analysis. Guys who've seen more streetfighting in a month than you have likely done in your whole life, people whose applied combat careers are matters of public record, have described in detail how their fighting strategy and tactics are guided by the principles encoded in the kata... and here you are again, saying, `No, it can't work, I can't picture it working based on my understanding, so by that fact, it clearly can't work.' The alternative, of course, is that your understanding of bunkai, and the training of the oyo derived from bunkai in `alive' protocols, with nearly all-out simulation of violence is... seriously uninformed.

You aren't familiar with any of the work I've referred to, with the way in which groups like the British Combat Association have shown bunkai for classical kata to be devastatingly effective in street defense,.... any of it. Why pretend otherwise? I think it will be fairly clear to people reading this thread that you have no evidence for your point of view, that there is a vast body of experimental research on the effectiveness of kata-based techs that you're not aware of, and that your posts and still_learning's posts refuse to engage that evidence because, based on your own refusal to confront this work, it has to be be concluded that you know nothing about it. But in both Karate and Taekwando, this movement is the wave of the future, more and more work is being done on both the method of deciphering the combat applications of kata and training those applications in real time under realistic condition, and the fact that—as your posts overwhelmingly suggest—you know nothing about it, doesn't change that fact.

[newGuy12]

Okay, I tried to add to the reputation of user 'exile', but a dialogue box popped up in my face (right in the nose!) and rudely corrected me -- I must spread some reputation around before doing that.

So, I will say this here, and take the heat if I'm out of line (wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last).

I, for one, want to say THANK YOU SIR! for bringing this to light! I have known that there are VERY DEEP meanings in these poomse (from time to time, not too often, our SabumNeem would show a single one -- but we would not ask questions, it did not feel very appropriate to question).

I will take advantage of these resources and learn from them! This knowledge was not so open at one time. This has evidently changed (it could have been widespread all along, and I just was not aware of it). This changes things, a lot!

Wishing that I didn't shoot all my "rep rounds" already, but thats the breaks, get you soon. Yes, as soon as people become aware of this, they will be studied very intensely, you can bet on that!

This is a very interesting thread!



Robert

[still learning]

Hello, The many discussions on the use of Kata's is good....it shows there are many who questions it's purpose....and there is reasonable amount of of questions to ask?

One have to look what is the purpose of Kata training....and why other sports do not have them? if it teaches one to train by themselves? If it works for martial art training? then the princples should apply to other ACTIVE....boxing, muay thai, wrestling,rugby, and etc...FBI, CIA, SEALS training? .....????

Remember Kata is a preset movements.(develop for that time period)...different from practiceing your techniques in one step,two step, and so on! Which is not call Kata!

All fights are fast,furious,unpredictable,anything goes,NO RULES,NEVER IN KATA FORMS of fighting...

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?

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

The future of martial arts will change...just like time...you see so many NEW ARTS forming and developing...for the modern world.

In the future?....sciencefic studes will prove or disaprove the princples of Kata's ...........

PS: For my next testing...in Universal Kempo...I am require to learn : Pinion NO.5 form and one bo staff Kata,nuchaku no.1 (the improve new one) Our Pinion 5 is kempo style with some nice chinese flowing movements....and also remember the others that was taught to us! (required) .....like it or not! .... need to learn it!

Aloha ....it is OK for you to disagree....I like eating chocolate Icecream...other's may perfer...Mango? ..Lichee?...(hawaiian flavors)...

IF Kata was black and white...there would be little discussions....It is NOT cut and dried.....

[MJS]

[quote]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?

Can you show me in any of my posts, where I said that you will do kata in a fight just like you'd do it in the dojo? I do not believe you will see that in anything I said. In fact, I said just the opposite.


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

Hmm..well, all I and a few others are trying to do, is show you that there is more than one view. You're so set in your ways, you refuse to see anything but you still refuse to show any proof, such as exile said. You say that kata are no good, but offer no reason why.


PS: For my next testing...in Universal Kempo...I am require to learn : Pinion NO.5 form and one bo staff Kata,nuchaku no.1 (the improve new one) Our Pinion 5 is kempo style with some nice chinese flowing movements....and also remember the others that was taught to us! (required) .....like it or not! .... need to learn it!

Question for you. You say you need to learn these katas. My question is: Do you understand them? Not just being able to do the moves, but do you know what the moves are for? Has your inst. taught that to you?

[exile]

Okay, I tried to add to the reputation of user 'exile', but a dialogue box popped up in my face (right in the nose!) and rudely corrected me -- I must spread some reputation around before doing that.

Hey, Robert, I appreciate the thought, very much. What would give me the most pleasure, though, is if you were to explore the matter yourself by checking out some of the serious literature that has appeared on the analysis of forms, and their hard-edged combat applicability, and found a way to integrate that information into your own training. I'm just a student, trying to learn as much as I can about the technical content of my art, just as you (and most of us on MT, I suspect) are. My personal explorations in the documented history of the KMAs, and their roots in Okinawan karate, made it clear to me at one point that even over important distances in space and time, the technical thinking that led to the formation of hard-linear Okinawan striking systems (which then made their way to Japan, and ultimately to Korea and then North America, where we benefit from them) was crucial to understand, if I were to make any sense at all of the fact that the kata of karate and the hyungs of TKD have the form they have, as vs. some other. When I learned about how Anko Itosu deliberately repackaged the many techniques of the karate he had inherited and elaborated, so that a multifaceted fighting system of robust brutality had become camouflaged as nothing but block-punch-kick-pivot in order to ensure its acceptance as part of the Okinawan school curriculum in 1905, it was like a light coming on.


I, for one, want to say THANK YOU SIR! for bringing this to light! I have known that there are VERY DEEP meanings in these poomse (from time to time, not too often, our SabumNeem would show a single one -- but we would not ask questions, it did not feel very appropriate to question).

I will take advantage of these resources and learn from them! This knowledge was not so open at one time. This has evidently changed (it could have been widespread all along, and I just was not aware of it). This changes things, a lot!

Robert, don't thank me; instead, I'll thank you, if you just go ahead as you indicated and look into some of these sources. Here's my own preferred minibibliography for getting into this stuff:


• The Abernethy book, Bunkai-Jutsu: the Practical Application of Karate Kata, the single best MA book I've read (and I've read my share!)—the most clearly written and carefully reasoned, and, page for page, the most informative one ever, showing not merely a bunch of facts, but a set of interpretive principle which will allow you, given enough patience and determination, to see the combat utility of virtually any of the classic kata. Abernethy has a remarkable grasp of how the history not just of karate but of other Asian (and Western) MAs yield insights into the self-defense principles underlying kata, and how these principles can be systematically extracted by application of a small number of simple, but not necessarily obvious rules (e.g., the rule that the `retraction chambering' movement of the nonstriking hand almost always corresponds to an anchoring or dragging motion applied to one of the attacker's limbs, pulling him into your own strike or anchoring him in place, and rarely has anything to do with the standard idea of chambering as `winding up' for the next strike). The one problem with this book: it usually takes a longish time to receive after you order it. Amazon does a reasonably good job, but it still takes too long. But it's worth it. If I only were allowed to keep one book out of my MA collection, it would be that one, no contest.

• Abernethy's article in the April 2007 Black Belt issue, pp.98–103, entitled `Making kata work: three ways to boost the benefit you're getting from your kata training', which presents a condensed version of his story on both kata analysis and realistic live training of the combat principles derivable from those kata.

• Any of Abernethy's thirty-six on-line articles, downloadable for free, no strings attached at all, from his website here ( http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_home.asp), along with his equally free series of articles on the street-ready SD techs inherent in the Pinan kata set. Just go and look around there to see the depth and breadth of the material he covers rationally, articulately and thoroughly... and doesn't charge you a dime for...

• Stuart Anslow's book, Ch'ang Hon Tae Kwon Do Sul: Real Applications to the ITF Tuls, an application of Abernethy-style bunkai methods to the ITF hyungs. I don't do ITF TKD, but the book is still an eye opener. Even better, I think, is...

• Simon O'Neil's great series of newsletters, Combat_TKD, which you can sign up for here (http://www.combat-tkd.com/Ctkd1/home.php); they would be worth it at three times the price. And later this year or early next year, he'll be publishing a full-scale book on the combat interpretations of TKD hyungs, covering both KKW and ITF forms. Of all the exponents of Abernethy's methods, O'Neil is I believe the most gifted. If you want to see his combat intelligence in action, get hold of the November 2005 Taekwondo Times and look at his article `Kicking in Self-Defense: a practical re-evaluation', which gives you some idea of how he approaches the problem of reconstructing the inherent SD content of a range of TKD hyungs.


Okay Wishing that I didn't shoot all my "rep rounds" already, but thats the breaks, get you soon. Yes, as soon as people become aware of this, they will be studied very intensely, you can bet on that!

This is a very interesting thread!



Robert

Listen, Robert, I do appreciate the thought, as I say—who wouldn't?!—but if you want to make me (and, I'm betting, yourself) happy, read a couple of these sources I've mentioned and see whether or not their detailed content rings a bell in your own training. The Abernethy Black Belt article and the O'Neil TKD Times article are maybe the most accessible places to start, if you can get your hands on copies—they each have a phenomenal amount of info and insight packed into relatively few pages. Start exploring this strand of MA thinking (which more and more will come, I believe, to represent the advance guard of hard-core MA training in the future, as per the OP's query) and I'll be more than very happy....

[newGuy12]

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

[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 (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=814670). 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?? :confused:

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.... :banghead:

[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%20Applications.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