Deep Kata

Bill Mattocks

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Posting this as a new thread at the suggestion of others.

Let's say that kata (forms, poomsae, etc) is a set of movements, ostensibly designed to encode a series of attacks and defenses for the martial artist to learn. I'll use the term 'kata' only because it is the term I know the best.

Many forms of martial arts training have kata, although many do not.

We might describe kata as an extension of basic exercises. In other words, first we practice punches and kicks and blocks, then we put them together into a set of stylized movements where we use the punches, kicks, and blocks that we have learned as 'basic exercises'.

Typically, there is a 'story' to each individual kata. That is, we learn that such-and-such kata is for 'fighting at night' or 'fighting on a hillside' or 'fighting with your back to the wall' and so on.

As we learn the movements, we learn practical application for them as well. This is part of the story of the kata, and it's often called 'bunkai'. A block is imagined as a defense against an imaginary opponent who is delivering a punch, or a kick, and so on. This can be taken further by having one martial arts student play the part of the attacker, and deliver the sequence of attacks that cause the person performing the kata to perform the sequence of responses.

Digging deeper into the kata, many arts encode multiple purposes for the movements in the kata, so there is more than one set of applications or bunkai for a given kata. In some cases, the number of applications becomes staggering. This is referred to by some as 'oyo bunkai' or applications that go far beyond the standard reasons or explanations of the movements. Oyo bunkai can be endless, or nearly so. One can spend their entire life examining and mining kata for more and more levels of application.

At some point in kata training, whether one dives deeply into oyo bunkai or simply concentrates on mastering the basic applications contained in the kata, the student begins to be able to extract parts of the kata and apply them outside of the kata. Not just in terms of a strike or a block, but also a transition, a body shifting movement, a timing that draws an opponent off balance, and that type of thing. Overt movements can be spotted; it is not unusual for a person to notice a technique being applied in sparring, for example, and to realize what kata it came from. Other movements are more subtle and may not be clearly seen as being 'from' some kata, but it was through the development and study of a given kata that the subtle movements as well as the clearly-defined movements can be taken and applied.

Taking a slightly different tack, one also begins, through the study of kata, to see how everything affects the kata and the applications. For example, breathing, timing, footwork, and the generation of power by calling upon different muscle groups, using different body mechanics, and applying leverage and power in ways other than the kata might call for on the surface.

It is (for me) primarily through the breathing and centering techniques,when applied in the context of kata, that one begins to see how these apply not just to kata but to all of karate. One begins to reflect on terms commonly heard but perhaps not commonly understood. "There is no first strike in karate," for example. "A block is a strike and a strike is a block," for another. Wheels within wheels, terms once understood as something else, shift their meaning and then shift back again.

And then, the big jump. This is when the student begins to see how the core principles of kata, the very basics that start even before the kata is committed to memory, apply to all of life. Balance. Breathing. Centering. Calmness of the mind. Trained responses to certain situations. Avoiding attack becomes avoiding attack, whether the 'attack' is a punch to the head or a remark made by a coworker and intended to damage a career or job. Orderliness of the mind required for clean kata becomes orderliness of the mind required to do one's job effectively. Moving with opponent's energy becomes moving with the flow of traffic while driving, moving with the flow of relationships with others. Everything furthers, it all applies.

Understanding the nature of an attack means understanding something of the person attacking. Applying this first to kata, as we develop the 'first do this, then they do that, then do this' responses, then to understanding more of both human body mechanics and human goals and motivations, and then finally realizing that people attack in a variety of ways; physical, verbal, mental, and so on. But the causes and the desires are the same. The movements and patterns are the same. People are people, their attacks don't radically change; kata shows us how to anticipate the attack and how to respond to it. Kata teaches us how to prepare, how to evade, how to strike but more importantly when to strike and how to make it effective when we do strike.

A mountain is a mountain, a river is a river. Then they are not. Eventually, they once again are what they seem to be, but now seen as according to their nature. Not my words, but taken from several zen texts which I do not recall at the moment.

Some might call this spiritual. Perhaps it is, but I tend to think of it as philosophical. There is nothing outside the realm of human experience involved that I can see. It is deliberate, calm, meditative. It is prepared responses trained until they become nearly instinctive, but which are never delivered without mindfulness of both the actions and the probable consequences. It is putting all the thinking in a box as a set of trained and conditioned responses, so that when the box is opened, the technique jumps out, mindful and intelligent, capable of shifting and changing, but not requiring deep concentration to apply; it is all done ahead of time.

These are the things I think of when I say that karate is kata and kata is karate. Was all this intentionally encoded into the kata developed by karate masters hundreds of years ago? I don't know. However, I suspect that it can be found there because it was put there; perhaps not intentionally. Perhaps it is impossible to encode one's knowledge into a form or kata without also encoding one's life and the reasons one lives the way one does.

I do know that when I learned to find sure footing in the dojo, it could be tested; it was either sure footing or it was not, despite what I thought of it. As I believe I find deeper meaning in the study of kata, I test it, and so far, it seems to work, it seems applicable.

Yes, kata is a simple set of exercises that demonstrate a set of attacks and defenses to an imaginary set-piece fight. It also is not that at all. The question is how deep down the wormhole one wishes to go.

I submit this as a student of karate. I am a master of nothing. This is what I am learning, exploring, and attempting to develop within myself. I do not claim to have any answers for anyone but myself.
 

mber

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Excellently put. Thank you for codifying something I've been trying and failing to explain for years.
 

JowGaWolf

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A mountain is a mountain, a river is a river. Then they are not.
Great post. This is exactly what I was going to say but with fewer words. In boxing and in MMA. A jab is a jab. People are taught the motion of a jab, they learn the jab and how to throw it. They use the jab. The jab stays a jab but it doesn't evolve.

In kata /forms, the jab is a jab, but then again it is more than a jab. In kata/forms the jab is the root. I can take the motion of my jab and open my hand, that jab becomes a palm strike, I can bend my fingers like a tiger's claw and it becomes a fu jow. I can straight the fingers of my jab it it becomes a spear hand. My jab can be with a vertical fist or a horizontal fist. I can open my hand and position it as if I'm praying and strike with the edge of my hand. In kata / forms, my jab is an understanding.

In Boxing and in MMA the stances are about moving. In kata / forms the stances are about awareness of balance, movement, force, and awareness of the surface that we stand on. In kata / forms my stance is an understanding.

My ability to move quickly, strike quickly, and to fight /defend myself isn't based only on my athletic ability. It is based on my understanding of my form. To be good in MMA or Boxing I only need to be faster, hit harder, have better defense. Do be good in a TMA that uses Kata / Form one has to understand both the form and the application. It is not enough for me to be stronger, to be faster, to hit harder or to have better defense. A person that understands kata / form and the application of it can easily break through an opponents physical ability.

 

Kung Fu Wang

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One can spend their entire life examining and mining kata for more and more levels of application.
By using this approach, your MA development will be restricted by the information exist in your forms/Katas. Are you sure that you want to put this kind of restriction on yourself?

there is more than one set of applications or bunkai for a given kata.
If the "intend" is not there, the application is not there. Unfortunately, when you train your form/Kata, you can only put in one "intend" at any giving time. That means, your form/Kata can only map onto one application at any giving moment. In order for your form/Kata to map into different applications, you will have to do your form/Kata with different "intend" at different time.

For example, when someone says that his form/Kata contain "hip throw". If when he does his form/Kata, he does not have "intend" to bend his head down to touch his legs, he is not doing "hip throw" at that moment.
 
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Buka

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Some might call this spiritual. Perhaps it is, but I tend to think of it as philosophical. There is nothing outside the realm of human experience involved that I can see. It is deliberate, calm, meditative. It is prepared responses trained until they become nearly instinctive, but which are never delivered without mindfulness of both the actions and the probable consequences. It is putting all the thinking in a box as a set of trained and conditioned responses, so that when the box is opened, the technique jumps out, mindful and intelligent, capable of shifting and changing, but not requiring deep concentration to apply; it is all done ahead of time.

I submit this as a student of karate. I am a master of nothing. This is what I am learning, exploring, and attempting to develop within myself. I do not claim to have any answers for anyone but myself.

I agree with Bill. All of what he said, actually. I only included two parts of his OP in my quote, however, because.....I don't do Kata. Never have. How can I feel the same way as Bill does? Maybe we're walking into the same house through different doors.
 

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Thank you bill for an excellent post. I think what you described is actually one attaining 'maturity' as a person as well as a martial artist. During teenage years, our actions are strongly influenced by our emotions or our inability to control them, but as we grow older, we began to realise that what once took the centrestage of our lives at that time was actually very petty and did not matter at all in the grand scheme of things. I recall one astronaut, when stepping on the moon and looking back at that tiny blue ball that we all live in, wanting to tell all the politicians of the world, 'just look at that, you sons of bitches'.

I think ultimately, a martial artist, once learning that there is more to fighting than 'i can hit harder than you' will begin to attain the maturity and experience the realisations and feelings as you described. Kata or no kata. Learning modern mma in a modern mma gym will take you there too.
 
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Bill Mattocks

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Great post. This is exactly what I was going to say but with fewer words. In boxing and in MMA. A jab is a jab. People are taught the motion of a jab, they learn the jab and how to throw it. They use the jab. The jab stays a jab but it doesn't evolve.

In kata /forms, the jab is a jab, but then again it is more than a jab. In kata/forms the jab is the root. I can take the motion of my jab and open my hand, that jab becomes a palm strike, I can bend my fingers like a tiger's claw and it becomes a fu jow. I can straight the fingers of my jab it it becomes a spear hand. My jab can be with a vertical fist or a horizontal fist. I can open my hand and position it as if I'm praying and strike with the edge of my hand. In kata / forms, my jab is an understanding.

I wanted to say that yes, I agree with you, but I am discovering that kata goes even deeper than that, or at least it appears to be such to me. And I wanted to thank you for those great videos. Really amazing stuff.
 

JowGaWolf

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I wanted to say that yes, I agree with you, but I am discovering that kata goes even deeper than that, or at least it appears to be such to me. And I wanted to thank you for those great videos. Really amazing stuff.
That's when your stance becomes more than just standing. Forget about everything in that video and just watch the legs.
 

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Typically, there is a 'story' to each individual kata. That is, we learn that such-and-such kata is for 'fighting at night' or 'fighting on a hillside' or 'fighting with your back to the wall' and so on.

The word 'Naihanchi' is said to mean 'sideways fighting' due to the kata's distinctive embusen (floor pattern). This embusen often leads to many karateka incorrectly believing that the kata is for fighting on a boat, or when your back is against a wall etc. As we shall see later, the sideways steps in the kata have nothing to do with fighting on boats and everything to do with effectively incapacitating an opponent. - See more at: Naihanchi - Karate's Most Deadly Kata? | Iain Abernethy
 
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Bill Mattocks

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Yes. The story may not be correct. But it exists, and beginning students are told it.
 

DaveB

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By using this approach, your MA development will be restricted by the information exist in your forms/Katas. Are you sure that you want to put this kind of restriction on yourself?

If the "intend" is not there, the application is not there. Unfortunately, when you train your form/Kata, you can only put in one "intend" at any giving time. That means, your form/Kata can only map onto one application at any giving moment. In order for your form/Kata to map into different applications, you will have to do your form/Kata with different "intend" at different time.

For example, when someone says that his form/Kata contain "hip throw". If when he does his form/Kata, he does not have "intend" to bend his head down to touch his legs, he is not doing "hip throw" at that moment.

Kungfu Wang, what art do you train specifically.

I ask because you went down a similar line in another thread (a kata for self defense) and I find myself completely disagreeing with almost every comment you make about forms.

Usually when this happens the poster is either a TMA cultist, or an MMA cultist. I'm not suggesting that you are either, but I do wonder what background leads you to such erroneous (at least from my experience) conclusions. I'm not asking for a training history, just curious what art teaches forms so differently to the one's I have experienced.
 

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By using this approach, your MA development will be restricted by the information exist in your forms/Katas. Are you sure that you want to put this kind of restriction on yourself?
It is only a restriction if the student does not want to see the connections of movements to other movements, or increase sensitivity to see subtleties. It is only a restriction if the student thinks in a restricted manner. For example, some see zhan zhuang as just standing: I do not.

It's the nature of practice in any art to see subtleties with practice. I play trumpet. Once I can play a b-flat, is that all there is to it? No, after time, I improve my tone, my posture, my breathing, my intonation, my attack, my vibrato. This is even more true for a scale, exercise, or etude (which may be analogous to a kata). There is much depth inside a simple exercise if you want to see it.

If the "intend" is not there, the application is not there. Unfortunately, when you train your form/Kata, you can only put in one "intend" at any giving time. That means, your form/Kata can only map onto one application at any giving moment. In order for your form/Kata to map into different applications, you will have to do your form/Kata with different "intend" at different time.
Just as we can conceptualize four fingers and a thumb into a fist, with training, we can turn multiple results into one intention. We can be taught that one movement can have multiple results, e.g. block and kick at the same time. To my mind, the movement is the intention, but it has multiple results. Aside from that, I'm not sure what you mean.

For example, when someone says that his form/Kata contain "hip throw". If when he does his form/Kata, he does not have "intend" to bend his head down to touch his legs, he is not doing "hip throw" at that moment.
It was my understanding that when a properly-trained artist does a hip throw, he is actually doing kata. This is the nature of practice, isn't it? The explicit (trained) becomes implicit (natural and instinctive).
 
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Kung Fu Wang

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Kungfu Wang, what art do you train specifically.
My major MA systems are:

- long fist,
- Shuai Chuiao (Chinese wrestling).

My minor MA systems are:

- praying mantis,
- Baji,
- Chang Taiji,
- XingYi,
- Zimen,
- WC,
- ...

Even if I have cross trained many CMA systems and I have learned many forms/Katas, my main MA interest is the "kick, punch, lock, throw, ground game integration".

That is to use:

1. kick to set up punch,
2. punch to set up clinch,
3. clinch to set up throw,
4. throw to set up follow on strike, or ground game.

Since most of the striking arts don't have 3 and 4, and most of the grappling art don't have 1 and 2, I just can't expect the form/Kata creators to give me all those "integration" information that I need.

The following clip can be a good example. It's a new created form/Kata that record the information that I would like to train.

For example,

- You use kick to set up your back fist, use your back fist to set up clinch, use your clinch to set up hip throw.
- You take your opponent down, you then kick his head while he is on the ground.
- ...

 
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Kung Fu Wang

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We can be taught that one movement can have multiple results, e.g. block and kick at the same time. To my mind, the movement is the intention, but it has multiple results. Aside from that, I'm not sure what you mean.
You (general YOU) can only have one "intend" at any particular moment. For example, when you hold on your opponent's leading leg, you can take him down in the following ways:

- sweep his standing leg,
- hook his standing leg,
- horse back kick his standing leg,
- lift up his leading leg over your shoulder,
- push down his leading leg to the ground,
- use "wheeling step" to rotate his body and take him down,
- ...

Even in your form/Kata, you may have a move that can be mapped into the wrestling "single leg", since to obtain that leg is just the 1st step, to take him down is the 2nd step. When you train your form/Kata, after you have obtained your opponent's leading leg, if you want to take him down by

- sweeping his standing leg, you have to add in a sweep move, you will need a "sweep" intend.
- hooking his standing leg, you have to add in a hook move, you will need a "hook" intend.
- ...

If you want to train all 6 take downs, you have to train your form/Kata in 6 different times with 6 different "intend".
 
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Kung Fu Wang

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It is only a restriction if the student does not want to see the connections of movements to other movements, ...
The "restriction" that I'm talking about is if I spend the rest of my life to dig into the forms that I have learned. I can be a very good "striker". But those forms won't be able to help me on my "striking art and grappling art integration" task that I'm interested in.

So the concern are:

- Should you (general YOU) "cross train"?
- How do you do your "integration" work?
- ...
 
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donald1

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I like kata, learning the forms themselves and over time learning what the techniques could also be (if the form is block and punch it could also be. step out of the way then punch. Something else block, grab, then pull them into the punch) I also like teaching other people kata, being able to explain why the techniques are effective and over time seeing them memorize forms and improve.
 

Kung Fu Wang

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the movement is the intention, but it has multiple results. Aside from that, I'm not sure what you mean.
Yes! The movement is the "intend". But you have to move in different ways to have different "intend". Since you can only move in one way at any giving time, you can only have one intend at any giving moment.

A simple example of "intend" in form is when you throw a left side kick, if your opponent

1. steps back, you can follow through with a "straight punch".
2. downward blocks your kick to your left, you can follow through with a "hook punch".
3. downward blocks your kick to your right, you can follow through with a "spin back fist".

After your side kick, you may have 3 different "intend", to

1. move forward,
2. spin to your left,
3. spin to your right.

Since those 3 "intent" are mutual exclusive, you can only have one "intend" at any giving moment when you train your form. You can't train all 3 "intend" at the same time.
 
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Zeny

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I think i can somewhat see where kung fu wang is coming from. His manner of training may work for him but i train differently.

Instead of practising specific moves or sequence of moves, i train integration and balance of mind and body so that my body follows the dictates of my mind, and whatever my mind wills, my body follows. This allows me to react to unexpected moves and situations, and kata helps me with that. That is also why kung fu wang finds my methods extremely foreign to him.
 

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Since those 3 "intent" are mutual exclusive, you can only have one "intend" at any giving moment when you train your form. You can't train all 3 "intend" at the same time.

Unless you are training a principle rather than a movement, which is the point of kata. In terms of techniques within kata, technical intent is something that you move beyond in solo practice so that you are exploring movement and all the potential that comes with it.

At least that's what I have learned.
 

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So the concern are:

- Should you (general YOU) "cross train"?
- How do you do your "integration" work?
- ...

So essentially you want to develop a kata to train mma as a fighting style?

Go for it, I'd love to see the results.

Personally I have no problem with inventing forms for personal use, but as this thread implies, classical forms often have many layers of depth so I'd not be inclined to replace them with ones constructed on only a surface technique level (not that you said anything about replacing).

All I would say is that I don't see any real benefit in stealing techniques and knitting them together. I believe you are best served by training in each specialism to a significant level of skill and understanding so that when you come to combine methods you understand the full implications of the techniques you are using and their counters so that your integration / transition doesn't leave you open.
 

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