Does one's skill flow from the kata?

[hrlmonkey]

with reflection, i can see how my words look acidic. Tellner may have unintentionally taken the brunt, of something that was an reaction based on the whole thread. i apologise whole-heartedly for this. i hope that anybody reading this, accepts my humblest apologies as i was a little out of order

 

[exile]

with reflection, i can see how my words look acidic. Tellner may have unintentionally taken the brunt, of something that was an reaction based on the whole thread. i apologise whole-heartedly for this. i hope that anybody reading this, accepts my humblest apologies as i was a little out of order

HM, I can't speak for Tellner, but I don't think you really have anything to apologize for. I think you may have overreacted to what you thought of as implied criticism, but quite honestly, I don't think anyone was targetting you. I personally believe that kata are a very useful tool for `threading together' separate techs so that they make sense in the strategic context of a real fight, but I certainly don't find it offensive or threatening if someone else disagrees with my view and instead goes in their own direction. Just as long as the kata are there for me (and anyone else who's of the same mind) to use as the basis for effective response to physical threats, I'm happy...

 

[tellner]

this is so disrespectful of martial artists who are non traditionalist, its just so small minded. i see traditionalists on here who feel that if it has no kata, its worthless, its not karate.

we are not all sports karate. we do not all see competition as the pinnacle of our traning. we are looking at new ways of training. we still respect the values that were passed down to us. we go through time and effort to better ourselves as martial artists. we still bow when entering and exiting a dojo. we probably do everything you do, minus the strict regime of kata. and then you disrespect us for it.
well heres old news, your preaching to your own. they will all agree with you, you know this. just because we dont all want kata, or see your point, doesnt mean that we all dislike kata or dont see its virtues.
argue against us, disown us, even vilefy us.... we are karate, we are staying and we will still be here when our systems have re-modernised. its a fact of life, grow or die.

That actually didn't have anything to do with what I was writing about. I may not have been clear, so here's the same thing presented a little differently. Please accept my apologies if it seemed to be aimed at you:

A lot of people talk about their ability to go beyond form and just spontaneously do what's best. Practicing pre-arranged movements, they say, detracts from their spontaneity. Besides, they've read The Tao of Jeet Kune Do and have transcended "The Classical Mess".

Most of them are fooling themselves.

Pre-arranged movement patterns don't have to be katas that start and end with a bow. Wrestlers have them. Boxers have them. Fencers have them. IPSC pistol shooters have them. Guro Inosanto teaches them. So do the Gracies. It's how we're wired to learn physical skills.

First you learn individual motions. Then you learn how to put them together. They mean nothing.

Then you learn to use them, internalize them and know their limits and uses.

Eventually, if you're really really good, the structure has served its purpose. It's a part of you that you can use or not as you see fit rather than a representation of preset technique.

The point is, that you can't skip the stages in between. One way or another you have to learn to do the movements of your system correctly, then do them in combination, then learn how to use them, make them your own. No matter what the pre-arranged motions are called they're there, and you have to go through the hard work to achieve the goal. When Bruce Lee was a big name a lot of people forgot that he was already a champion competitive dancer who had been through a system already.

 

[hrlmonkey]

no no, i am at fault here. i had a poorly timed attack of martyrdom, a chip on my shoulder if you will.

if i didnt make it clear, i actually originate from kata based systems, i happen to be in awe of a certain amount of them. i just happened to find my zone with a kataless system.

who knows though.... i'm no longer in the uk, i no longer teach (other than my wife) and there are many schools in the area i reside. theres every chance that the next art i look at, may be kata based?

 

[tellner]

After you, my dear Alphonse

Seriously, I also communicated poorly. The problem with kata is the same as for so many other aspects of martial arts. It's seldom taught with understanding in an appropriate integrated way. This leads some people to slavishly go through motions which have nothing to do with how they actually move and fight. It leads others to believe that the hard work of developing understanding and skill is worthless.

 

[Zero]

Hey Exile - thanks a bunch for this Abernathy stuff - have made my way through the Bunkai material and onto the next lot - cheers for the link and 'directions' re accessing it. I appreciate your help!

Is a good read and actually nothing new as is just as a lot of the defense training moves and practice we did at my old dojo. If this is what the idea of kata is all about - and not some miasmic ballet routine on a mat to pipe music - then I agree it has an important role in making one better able to defend oneself. The problem is many clubs don't break the kata or the moves down and apply them to real-life scenarios - but hey, enough said there.
Zero

 

[tellner]

If it's, as you nicely put it, "a miasmic ballet" it will be worse than useless. As I've said before, teaching "the" application or applications from the kata is one step. One must keep in mind that it's not the only step. To get what you really need you have to have a teacher who can get you to use them in many different ways instead of an "If he does 'A' I do 'B'" fashion. Then they'll be the tools that your conditioned instincts will reach for.

 

[IWishToLearn]

I asked an old shotokan sensei about the usefulness of kata. She said it is from the kata that your fighting techniques should come. She added that if you remain true to the tradition and focus/study the kata, your karate will be far more advanced than if you merely focus on combos and sparing. She said focusing on combos and the like will make you a slave to those techniques. What are everyone's thoughts on this?

Kata has a place in MA. It should not be the only tool (thanks for the Sears catalog comparison btw) in your tool chest, because the pre-choreographed techniques are rarely stressed to be used with a partner(s). Practicing the kata as if it translated directly to a FIGHT...note I said "fight" and not "sparring" is a really great way to kill your reaction time.

Now having said that, kata's place is to refine your techniques making them smoother, and flow from one to another while applying them in various ways while moving around in various directions. The only downside is that classecal fighting forms were developed for rough uneven terrain (in most cases) and in today's world of cement and pavement, the footwork is anatomically speaking very poor. A group of my training partners and I (three who come from a medical background, one is a body alignment/massage therapist, another is a physical therapist, and the third is a nurse practitioner) dissected the 27 forms found in the traditional system we studeied and found that only 11 of the 27 are valid when put into the context of correct anatomical movement. The others are nice to watch and see, but if relied upon too heavily will ingrain improper movement methodology and cause structural problems later.

I love practicing my forms to be able to help smooth transitions between techniques and to explore the "how can I apply this in a different way" phase of training. But as a sole means of learning to move, bad idea.

 

[exile]

Hey Exile - thanks a bunch for this Abernathy stuff - have made my way through the Bunkai material and onto the next lot - cheers for the link and 'directions' re accessing it. I appreciate your help!

Is a good read and actually nothing new as is just as a lot of the defense training moves and practice we did at my old dojo. If this is what the idea of kata is all about - and not some miasmic ballet routine on a mat to pipe music - then I agree it has an important role in making one better able to defend oneself. The problem is many clubs don't break the kata or the moves down and apply them to real-life scenarios - but hey, enough said there.
Zero

You nailed it, Zero (like Tellner, I love the `miasmic ballet' turn of phrase—perfect!) Yes, the problem is exactly what you say—very few schools teach kata from this point of view. If you already know a lot of this stuff because of your prior training experience, you're a lucky guy—you trained at a place that took the combat use of karate very seriously.

What would make me happy would be to live long enough to see a time when people neither dismissed kata nor venerated it, but treated it simply as a kind of roadmap through realistic applications of (combinations of) karate techs. Kata shouldn't be mystified; part of the reason why some people diss kata is because other people treat it as almost a kind of sacred ritual, and the first group can't figure out what the hell the second group are smoking. :wink1: Seeing kata just as an aid to understanding—and training—tactics that work (in combination) in real fighting is what seems to me to be the happy mean between these two excessive positions.

And I'm glad you found the stuff at IA's website to be of interest, even if it wasn't totally new to you.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Just reading through the last few posts again has brought another realisation to me. If kata has had the meanings of the techniques hidden with the intention of keeping the knowledge secret, and schools are teaching kata a particular way because of tradition, then many schools, perhaps entire styles, will never know the truth inherent in their kata. This seems even worse to me than the "miasmic ballet".

This is performance with out knowledge, and potentially no hope of ever finding or acquiring that knowledge. In this case it is the traditions of the school or style that are hampering any development. if one is going to say, "this is the way it is because it is the way it has always been", then there is no chance to analyse the kata to find its secrets because that would be trying to change the kata, and that would be against tradition. Its very sad really.

 

[exile]

Just reading through the last few posts again has brought another realisation to me. If kata has had the meanings of the techniques hidden with the intention of keeping the knowledge secret, and schools are teaching kata a particular way because of tradition, then many schools, perhaps entire styles, will never know the truth inherent in their kata. This seems even worse to me than the "miasmic ballet".

This is performance with out knowledge, and potentially no hope of ever finding or acquiring that knowledge. In this case it is the traditions of the school or style that are hampering any development. if one is going to say, "this is the way it is because it is the way it has always been", then there is no chance to analyse the kata to find its secrets because that would be trying to change the kata, and that would be against tradition. Its very sad really.

In the scenario you're raising, ST, `tradition' is the alibi given for ignorance. The fact is, a lot of people who teach karate-based arts probably have very little understanding of what the realistic applications are available for these movement-sequences. The teachers themselves were never taught the proper use of certain movements. So how can they figure them out?

Well, actually they can, if they take the trouble to try to work out the consistent encoding of tactical moves in sometimes-perplexing sequences of movements. Abernethy gives a set of principles for decoding kata in Bunkai-jutsu, and so do Kane & Wilder in The Way of Kata; Simon O'Neil, in his Combat-TKD newsletters, gives yet a third set of interpretation principles. The knowledge hasn't been entirely lost, and more to the point, we can undertake the research effort ourselves to determine just what kinds of things these kata are telling us about responding to certain specific attacks (grabs, roundhouse punches, attempted head-butts and groin strikes). All it takes is a bit of will, a reasonable level of intelligence, and an independent perspective.

And that, of course, is why it happens so rarely...

 

[cstanley]

Kata is not about fighting; it is about mushin and zanshin.

 

[tellner]

Kata is not about fighting; it is about mushin and zanshin.

Mushin and zanshin are attributes which can be developed through many meditative practices including kata. If that were all kata were about it would have been tossed in favor of Qi Gong or zazen centuries ago.

It's patterned movement. I think we've already hashed that out and what it implies. Other than blind assertion what do you have to bring to the table on this?

 

[exile]

Kata is not about fighting; it is about mushin and zanshin.

Say what?

Kata isn't about fighting? Then why did Bushi Matsumura invent the Chinto kata specifically to record the fighting style of a Chinese sailor and expert fighter who actually fought him to a draw in an encounter of over some missing chickens that Matsumura, as chief sheriff of Shuri, had gone to investigate? Why did both Anko Itosu and Gichin Funakoshi emphasize that kata, though disguised as simple kick-block-punch sequences, had to be applied intelligently to actual combat, because the techs to win in combat were all contained in them? Why do some of the greatest karateka in the world write books showing how instructions on how to break your opponent's arm or neck, crush his trachea, blind him, and get to him to the ground where a finishing hard kick to the groin can be aministered, are contained in the kata once these are translated—as Itosu, who disguised them, told us to translate them—into combat moves?

I have to say, I find statements such as the one quoted here very difficult to understand. Given that the inventors of kata tell us explicitly that they are roadmaps to applying tactics, guided by general combat principles, to damage your assailant badly enough that he ceases to pose a danger to you, what possible warrant could there be for the statment that `Kata is not about fighting'? Can you please supply the missing steps in the argument?

Mushin and zanshin are attributes which can be developed through many meditative practices including kata. If that were all kata were about it would have been tossed in favor of Qi Gong or zazen centuries ago.

It's patterned movement. I think we've already hashed that out and what it implies. Other than blind assertion what do you have to bring to the table on this?

Yes indeedy.

Tellner, do you sometimes get the feeling that we've been here before, so to speak... many, many times....?

 

[Steel Tiger]

It's interesting isn't it? To see how many people are of the opinion that kata/forms are not about fighting, and I suppose they can be used in that fashion without any problems. Now I come from a CMA background where the forms are properly termed Tan. They are considered spirit fighting forms. In the internal arts meditation and qigong are incorporated into the forms but the fundamental movements and interpretations are combative.

I can see how a change in perception can occur. In all the forms in my style of bagua, there are techniques in which the foot is raised to about the height of the knee. Many have interpreted this as an evade against a low kick. Not a bad interpretation. The actuality of it is that these foot raises are signals that a low kick is to be performed in conjunction with whatever else is being done in all but a couple of instances. Both interpretations are viable within the context of the form but only one conforms to the original meaning.

The interpretation of the form changes and in time becomes the norm. I am fortunate in that the style of bagua I learn and teach is not that old, but imagine something that is over 1000 years old. It is likely that the interpretation of the form has mutated several times.

 

[tellner]

Say what?

...

I have to say, I find statements such as the one quoted here very difficult to understand. Given that the inventors of kata tell us explicitly that they are roadmaps to applying tactics, guided by general combat principles, to damage your assailant badly enough that he ceases to pose a danger to you, what possible warrant could there be for the statment that `Kata is not about fighting'? Can you please supply the missing steps in the argument?

It's like that famous cartoon with the two mathematicians at the blackboard. Somewhere near the middle there's a step labelled "And then a miracle occurs." One is saying to the other "I think you should be more explicit here." :shrug:

Tellner, do you sometimes get the feeling that we've been here before, so to speak... many, many times....?

Like the stars in the sky, the sands on the beach and the spam in a hotmail account.

 

[cstanley]

Say what?

Kata isn't about fighting? Then why did Bushi Matsumura invent the Chinto kata specifically to record the fighting style of a Chinese sailor and expert fighter who actually fought him to a draw in an encounter of over some missing chickens that Matsumura, as chief sheriff of Shuri, had gone to investigate? Why did both Anko Itosu and Gichin Funakoshi emphasize that kata, though disguised as simple kick-block-punch sequences, had to be applied intelligently to actual combat, because the techs to win in combat were all contained in them? Why do some of the greatest karateka in the world write books showing how instructions on how to break your opponent's arm or neck, crush his trachea, blind him, and get to him to the ground where a finishing hard kick to the groin can be aministered, are contained in the kata once these are translated—as Itosu, who disguised them, told us to translate them—into combat moves?

I have to say, I find statements such as the one quoted here very difficult to understand. Given that the inventors of kata tell us explicitly that they are roadmaps to applying tactics, guided by general combat principles, to damage your assailant badly enough that he ceases to pose a danger to you, what possible warrant could there be for the statment that `Kata is not about fighting'? Can you please supply the missing steps in the argument?




Yes indeedy.

Tellner, do you sometimes get the feeling that we've been here before, so to speak... many, many times....?

Perhaps I should have added that kata is not PRIMARILY about fighting for those who are literalists. Mushin and zanshin have everything to do with fighting...much more than any "catalog of techniques." The techniques in kata are only the surface, the omote. Applying kata "intelligently" to actual combat means getting beneath the surface to the mindset that years of diligent kata practice, in addition to actual fighting and partner training, is supposed to develop. You don't drive your "roadmap," but you can't get to an unknown destination without it. You do not do close order drill in combat, but you can't prepare people for combat without it.
Kata is like a koan...sometimes nothing is as it seems.

 

[exile]

Perhaps I should have added that kata is not PRIMARILY about fighting for those who are literalists. Mushin and zanshin have everything to do with fighting...much more than any "catalog of techniques." The techniques in kata are only the surface, the omote. Applying kata "intelligently" to actual combat means getting beneath the surface to the mindset that years of diligent kata practice, in addition to actual fighting and partner training, is supposed to develop. You don't drive your "roadmap," but you can't get to an unknown destination without it. You do not do close order drill in combat, but you can't prepare people for combat without it.
Kata is like a koan...sometimes nothing is as it seems.

I'm still having a lot of trouble following your reasoning here. Kata were certainly primarily about fighting for Matsumura, Itosu, Motobu, Egami and the other founders of linear, combat-ready karate. Exactly what does it mean to say `the techniques in kata are only the surface, the omote'? The techniques in kata—properly understood, analyzed via realistic translations of the kind Itosu explicitly told us to seek out—are exactly what the fight is about. They inform you of how to respond to the habitual acts of violence that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, initiate a violent attack, and how to terminate that attack.

Let me give you an example, and you tell me exactly what is `on the surface' about the techs. There is an elementary form, which comes from Shotokan and was copied literally into TKD as Kicho Il-Jang. It begins in ready position, and involves a 90º turn to the left into a left front stance, with a left down block and a right fist retraction. Tori steps forward into a right front stance with a middle lunge punch retracting the left fist. Then tori pivots 180º into a right down block/front stance, with left fist retracted, and steps forward into a left front stance/middle lunge punch, retracting the right fist. Finally, tori pivots 90º to the left, into a left down block/front stance.

OK—this is a specific sequence of moves. You can assume they were thrown together willy-nilly, the weakest possible hypothesis, or you can assume they were put together in that sequence for a particular reason—that they contain information which is different from any other given sequence of moves, which is a much stronger hypothesis. Let's stick with the stronger hypothesis, OK? So then, why this specific sequence? What is the point of it? Neither Itosu nor Matsumura had much time for anything but business—they were royal bodyguards forbiddent to have weapons, they were the King of Okinawa's chief LEOs. What use would this particular sequence, or similar sequences, have been to them?

Well, if you understand the message that Itosu told us more than a century ago (and that was echoed in writings by Funakoshi, Motobu, Egami and just about every one of the karate pioneers) that the schoolchild labels `block' and `punch' were not the actual content of the movements depicted, and if you follow the well-worked-out translations rules that people like Iain Abernethy, Lawrence Kane & Chris Wilder, Simon O'Neil and others have provided on the basis of serious research and experimentation under `live', realistic conditions—then the following corresponds to a very useful, practical application:

The assailant (A) grabs the defender (D)'s shirt, or arm/wrist/etc, standing close-up and face to face with D. D countergrabs A's gripping wrist with his right hand, turns 90º so his left side faces A's centerline, turning A's wrist to establish a lock and pulling it hard toward his own left side (`retraction') while slamming his left forearm into A's extended elbow (`chambering' to coming down `block') to establish an armlock, which D then moves his own bodyweight into (the initial `front stance') to drive A's upper body, with locks at wrist and elbow, way down so that A's head is expose. D quickly brings the locking forearm all the way up past his own right ear (maybe smashing an elbow into A's lowered head on the way) and then slams his closed right fist down into A's carotid sinus, or face, or collarbone (the `down block' itself, lol). The striking left hand grips A's ear, or right shoulder, or whatever gripping surface seems best at the moment as part of a muchimi move to anchor A while D steps forward with a middle punch to A's still lowered, trapped head, then by another muchimi move grips A's ear immediately with the punching hand and pivots 180º to throw A towards the floor—the 180º turn typically explained away as just a `symmetry' move to do the form mirror-image on the other side, and the `down block' now a crucial component of the throw—and steps forward to punch A's head at the temple, or possibly the throat with the left fist. Another 90º pivot, to D's left, corresponds to a final throw, and again, the `down block' a strike to A's neck. By now, A is probably wishing he'd stayed home.

I've used this particular bunkai for the first five-move subsequence of the form under fairly rough training conditions, and it is almost bombproof. It works with instinctive reactions, it's robust—there's plenty of room for error, because only large motor skills are involved, and it depends in no way on a compliant uke. It's a simple, `classic' sequence illustrating the huge discrepancy between the Itosu-style packaging of the kata/hyung as per my first description and the actual combat use of the sequences in a typical situation—according to Patrick McCarthy and others who've compile extensive studies of the habitual actions which attackers use in initiating assaults, the grab/punch sequence is extremely frequent and effective if no counteraction is taken. The kata gives you a principle-based approach to the problem posed by the imminent attack: go for A's weak point, pull him into close range, project your own bodyweight (the various `front stance') to force his head into striking range without him having any choice in the matter, and attack the weakest points on his head: throat, temple, face around the eyes, etc.

This is only one a number of techs that are available from these elementary kata; and the more advanced forms contain many more `atomic SD sequences'—subsequences of movements which translate into principle-driven tactical applications that take you from A's first pre-attacking moves to him lying on the ground, no longer a threat. That's what kata are about. In place of this kind of useful, specific information, your comments about mushin and zanshin have virtually no information at all, because they do not distinguish this particular sequence of movements, which replect a particular tactical application of general SD principles, from any other. Your comment about kata being all about mushin and zanshin is a generalization which fails to make it clear why we have these movements and not some others. Itosu had specific things in mind for you to do as a result of learning the Pinan kata, or Naihanchi; Matsumura recorded the Chinto kata because he wanted a record of what the guy, Chinto, had been able to do so effectively. He didn't write down that particular sequence to teach you mushin/zanshin or anything else like that; he wrote it down because it was something he himself needed to learn to enhance his own combat effectiveness. You give only generalities, but generalities cannot explain particularities. I think, myself, that someone like Matsumura or Chotuko Kyand or Motobu would have chuckled, quietly, up their sleeve, at the thought that kata were anything but a record of effective, battle-tested combat techniques. They weren't, in those days, part of a martial art; as Abernethy and Burgar in their books amply document, they were regarded as martial arts in themselves. Mushin/zanshin... all of that is just mystification.

 

[kidswarrior]

Abernethy gives a set of principles for decoding kata in Bunkai-jutsu, and so do Kane & Wilder in The Way of Kata; Simon O'Neil, in his Combat-TKD newsletters, gives yet a third set of interpretation principles. The knowledge hasn't been entirely lost,

To me, resources such as these make a great starting line.

...and more to the point, we can undertake the research effort ourselves to determine just what kinds of things these kata are telling us about responding to certain specific attacks (grabs, roundhouse punches, attempted head-butts and groin strikes).

I'm beginning to think this is the punch the whole idea provides. It doesn't even matter to me all that much what the 'masters' might have 'encoded' (originally seen as the applications). Yes, those are important, but not necessarily exhaustive. The applications, I'm coming to believe, are limited only by my ability to keep seeing and seeking new ways the kata/segments/moves within kata might be used.

All it takes is a bit of will, a reasonable level of intelligence, and an independent perspective.

And that, of course, is why it happens so rarely...

But, that is also what makes it so fun! :ultracool

 

[kidswarrior]

Let me give you an example, and you tell me exactly what is `on the surface' about the techs. There is an elementary form, which comes from Shotokan and was copied literally into TKD as Kicho Il-Jang. It begins in ready position, and involves a 90º turn to the left into a left front stance, with a left down block and a right fist retraction. Tori steps forward into a right front stance with a middle lunge punch retracting the left fist. Then tori pivots 180º into a right down block/front stance, with left fist retracted, and steps forward into a left front stance/middle lunge punch, retracting the right fist. Finally, tori pivots 90º to the left, into a left down block/front stance.

Many, many good points here which deserve their own recognition and comment. But since as Exile and Tellner have said, we've been down this road a few times already, just wanted to say: Exile, the sequence you describe sounds very similar to the opening of Pinan 3 in Shaolin Kempo; and it's pretty much agreed that the Pinan series is taken from Shotokan. So, you chose a very good example with generalizable applicability across at least several major arts/styles, thus giving your argument that much more credence. :ultracool Case closed?