Does karate need to evolve?

[GojuTommy]

Meh, MMA definitely influenced a lot of arts in early 2000s, Karate being no exception.

Influenced sure, but as a whole mma hasn’t made much of an impact other than drawing potential students away.

And there’s a handful of dojo all over the world (in the grand scheme of things) that have adapted to newer more modern ways of doing things without abandoning the old completely, but they’re rare exceptions rather than the rule

 

[Oily Dragon]

But the process is the same. People who train by fighting generally fight better.

So yes I know a shotokan club (I think) that produces killers. But they also jump in the ring a lot. They also cross train a lot. And they have good fighters training their guys.

Yeah that was kind of where I was going.

People who train to fight...often also pick up old arts. Or, they train old arts and bring them into a realistic training environment.

It does suck that there are so many dead schools out there, but I've seen enough that train alive (or at least with some resistance and contact) to not write anything off.

But if someone today told me they "do karate/Kung Fu", a fun game of 20 questions starts...can't tell you how many times somebody says they spar and I'm like "what do you wear to protect your hands" and hoo boy does the BS often fly.

 

[Oily Dragon]

I personally don't think that the overarching culture of Karate has become stagnant, to the contrary, I think many aspects of the culture have slowly evolved over the last 100 years. Many new traditions, concepts, philosophies and styles have been created that are for better or worse, drastically different from the arts practiced and promoted by the pioneers of 100+ years ago.

Not to mention, all it took to make (Shotokan) karate "ok for MMA"was a couple key MMA fighters bringing their game.

Lyoto Machida doesn't just consider himself an MMA fighter. He proudly considers himself a karateka also.

 

[Oily Dragon]

It’s primary purpose is that no questions about it.
Muscle memory and everything else has other ways of being achieved that are not kata. Transmission of techniques has few other realistic options before the printing press and photography.

MMA isn’t a style or art, but the main styles within MMA do not have kata.
Shadow boxing is not kata. Kihon isn’t kata.

Most of the styles in MMA have some form of sequence training. BJJ has them, boxing has them, even wrestling has them. They don't have to be long or static either. Remember what Kata actually means ..it's not from Karate at all.

Muay Thai in particular comes from this stuff. Now you could argue "Oily why train this, it's really old and useless" but...it's really not. In fact if you've ever met anyone who Thai boxes AND knows the forms of Boran and others ...these people are the real deal dude.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Anybody here engage in shadow wrestling? Very similar to kata and the exercise science here is on point.

Shadow Wrestling: How, What, & Why Of Solo Wrestling Drills - Sweet Science of Fighting

Shadow wrestling is more than a way to drill technique. It is also a wrestling conditioning modality and a highly effective one at that. If you want to level

sweetscienceoffighting.com

Man not only do I do this all the time, but it's fun as hell.

That's kind of my take on kata. It's fun, it's part of the art, and it's the part you can practice on your own in a functional conditioning way (or in some cases a partner, CMA has a lot of 2-man fist sets that are very cool to learn as a segue to San da).

Are there 2 man karate kata? Wouldn't know, only did a few years of it, didn't get that far.

 

[GojuTommy]

Most of the styles in MMA have some form of sequence training. BJJ has them, boxing has them, even wrestling has them. They don't have to be long or static either. Remember what Kata actually means ..it's not from Karate at all.

Muay Thai in particular comes from this stuff. Now you could argue "Oily why train this, it's really old and useless" but...it's really not. In fact if you've ever met anyone who Thai boxes AND knows the forms of Boran and others ...these people are the real deal dude.

Weird you can find all sorts of MT classes to watch in Thailand and don’t see anyone doing any of these in any of those classes.

 

[GojuTommy]

Anybody here engage in shadow wrestling? Very similar to kata and the exercise science here is on point.

Shadow Wrestling: How, What, & Why Of Solo Wrestling Drills - Sweet Science of Fighting

Shadow wrestling is more than a way to drill technique. It is also a wrestling conditioning modality and a highly effective one at that. If you want to level

sweetscienceoffighting.com

Man not only do I do this all the time, but it's fun as hell.

That's kind of my take on kata. It's fun, it's part of the art, and it's the part you can practice on your own in a functional conditioning way (or in some cases a partner, CMA has a lot of 2-man fist sets that are very cool to learn as a segue to San da).

Shadow boxing/wrestling is not the same as kata, but ok.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Weird you can find all sorts of MT classes to watch in Thailand and don’t see anyone doing any of these in any of those classes.

Ram Muay differs depending on the lineage. Lots of Thai schools have no clue about their history. Quite a few use traditional Muay Boran fight dances, others make up new ones.

Muay Thai is basically a mixed art going back to the Siamese empire, heavily influenced by Chinese martial arts (since Thailand is basically the end location of southern Chinese emigrants).

 

[Oily Dragon]

Shadow boxing/wrestling is not the same as kata, but ok.

That's an odd thing to claim. What's your wrestling/boxing experiences?

Both are basically freestyle kata. It's just a sequence of events dude, using certain forms. That's how you recognize an art...its form and dynamics.

Like an etude, musicians use the same method to get really good at specific things that need to be played fast and repetitive, like arpeggios.

This is a kata developed by Chopin for strengthening the right hand.

This is

 

[Tez3]

Traditional Japanese dancing also used kata to learn and practice.

Kata is not confined to martial arts.

What is Kata? Toyotaâs Karate Concept for Lean Continuous Improvement and Coaching Success | Process Street | Checklist, Workflow and SOP Software

Yōkoso! I apologize for my poor Japanse pronunciation. Pray, why am I speaking to you in Japanse? Well, for this post, we will be delving into the Japanese mindset for business using Kata. Kata is a methodology used to make businesses lean. The approach, originally used in martial arts, was...

www.process.st

 

[Darksoul]

Killing time at work, just read through this entire thread. Interesting topic, some really great posts, some just really obtuse and evasive. I'm thinking about getting back into martial arts training, and I'm leaning towards karate. Time will tell.

 

[hoshin1600]

It’s primary purpose is that no questions about it.

That's not it's primary purpose. That's just what you believe and it's a shallow misrepresentation.
The primary purpose is to transfer and embody the style. But to understand that, one would first have to understand what a style is. Not many people do. Most people think a style is a collection of techniques as if one could go around finding new shiny things and put them in their bag. Most experienced MA know that method doesn't work well because those parts are disjointed in a way and don't make a cohesive unit. Can you do it sure but that's the big difference between asian and western thinking. An Asian "style" is a subset of the Asian concept of the family unit. It's a very abstract concept. but you could think about like this, when you are accepted as a full student you become a part of the teachers family. It's the students role to learn and pass on the family style. It's not a collection of techniques, it's the essence of the father. As example I walk, talk and have many characteristics that my dad has. That is his essence. It's a feeling. Likewise in MA circles everyone that knows me and my old instructor comments on how much i move and look just like him. The primary purpose of kata is to impart and pass on that feeling. There is no equivalent in western society. With out that feeling or essence you are not doing the style. You are doing a collection of moves and just about every school of fighting throws a punch. Everyone punches, its the essence that defines the style and makes those punches different. If you don't understand forms and don't train them you do not learn the essence of the style and its why many people complain about everyone looking the same when they do sparring when the rest of the style curriculum looks so different. This is where the Asian concept of Shu- Ha- Ri comes in. It's an implicit concept that's embedded in Asian culture. It's not an Aikido thing. Other arts could just have different words to express it. But the concept is that once you learn the essence, you can transcend the physical techniques because everything you do will exude that same essence. Even when your not trying to.

 

[isshinryuronin]

It was the Japanese that introduced the "kata shouldn't change" mindset. The Japanse were in pre WWII mindset of military conforming doctrine.

Your post had a lot of good stuff in it, especially about kata being more complicated than some may think, but I'd like to make a few points.

The Japanese standardized kata into a curriculum, true, but I think this began a little before their militarization, done in the interests of teaching effectively in a public-school environment starting during the mid 1920's to early 1930's.

It's important to understand that the original purpose of kata was for the transmission of combat techniques. It was really a synthesis of a master's concepts. It has been said that each of the old kata formed the basis of a complete fighting style, in and of itself. I believe this is true, but probably not complete, rather a compilation of representative techniques of a particular master's personal fighting style.

Kata is a structured action pattern that spans multiple levels of muscle memory that is purposely repeated in order for the brain to gain and engrain embodied knowledge.

Kata certainly helps with this, however, repetition to perfect karate technique execution is not the purpose of kata. That's what drilling is for. What is not often done, however, is taking the technique/series out of the kata and drilling them individually, solo and with a resisting partner. After all, these individual techniques or short combos are really what kata is composed of. This kind of drilling puts some of the purpose back into kata.

Kata can show how these techniques are used in dynamic combinations, but its main purpose is conceptual. In other words, a framework of ideas to work off of. This infers that kata can not only (and should) be done as taught but can also be utilized as platform for further non-standard exploration.

 

[Tez3]

Hironori Otsuka founder of Wado Ryu wrote
" It is obvious that these kata must be trained and practiced sufficiently but one must not be 'stuck' in them. One must withdraw from the kata to produce forms with no limits or else it becomes useless. It is important to alter the forms of the trained kata without hesitation to produce countless other forms of training.
Essentially it is a habit, - created over long periods of training. Because it is a habit, it comes to live with no hesitation - by the subconscious mind"

There's a lot of thought on kata, lots of different ideas on how it should be used, we have different ideas on here. This indicates to me that karateka are thinking, pushing and exploring ideas about both karate and kata.
I don't know where the OP gets his opinion on karate from and why he is so aggressively against it. Perhaps just to argue.

 

[JowGaWolf]

A broken clock is still right twice a day

ha ha ha.. only if it's analog

 

[GojuTommy]

Hironori Otsuka founder of Wado Ryu wrote
" It is obvious that these kata must be trained and practiced sufficiently but one must not be 'stuck' in them. One must withdraw from the kata to produce forms with no limits or else it becomes useless. It is important to alter the forms of the trained kata without hesitation to produce countless other forms of training.
Essentially it is a habit, - created over long periods of training. Because it is a habit, it comes to live with no hesitation - by the subconscious mind"

There's a lot of thought on kata, lots of different ideas on how it should be used, we have different ideas on here. This indicates to me that karateka are thinking, pushing and exploring ideas about both karate and kata.
I don't know where the OP gets his opinion on karate from and why he is so aggressively against it. Perhaps just to argue.

I don’t know where you get the idea I’m against karate let alone ‘aggressively’ against it. Suggesting something needs to make changes doesn’t mean you’re against that thing. It means you think that thing could be and should be better, which to me is the most supportive thing someone can do for a person or activity.

You can look at the videos of pretty much any school that puts videos of their training online and see that most are doing things the same way, and if you look back it’s the same way things have been done for the last 30-40 years.

People talking about the different ideas behind kata, and whether or not the lost meaning theory doesn’t mean karate is changing. Wouldn’t be surprised if people weren’t having these same discussion 30 years ago when the internet was first born, and here we are still with no general consensus, stagnately speculating.

This speculation however isn’t really relevant to the discussion however.

 

[Hyoho]

No it is not. The original purpose of kata, was to be step 1 of the Shu-Ha-Ri process. That purpose is to teach and study the core principles. Memorization of a kata does not equal mastery of a kata. Once you have memorized a kata to the point where you can do it without thinking... you are now ready to begin studying that kata. You cannot study the kata, if you are busy trying to remember what comes next.

Shu ha ri (Shi gyo to) reads as protect, break, seperation.

Shodan to Godan-Shu
Rukudan to nandan-Ha
Hachidan-ri

This really should not be case as most certainly is not the theory professed by our most respected sensei.

It's Shu Ren Ko. To study, practice, figure/work out.

After Ko we then go back to Shu in a never ending process.

It's a never ending process we follow with our teacher and still continue when we are on our own. How many times do we hear and see this with a sensei on a seminar who has you doing the first fundamental you ever did? Its back to basics. We can do some fancy stuff or add our own character. But all in all it's the same old stuff with or without our sensei if we want to try reach for that perfection that will alway elude us.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Not if it can be avoided, but even the shovels have changed and gotten better.

Mine hasn't.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Sometimes. Sometimes they use tractors.

Or guns. I dig small holes. Shovel works fine. Karate does not need to evolve. Students need to be better students.

 

[GojuTommy]

Mine hasn't.

Congratulations?