Kataless Karate Pros & Cons

[KarateKowboy]

Sport or SD based it doesn't matter, but what are the pros and cons of free style (no kata) karate styles?

Kata is is the essence of Karate.
No Kata = No Karate

 

[exile]

What's important is to remember what was modified, and why... And to remember that some changes were made for reasons with no purpose other than to fit the space available or to please someone's numbering system, or whatever.

That's exactly the crucial point---to understand when a given motion is somehow integral to the kata (and therefore has combat applicability), as vs. cases where a motion is basically accidental, an add on or accomodation to something in the training environment that has nothing to do with the combat scenario which that part of the kata is referring to. In the case at hand, imagine how distorted your notion will be of the combat storyline encoded in the kata if you try to work out a combat app for that back-hop.

This is why, if you're going to seek effective bukai for kata in a serious way, you really need to do a certain amount of historical research on each kata to figure out whether that eccentric-looking move is really supposed to be there, or if instead it got there because some famous master who popularized the kata a century always got a cramp as a result of the preceding move and had to stop and stretch his leg out against the cramp at that point... that sort of thing.

 

[Zero]

What you say makes sense and perhaps my conclusion is drawn from primarily the schools' aplication of kata (however, this is also drawn from visiting many other schools and competitions also) where I have studied.

I completely agree that individual actions in a lot of the kata can be used effectively in a fight or defence situation - however, I disagree with your thinking that kata is the most effective way of transmitting these techniques to students. I find that it is best to practice the moves until well honed and then put these to practice in contact fighting/training or competition (with often, but not always, of course the rules negating or hindering certain applications).
However, I will look at the material you have mentioned as it sounds interesting and very good and may perhaps be an eye opener for me.
You seem to think however, that after practicing techniques you should move onto kata (or go full circle back to kata), however I think and have found that it is best to put that into practice in a fluid, dynamic situation and I have never found kata to provide this environment. But thank you for your very informative views and information.

 

[exile]

What you say makes sense and perhaps my conclusion is drawn from primarily the schools' aplication of kata (however, this is also drawn from visiting many other schools and competitions also) where I have studied.

Hi Zero—give some of that stuff I mentioned a go, you won't be disappointed—particularly Iain Abernethy's stuff. He can write—this is my objection to a lot of the MA literature, it reads terribly and digging the author's point out from under the vague language is like pulling teeth; also, his illustrations and photos are as clear as I've ever seen (another gripe I have with a lot of MA books: the graphics are muddy or badly scaled or both, and this is the kiss of death when the point of the photo sequence is to illustrate some particularly fine point of kata tech application).

I completely agree that individual actions in a lot of the kata can be used effectively in a fight or defence situation - however, I disagree with your thinking that kata is the most effective way of transmitting these techniques to students. I find that it is best to practice the moves until well honed and then put these to practice in contact fighting/training or competition (with often, but not always, of course the rules negating or hindering certain applications).

Again, Z, the kata aren't about how to learn individual techs. They are in effect scripts telling you how to set up a sequence of forcing actions that will yield a finishing move in the shortest possible time, using those techs (where the specific application depends on the dynamics of the fight: is the assailant's throat exposed? Is his head high or low? Are you inside or outside? etc). The problem is learning to read them. Here's a trick, for example, that is becoming increasingly well known: katas often start with you facing N(orth), say, and then carrying out a movement so that you're now facing W(est)—you know the kind of thing I'm talking about: a down block or rising block or whatever, yes? But if you're actually carrying out a block with that second movement—if that movement were a blocking move—the first kata `position' would mean that you were standing gazing dreamily facing N, noticed (by acute peripheral vision, or mental telepathy, or...?) an attacker advancing on you from W, and then turned to block a punch or kick that the assailant launched while your side was facing him. Pretty lame scenario, eh?

The problem comes from assuming that you actually begin the fight in the `ready' position facing N wrt an attacker coming at you from W. But Abernethy, Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder in their book The Way of Kata, Rick Clark in his book 75 Down Blocks and an increasing number of fighters who are applying the Abernethy et al. model to karate's sibling art TKD argue that this is a serious misunderstanding of what was once a well-known assumption amongst karate masters codifying or devising kata: every fight `scenario' in the kata takes it for granted that the fight begins with you and your assailant facing each other. That means that in the actual fight that the kata is trying to guide you through, you start facing W, because your assailant is coming from there. So the `start' position of the kata can't be how the fight begins; it has to be the result of what you do in response to the attacker's first move as you and he face each other. Thus, the first move you make is a turn to N. And what are you doing turning? Well, in one common kind of tech, the fight starts with your attacker grabbing you (to hold you in place while the other fist delivers a blow to your face or midsection). You countergrab with your `chambering retraction' hand and turn sharply from W to N, imposing an instant wrist/elbow lock. From there, your down block strikes his upper arm or his throat (if you force his head down low as per my first post in response to yours), or your `rising block' drives your forearm and elbow into his larynx or jaw, or your middle outward block participates in a sweep/throw sequence that sends him to the ground, etc. Then you follow up with the next move the kata encodes.

So your whole way of looking at the kata changes once you know that the kata formally `begins' in a position which you are supposed to understand as the result of a prior move. People like IA and others who've delved deeply into the history of kata formulation have noted that there were certain conventions which were simply assumed amongt the karate masters of a century or morer ago. These conventions—together with the deliberate concealment that the Okinawans practiced in presenting MAs either to their own school children or to their Japanese overlords—mean that understanding the actual meaning of kata is something akin to decoding a manuscript written in what look like familiar symbols, but which turn out to have very different phonetic values than we usually understand them to. A `block' in a kata is often code for a strike, a `strike' may be code for part of a throw, a change in stance is probably code for a weight shift that anchors a trapped assailant in a position in which you can sweep him or apply some other damaging tech, etc.

However, I will look at the material you have mentioned as it sounds interesting and very good and may perhaps be an eye opener for me.

As I say, if you give the stuff I mentioned a try you'll discover a way of seeing kata that's very different from what you've probably concluded about them on the basis of their `exhibition'/competitive treatment in tournaments. The main thing I'd suggest is to start with Abernethy's book, Bunkai-Jutsu—I got it from Amazon for around $23.00 and it was the single best investment in a martial arts resource I've ever made (Simon O'Neil's Combat-TKD newsletter, which is a very good application of Abernethy-style bunkai analysis to the patterns of TKD, would be a respectably close runner-up—but IA really is the master analyst).

You seem to think however, that after practicing techniques you should move onto kata (or go full circle back to kata), however I think and have found that it is best to put that into practice in a fluid, dynamic situation and I have never found kata to provide this environment.

Ah, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. Take a look in particular at the reality-based combat training approach that Abernethy works out so that you can test out the application of the fighting scenarios he's trying to teach readers to uncover for themselves in the kata. The essence of fluidity is that the combat situation is constantly changing, but the same principles that the kata encode are applicable regardless of the situation; the trick is to train your understanding of the opportunities that any given fighting situation presents so that you see just what kinds of possible forced-win solutions (borrowing a term from chess) are possible in that situation. The kata are, in effect, catalogues of `forced wins' based on certain principles that correspond to the martial knowledge these old masters possessed. To actually impose these forced wins, though, requires you to train for them in real time with a seriously noncompliant partner, and in his last chapter IA outlines the training methods he uses for this purpose... very promising, was my first thought when I read it for the first time, though physically pretty intimidating; those guys don't hold much back. One thing is for sure: training for combat using kata-based fighting scenarios is totally different from competitive kata performance as a tournament event... the two have almost nothing in common.

But thank you for your very informative views and information.

My pleasure, Zero, and I hope you find and enjoy Abernethy's take on the concealed applications to real, serious combat that he identifies in classic Okinawan and Japanese kata forms. I'm not saying you (or anyone) is going to wind up buying everything IA says, but his perspective makes a huge amount of very practical sense out of what at first blush does look like a set of somewhat odd, aggressive looking dance steps... I really would be interested in knowing your response to what IA is suggesting about how to interpret the combat meaning of kata movements, once you've gotten to read him.

 

[Zero]

Exile

I must confess I do agree with a lot of what you say and thanks again for the Abernathy heads up - unfortunately I can't locate any free stuff/info regarding the mentioned materials but will have to try a library and hunt it down.

I do think you may be blending what the concept commonly recognised as kata is these days with other things or choosing to call RBT (reality-based training) etc kata. THe adrenalin training has its place for street defence situations etc and is very good, while you can't go past fighting more experienced praticioners for competition. However, even our advanced 2-man kata in goju ryu (whiole great for covering basics) does not offer the dynamic situations in a real life fight or struggle when jumped on the street.

You are right in that segments of kata - be it in defence or attack - can be taken and referenced from within any part of the overall particular kata and applied to whatever situation you find yourself in. HOwever surely you must agree that once a fighter has trained to a level that they can execute the core defensive/offensive moves then it is best to move on to applying them in mulitple pressure situations - I just have not seen kata like this and if it is around, I don't think it is correclty referred to if called kata. Question - what is kata?? (is there a define parameter martial artists can recognise kata as coming within - if not, then why bother with the title?

 

[JackShadow]

I believe katas form the foundation for most of Karate and for good reason too. They perfect your technique. If you jump into fighting and sparring, your never going to learn the proper technique; you'll get into bad habits early that will be very hard to correct later in your training.

By learning a kata the right way first, you learn how it is performed in a textbook. From there you develop muscle memory and also learn how to precisely control your movements and develop control. As you develop these skills, it is reflected in your fighting. That block you've been doing millions of times in your kata will often translate into a more effective and natural movement in your kumite.

You can also say there is more spiritual development in a kata. Katas are stylized versions of "real world" techniques yet you have to imagine the fight and think about what exactly each move translates to, what it means, and what it does. You also look more inward towards yourself when developing your kata skills. If you mess up or are doing something wrong then the problem lies within yourself and you must find within yourself the solution to the problem. I truly believe it makes one a much more spiritual being when one is constantly perfecting a kata to get it just right not only on the outside, but on the inside as well.

A kataless form might develop good fighters very quickly, but I believe the hard work, dedication, skill, and spirit of a kata-trained person will make them the better martial artist. Many people forget that Karate is not just about developing your body, but about developing your mind and spirit as well. And I do believe there is nothing too spiritual about hitting a punching bag for several hours.

 

[Haze]

History tells us that karate was developed by Okinawans that had studied arts from China. They called it Karate (china hand) The Japanese changed it to Empty hand. Now if you take any system of karate that was developed in Okinawa or Japan and change it should you give it a different name as the Okinawans did with what they took from the fighting arts of China?

IMO - YES

If you develope an art then give it a name but don't call it karate if it does not come from Okinawa. Kick boxing, this is good. American karate? Like saying Polish burritos.

Karate without kata- You will have techniques from karate, probably add some kicks from MuayTai, some locks/throws from jujutsu, some wrestling moves for ground fighting, some kobudo training, etc, etc, etc.

Kataless karate? It's not karate, it's a system of defensive and offensive fighting techniques. Call it what it is.

Muay Tai Boxing with out knees and elbows is not called Knee and Elbowless Muay Tai? It's kickboxing!

 

[tshadowchaser]

Kataless karate? It's not karate, it's a system of defensive and offensive fighting techniques. Call it what it is.

exactly well said by the way

 

[Drag'n]

You can teach the same techs from the Kata with a partner, without practising in kata form. Still the same techs. Still Karate.
This will be less time consuming. You get a feel of working with a real body and how it reacts. And increase resistance gradually to improve your effectiveness.
There wont have to be anymore guesswork about the possible applications, or years spent "discovering" the techniques.
There would be alot less misinterpretation. I think we've all seen some real bogus applications being taught by ill informed instructors.
The only down side is you always need a willing partner handy.
Kata can be practised without one. That is really one of the few benefits I can think of.
Plus its nice to watch, is real handy for gradings, and keeps students interested by providing a very tangible new goal with each belt.(sarcasm)
Is it necessary? I dont think so.
There seem to be more people doing kata without really understanding it than those that do.
I do appreciate those that do understand it. But Karate can still be Karate without it. The same building blocks and concepts can be taught by other methods. Perhaps even more effectively.

 

[Haze]

Drag'n

The same techniques could be taught but would it still be karate? I feel that what makes karate karate is that it has kata. Many of the same techniques are found in jujutsu that are in my kata. It's just delivered to the student in a different teaching form.

I have friends that train in kenpo/kempo and have no kata. But their techniques are not much different than mine.

Where I train we can look at a section of a particular kata and examine the sequence of movement and see how this could be applied.

Maybe this is just the textbook (kata) and how we (karateka) keep are techniques organized/memorized.

I'm just old school. And my mind says "karate has kata"
If I take the techniques that my kata hold and teach them without the kata
I would be teaching "techniques and application of GOJU "

We can agree to disagree and this is why we have these forums>

 

[matt.m]

I know I am a bit out of my element here, I have a dan in Judo and participate concurrently in Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido. But to not do kata in Karate would be like saying you learned a non poomse cirriculum in tae kwon do. I don't even think that is in the realm of possibility.

Just a thought, considering even judo has kata. Katas, Forms, Poomse....whatever you wanna call it just helps you build on proper technique.

 

[Martin h]

I dont have a problem with kataless karate. Kata is just a method of storing information/tchniques to keep the style intact, and that purpose has almost been forgotten anyway, with the formal kata itself becoming the purpose.
As it is, kata today it usually taught and trained completely separate from the rest of the training, using the kihon, but not adding to it. So nowdays, learning a kata is just combining what you already know.

In the old days it was "3 years for one kata", or learning a kata -which takes a few days of hard training if we are honest, and then spending the rest of the time with bunkai and oyo for the kata. That is just not done anymore.

In kataless karate they could jump the kata and go directly to bunkai/oyo -although they call it simply combination training.
I still say its karate. What it will be in a few generations without the kata to serve as memory device for its core techniques, is another matter.
But again, since the kata comes after learning the basics today, that could be said for many kata "based" styles aswell.

 

[twendkata71]

I don't think that karate without kata, would not have much substance. It would be a shell of its former self.

 

[Brandon Fisher]

I don't think that karate without kata, would not have much substance. It would be a shell of its former self.

I think you are correct.

 

[Iron Leopard]

Must have kata. Kata teachs balance, movement, moving hands and feet as one, keeping your back straight and head up, combinations and kicks as well as fighting principles. Can you teach all of this without kata? Sure! But in my opinion it's not as effective. Everyone no matter the rank or style or length of study can benefit from kata period. Even if you are doing a martial art that has no kata...I can teach you a kata and make you better in your art!

Now even if you don't agree with me on the above paragraph. here's another point. You've all either taught or trained with someone who is NOT a natural fighter and has absolutly no balance or coordination. In this case kata is a must! and even if you disagree with kata.. this person has probably been given drills that either look like kata or put together kind of form a kata.

maybe the drill is stepping forward with a punch and repeating this dozens of times. (1 pinan?) maybe it's kicking and steping down facing a different direction on gaurd. (2 kata, 3 kata, 4 kata, etc etc etc). this is basically learning kata without doing the full form.

My examples of forms are all from SKK.

 

[cstanley]

"Kata is karate; karate is kata." If you aren't doing kata, you aren't doing karate. Call it something else.

 

[exile]

I'd like to come back to Drag'n's post and look at it in a little bit more detail, because I think certain important points about kata emerge if we follow him a bit of the way and see where it takes us.

You can teach the same techs from the Kata with a partner, without practising in kata form. Still the same techs. Still Karate.
This will be less time consuming. You get a feel of working with a real body and how it reacts. And increase resistance gradually to improve your effectiveness.
There wont have to be anymore guesswork about the possible applications, or years spent "discovering" the techniques.

OK—first problem: you're already assuming that the problem of bunkai/oyo for a given kata has been solved, so that all the learner learns are the oyo, without the kata. Well, who tells the karateka [?] being taught in this manner what oyo to learn? It's not you, the karateka, applying kaiai no genri to the kata to work out the bunkai, because our starting assumption is that you aren't learning the kata, just the techs, right? So who teaches you the techs? Your instructor? OK, you're going to rely on your instructor to teach you the techs encoded within the kata—meaning s/he is the one who has to work out the bunkai/oyo; or else his/her instructor had to... but somewhere up the line, someone had to decide what those apps were. And then, if we follow your idea, we simply jettison the kata (which will virtually certainly be forgotten, if it's not practiced... this has probably happened to many kata since time immemorial). So now we have no kata, just a set of techs, which you inherit through your instructional lineage.

Except...

There would be alot less misinterpretation. I think we've all seen some real bogus applications being taught by ill informed instructors.

Whoa! What if the techs that were passed down, and taught to you, belonged to this sorry lot that you yourself have brought up—bogus applications from higher up in your lineage that you learn without suspecting a thing?! And since we no longer have the original kata to restudy, once we figure the tech is bogus, we're sort of up the creek, eh? If you knew the kata, you could work out some valid apps yourself, with a good bit of effort... but you aren't going to get the chance, because the katas are now all pretty much unrecoverable history.

The only down side is you always need a willing partner handy.
Kata can be practised without one. That is really one of the few benefits I can think of.
Plus its nice to watch, is real handy for gradings, and keeps students interested by providing a very tangible new goal with each belt.(sarcasm)
Is it necessary? I dont think so.

It's only necessary if you want to have the living source of the techs always available to you, to test out your competence against and see if the techs you practice really do them justice. Iain Abernethy's bunkai and oyo for the Pinans, for example, are, in terms of combat effectiveness, beautiful, in a scary kind of way; but you might not have been taught something nearly so good, by combat standards. Without the kata to go back to, though, you can only go on with what you've been... well, spoonfed, I guess is the right word.

There seem to be more people doing kata without really understanding it than those that do.
I do appreciate those that do understand it. But Karate can still be Karate without it.

The implication here is that since so many people do kata without understanding it, the solution is not to get them to understand it—as Iain Abernethy, Bill Burgar, Rick Clark, Kris Kane & Lawrence Wilder and a ton of others have tried to do in karate, and Simon O' Neill and Stuart Anslow have in karate's sister art TKD, by writing books, giving demos and seminars, producing videos and so on—but rather to eliminate the kata entirely. The logic here is the same as saying that if there's a really useful tool that most people misapply because the instructions have been left out of the boxes, what you do is stop manufacturing the tool, as vs. making sure that the users' manual gets packaged along with it.

The same building blocks and concepts can be taught by other methods. Perhaps even more effectively.

See all of the preceding. The kata are time-tested repositories of effective combat techniques, techniques which each generation has the chance to relearn, and extend and find novel applications for—unless we follow your suggestion and deep-six the kata once and for all.

 

[undeadcheese]

Kata has a few other benefits. First off you can practice techniques that would be extremely dangerous to apply to a partner no matter how good they are. Second when you practice kata you have an opportunity to dissect the techniques in a manner that allows you to take not just the application shown in the form but also allows more time for your neurons to build a memory of correct proceedure in your mind. Third kata practice allows you time to study or feel for useful variations in the fight sequence which may come as unexpected for an assailant. Fourthly kata can be practiced in your imagination if for some reason you are unable to practice physically. For example: due poor health, a confined space, bad company or too many people watching... etc.

 

[hrlmonkey]

having read through this thread with much interest, i should admit that i am of the kata-less variety. i have studied shotokan in my youth, i loved it - kata and all. but having a black in kickboxing (lets call it ring style for ease of indentification here), and a black in a kata less karate style, i can say that they are two different entities. its was everything that i know in karate, there was no boxing in it at all. the 'shadow boxing' was refered to as free form, and you were expected to show more than punches and kicks. you also had to show a comprehensive knowledge of all techniques you used. if you performed a spear hand to the throat height, you had to be aware of the possible consequences. in all, you had to have a moral understanding of everything involved.
there was everything from one on one, to multiple attackers. but competition was discouraged, in favour of truth - by which i mean, being punched in the face bloody well hurts, even after 25 years of martial arts training.

i understand that some people still dont feel its karate, but i ask then to be a little understanding. anything that you practice has evolved from another form of karate, to argue that its the original is your love for the art coming to the surface. well heres my love for what i have learnt - i will refer to it as modern karate and not traditional. but i will never say that its better, because i love any form of martial arts, regardless of the origin. so please lets not argue about whats real and whats not. lets just get on with enjoying and progressing what we share in common.

 

[chinto]

The freestyle karate dojo is was checking out was pretty cool, they teach the core techniques and have dropped kata, in favor of a more scientific view point, they have a pretty nice set up, they also teach the philosophy aspect as well. I was actually surprised they went back to the old, trap-lock-break methods from a block as well.

If by that you mean that they found themselves basicly where the old kata tought you to be? well i would not be suprised at all! Please remember the kata came out of the experiances of the old men who had fought for their lives. What they passed on and others had work for them in similer fights where their lives were at stake is what went into the kata. This includes the principles of movements and techniques and all of the phisical movements that saved their lives when it was for keeps.