How many kata is too many kata?

[D.Cobb]

Originally posted by Old Fat Kenpoka
OK, Sorry. You asked for an opinion and I gave it. Don't diss all Kenpo people because of my opinion. Don't try and banish me to an MMA forum because I gave an honest answer...You asked a very general question and I gave a very general response.

I spent 20 years practicing Kata really hard. I did about 25 different forms including 4 weapons forms. One day I woke up and realized I had spent all my time doing forms.

Compared with my contemporaries who did not spend as much time on Kata: I couldn't spar as well , I couldn't hit with as much power, and I couldn't execute the techniques against a real opponent as effectively. So, love your katas, but you asked the question and I gave my opinion. [/B][/QUOTE]

Kata, is how we train our techniques without a partner. They are where we learn some of the finer points of our chosen system. They won't teach you how to fight, but from them you can learn things that you won't get by just doing your techs on someone else.
Obviously to make kata work for you, you need to add drills to your training, preferably ones that are based upon your katas. From these you will learn correct distancing and timing.
Kata are the encyclopedia of our respective arts.

Compared with my contemporaries who did not spend as much time on Kata: I couldn't spar as well , I couldn't hit with as much power, and I couldn't execute the techniques against a real opponent as effectively. So, love your katas, but you asked the question and I gave my opinion.

All I can deduce from this comment is that you may have worked hard on your katas for 25 years, but you really didn't learn anything. I have to admit I haven't been in the arts as long as you, but I have to say, if you do your katas correctly, and with intent and purpose, then you will hit harder, and your techs will come alive. If your kata is dead then it is time to put on a white belt in a kata oriented style and start again.

I can't remember who it was, but someone once said, "Movement without purpose is nothing more tham wasted motion."
As a KENPO man I would have thought you were against wasted motion

Hey, this is just my $0.02 worth.

:asian:

 

[D.Cobb]

Originally posted by RyuShiKan
Yes.............and I can say uninformed too.

 

[RyuShiKan]

Originally posted by D.Cobb
Kata, is how we train our techniques without a partner. They are where we learn some of the finer points of our chosen system. They won't teach you how to fight, but from them you can learn things that you won't get by just doing your techs on someone else.
Obviously to make kata work for you, you need to add drills to your training, preferably ones that are based upon your katas. From these you will learn correct distancing and timing.
Kata are the encyclopedia of our respective arts.

Dave,

Couldn’t have said it better!
Some nay sayers of kata just don’t get the whole picture.

Originally posted by D.Cobb
All I can deduce from this comment is that you may have worked hard on your katas for 25 years, but you really didn't learn anything. I have to admit I haven't been in the arts as long as you, but I have to say, if you do your katas correctly, and with intent and purpose, then you will hit harder, and your techs will come alive. If your kata is dead then it is time to put on a white belt in a kata oriented style and start again.

I can't remember who it was, but someone once said, "Movement without purpose is nothing more tham wasted motion."
As a KENPO man I would have thought you were against wasted motion

Hey, this is just my $0.02 worth.

:asian:

Again……..Bravo!
My teacher has a saying.
“There are 2 kinds of sweat. “Stupid sweat” where you sweat hard but don’t concentrate on what you are doing and “Golden sweat”; where you think about and understand what you are doing so your sweat is worthy of you efforts……like gold”

 

[Sauzin]

In YiLi, it is an EXPECTATION to work on things outside of scheduled class time. When you go to college, you don't just spend the time in class learning; you are expected to do at least 2 to 4 hours for every hour of class time...the same is true of martial arts...if you simply go to class and train there, but invest none of your own time outside of class, you'll never get where you want to be.

Of course, I agree completely

I did not mean to say that I am frustrated due to having to spend time outside of class. I meant to say that I am frustrated due to having to spend all my time outside of class only running through the kata once and not working specific kata repetitively. Just running through all of my kata once takes me about 4 hours. This doesn't leave me with much time to work specific kata, unless I sacrifice running through others.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

-Paul Holsinger

 

[chufeng]

Certainly you remember your basic kata pretty well by now...you can cut back on those and do them once or twice a week, instead.

With the time you save, invest it in picking apart a single kata...work that one kata for at least a month...look for things you think you see and write them down...then practice them with a partner...ask your sensei for clarification once you do the hard work.

Again, you'll never master even one kata using your current strategy...

After you've examined six or seven, pick the one you like the best and then get rerally nit picky on detail...hidden goodies often show up in the transitions so don't neglect looking there as well.

:asian:
chufeng

 

[D.Cobb]

Originally posted by RyuShiKan
Dave,

Couldn’t have said it better!
Some nay sayers of kata just don’t get the whole picture.






Again……..Bravo!
My teacher has a saying.
“There are 2 kinds of sweat. “Stupid sweat” where you sweat hard but don’t concentrate on what you are doing and “Golden sweat”; where you think about and understand what you are doing so your sweat is worthy of you efforts……like gold”

Thank you for the kudos.
I believe that compliments from you are not to be taken lightly.

--Dave

:asian:

 

[RyuShiKan]

Originally posted by D.Cobb

I believe that compliments from you are not to be taken lightly.

I always give credit where credit is due.

 

[Old Fat Kenpoka]

OK. So you can call me a troll if you want. You can claim I don't understand my Katas. You can even call my instructors incompetent because of my attitude on Katas even though they've won numerous Kata and Kumite competitions. I can handle your criticism. I am not going to defend my competence in Kata. I am not going to post pictures of myself doing katas or of the tournament trophies. I am not going to post pictures of my my students doing katas and winning in tournaments.

You should all just keep on practicing all of your katas whether you are doing 8 or 80 of them. More power to you. Next time you get into a fight, just remember your katas. After the fight, tell the paramedic that you should have spent more time practicing kata.

As for me, I am not going to spend any more time on Kata. I am going to take all that I've learned and all that I am still learning and apply it against fully resisting opponents sparring and fighting and making sure that everything that I do really does work.

 

[Sauzin]

Certainly you remember your basic kata pretty well by now...you can cut back on those and do them once or twice a week, instead.

With the time you save, invest it in picking apart a single kata...work that one kata for at least a month...look for things you think you see and write them down...then practice them with a partner...ask your sensei for clarification once you do the hard work.

Again, you'll never master even one kata using your current strategy...

After you've examined six or seven, pick the one you like the best and then get rerally nit picky on detail...hidden goodies often show up in the transitions so don't neglect looking there as well.

Thank-you.

That is good advice and I will make sure to put it to practice.

-Paul Holsinger

 

[Shuri-te]

I would like to resuscitate a thread I began some time ago. I think it useful to actually count the reps of kata you do, and more important, count the reps of kata you teach. I have been in many traditional dojos, and the numbers collectively done in the dojo rarely add up to much.

Here is one very general practice. During kata practice, a students "runs through" all he knows. If he knows 15, he will run through each one once.

So add up the reps of what you practice and extrapolate over one year, four years, and a decade. For some systems with lots of kata, especially those with kobudo thrown in on top, the total numbers may surprise you. I have done this with a couple of mainline Okinawan systems and the total reps over time are remarkably meager.

Now go back 100 years. Funakoshi talks of beginners taking three years to learn Naihanchi. And remember to be a student under the masters he trained under, you trained everyday for 2 or more hours. And the curriculum was kata-intensive. Yabu Kentsu (one of Itosu's senior students) said you needed to practice a kata 10,000 times to make it one's own. It would be very surprising to me if the average student didn't pass that mark before a year.

So the Okinawans prized repetition. And I don't think this be a surprise to anyone. How many times over 20 years would a professional boxer practice a left jab, right cross combination? In the air, on the heavy bag and speed bag, and in sparring and boxing? My guess is scores of thousands of times. I have read that serious professional golfers can easily hit a thousand balls in one day of training. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back on an NBA basketball player trying to move up from the bench. He shoots a thousand jumpshots a day. How many strokes do you take if you are an oarsman? How many swings of a bat if a baseball player? Swings of a tennis racket if you are a tennis player? Over 10 or so years, serious athletes do these movements not tens of thousands of times but hundreds of thousands of times, and lots more.

And in many dojos, a technique might be practiced in a kata 50 to 200 times per year, because kata is "run through" once or twice a week, maybe with two reps per kata. And with these miniscule repetitions, do we really expect we will be able to apply these movements in self defense? Imagine our lives are on the line, in a moment of intense stress. Can we really expect these measley reps to provide us with reflexive, fast and powerful responses to large attackers?

Count the reps of kata you do and teach, and then ask yourself why are you practicing and teaching movements that can never be practiced enough for good self-defense. Then ask yourself why you couldn't be like the Okinawan masters in the 1800s. Funakoshi said it was common for a master to know one kata, or just a few.

IMHO, most systems do too many kata. If self defense is ultimately the purpose for the kata the practice, they would be better served by practicing just a few.

I recently had the great fortune to train with a 65 year old Okinawan master who has devoted his life to the fighting arts since he was 10. He told our group that he wanted to throw out half of his 15 kata.

I am a student of Shito Ryu, a system that descends from Kenwa Mabuni, a collector of Okinawan forms. With his additions, there are approximately 50 kata in his system.

I practice and teach five. I have found that I can get so much more out of them then I ever could when I tried practicing 50.

 

[cas]

The founder of wado-ryu Ohtsuka sensei put nine kata in wado originally. The five pinan kata's, kushanku, naifanchi, seishan and chinto. He said this should be enough to practice on during a lifetime. Students in Europe and the US started learning other kata's from other styles so they had more kata's to show in kata competition. To prevent having many different versions of the same kata's in our style senior Japanese teachers started teaching the other kata's that are in Wado now.

Perhaps a kata should be seen as a individual teaching tool. If a style has many kata a teacher could pick a kata that's best for a certain student. In this way a style could have quite a lot of kata's but a practioner will only know a few (really well). This is somewhat contrary to the idea of one grade one kata up to 5th dan.

What do you think?

thanks,

Casper baar

 

[Shuri-te]

In Bishop's book, he says Higaonna did just that. Sanchin for many months, then have a kata hand-picked by the master.

 

[angrywhitepajamas]

Do you guys do it hard and fast, soft and slow? What mind set do you approach the kata with? Are you fighting, exploring the different nuances of the technique ,or are you performing a specific set of movements? Is your traning as my teachers have put it "kata kumite same" or is your kata a separate from your application as some schools near me do(too many to name)?What is your prefered emotion to perform/practice/explore/fight?
Do you practice a single set as a standing meditation?


This may set off sparks, but I am curious to learn how different people approach kata. Because as the aikido proverb states "what is going on in your head shows in your body" and one of my instructors states every time "Your kata reflects how you will train for the rest of the night and the rest of the year".

 

[Shuri-te]

There are lots of ideas on kata practice.

I think to make kata practical you need to do several things. First you need to do reps of the kata. Second, you should, where possible, practice pieces of combinations, or complete combinations against a bag. Third, you need lots of partner work.

Regarding the kata repetitions, there should be some done the "traditional" way. Lots of kime (keymay), or focus. But I don't think it necessary to spend too much time on hard, tough movements. I think it more helpful to practice a range of speeds and tension. Here is my strong advice. If someone says you should only practice kata one way, ignore him. On your own time when you practice kata, what you do is up to you, and the way most Japanese and some Okinawan kata is practiced, the pace is often too slow to really begin to make it practical. You need to practice techniques as you would use them in fighting, and that is fast, without all the pauses.

So you should practice a range. First, to warm up, it is good to practice the movements completely relaxed and slow. Kind of like tai-chi only somewhat faster. Then do lots of reps fast and relaxed. In Muay Thai training, as well as western boxing, there are lots of fast relaxed strikes thrown. Really try to crank up the speed on at least some of them. But for most, just pretty good speed.

Let's say you chose to do 30 reps of a kata. You could take them in stages. 2 medium speed relaxed, 5 almost full speed, relaxed, 3 full speed relaxed. 3 full power with kime, 2 slow like tai chi, then repeat. Any mix is good. Find something that works for you.

You could do a couple of reps with weights in your hands, but don't do them to quickly, or too hard, as hard techniques with weights can damage some of the tissue in your joints, especially your shoulder, and even more especially if you are older. You could choose to do parts of kata with dynamic tension, like some portions of Goju kata. If your application of a movement is a lock, or a throw that takes a good bit of arm strength, then these are good candidates.

Don't neglect bag work, it is essential. Use full combinations, where possible, or portions of them, against a bag to help develop good power. You quickly find out where your weaknesses are, so you can better understand how to apply good body mechanics to maximize power. (How to put more of your body into your techniques.)

But none of this will likely result in effective techniques unless you practice combinations with partners. And for these, you really need to do lots of repetitions. I like to break the movements down. And sometimes do a small piece of the combination many times. Maybe it is a difficult transition such as switching a grab from one hand to the other, or a difficult trap. Focus on high reps of the difficult parts of the application. Sometimes it is best to focus on the end part, and once that begins to feel natural, work your way backwards incrementally until you get the beginning. Lot's of techniques can fail because you are good at the beginning, but have not practiced the end nearly as often. Reversing the repetitions to the end movements helps to overcome this. Once you get through the beginning, the rest flows more naturally.

One important thing. If you are to really want to crank up the reps, it helps to figure out how to breathe properly. You need to find something that works for you. I can share my thoughts if somebody wants, but this post is getting long enough.

Finally, you have to find some techniques that actually work. The karate world is filled with people who practice and teach kata and have no conception of how to make the movements useful. Rather, the unfortunate truth is that most bunkai practiced is just plain bad fighting. There are some basics I go by that have provided me with good applictations, but that too is another post, if there is any interest.

Just some ideas.

 

[Kempojujutsu]

Is it me or should one be a master of 1 to 3 kata's instead of trying to know 10 or more kata's. Just a thought.
Bob :asian:

 

[Shuri-te]

Bob,

First, I have a caveat. I know something about a number of Okinawan kata (and their Japanese derivatives). I do have some familiarity with many other fighting systems. Unfortunately for those with forms and kata, I have chosen not to try to better understand these movements. As I said above, I have abandoned dozens of kata in my own system. (Although I do have some understanding of the movements for many of them.)

I have seen Kempo kata, but I confess ignorance regarding the inner workings of them. So although I have been using the term kata, I have been using it in a specific context, kata that have evolved from those practiced in Okinawa 90 years ago when Itosu, Kyan and Higaonna were teaching. Mea culpa if this doesn't fully apply to Kempo.

The reason that I make this qualification, is that I have firsthand knowledge of the effectiveness of Okinawan kata, and why just a few can serve as a complete foundation for a fighting system.

The issue comes down to the breadth of application contained in the movements of Okinawan kata. I just don't know whether there are comparable kinds of applications within other systems with which I am not completely familiar.

To me, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Okinawan karate is that some movements are really like swiss army knives. They can be used against many different kinds of attacks. Sure, there are small differences between the actual movements in these applications, but the general pattern can be repeated.

In the applications I do, I stick closely to the kata, and not only are there blocks, counterkicks and strikes, and all sorts of locks, but there are takedowns for every application I practice. Against a big attacker, my goal is to put the big guy on the ground so his relative advantage in mass is greatly diminished. And I can just follow through the steps of kata, and do that hundreds of times, with the handful of kata I teach and practice.

In the applications I do, the "turns" (and pivots) are an integral part of the technique. Everything you do benefits from good body mechanics, bringing your body into the technique. You can do that by moving forward, or by turning, and many forward movements have pivots as well. So you turn to block and counter, then continue with your combination by perhaps turning to lock, (and perhaps counter again) and continue again by perhaps turning to throw. I say perhaps, because sometimes the forward movements are used for locks and takedowns. In Okinawan kata, there are turns and forward movements, and both come together.

So lets say a kata has starts with turn A and proceeds, each turn and it's associated forward movemens being a letter. AB or ABC would be a technique, (and perhaps, though rarely, ABCD) BC and perhaps BCD are also techniques. So is CD or CDE, and DE, EF and so on. In some cases, movements modeled on the body mechanics of one "combination" can be used against a variety of attacks, and in rare cases, perhaps 5, 10, 15 different kinds of attacks. (For example AB, or ABC at the beginning of Pinan Shodan and Pinan Yondan.)

Please note that this is a very unorthodox approach to kata interpretation found in Okinawan and especially Japanese karate today. Many, many systems use turns primarily to face an opponent coming from a different direction, and then complete the technique with a single counterstrike/kick found in that one "direction." However it is what, in my mind, makes kata practice so useful. It is not a bunch of techniques strung together, but a bunch of overlapping techniques strung together, and why the practice of the kata is different from the practice of individual techniques or components of the kata.

Again, I am referring to Okinawan kata, but this is why just a few kata are so hard to master. Because if you really want to use the kata to its fullest, you have so much work ahead. Let's say a particular combination can be used in 10 different ways (not the norm). Then I do believe why most MAists could see why it might be a good idea to adopt those movements fully into one's defensive repertoire. And for that you need thousands of repetitions of kata, lots of bag work and tons of partner work.

Now let's say you decide to go forward with that plan. How long would it take to achieve in the typical karate dojo? I would venture to say, from experience, several years, just for one kata. And if you wanted to, for a variety of reasons, introduce kata say once per year, it would take far longer.

Even more important, if your school were not set up for this kind of repetition, but you needed to do this on your own, outside your dojo, it would take many years.

That's why I advocate finding a few kata that work for you, and focusing on just them. But again, when it comes to Kempo please recognized that I don't understand the kata. Maybe more kata are needed to get to the right number of combinations good for self defense. Some Kempo kata I have seen are relatively short compared to many of the Okinawa forms. (There are relatively short Okinawan forms, Pinans and Naihanchi being examples, but most kata have 15 or more directions.)

But then that is a whole other story. How many combinations do you really want to practice for true self defense?

 

[Nightingale]

Kenpo Katas contain the left sides of many techniques...

when I was testing for my brown belt, my instructor told me to do the technique "grip of death" and the guy who was being the dummy attacked me the wrong way...I just did the technique on the left side. If I hadn't known my katas, I wouldn't have had that in my arsenal. I pulled the tech off with no problem, and about ten minutes later, my instructor finally figures it out, looks at me and says "did you just do grip of death on the left side?" me: "yes, sir" him: "where the heck did you pick that up?" me: "short form 3, sir" him: "oh, yeah! I'd forgotten about that. Jose, get over here and do the right attack!"

There's nothing wrong with training in a system that is designed without katas. In many of those systems, the things katas teach are taught in other ways. However, when you take katas out of a system that already has them, without putting something else in, you lose a lot. Katas in kenpo not only teach you the left sides of many techniques, they teach you a lot about movement and focus. Also, if you practice the steps of your kata off the attack, you gain a lot of insight as to what exactly is supposed to be happening in your kata.

 

[Shuri-te]

I have a question on Kenpo katas. Let's say you learn a new kata after 2 years of study. I would like to understand how quickly the applications of the kata would be provided by the teacher.

In many karate systems, the kata come quick, but the applications, slow, or not at all. And many would argue that most of the applications given provide the student a terrific way of getting seriously hurt. They are lousy fighting plain and simple. (Anyone want another thread on this topic?)

Can you tell me if Kenpo is different? Is it a general practice to teach applications for the movements in kata? And if so, in general, how quickly are they taught and for what percentage of the kata?

First, as I am really interested in kata application, I would like to know. Second, if applications are learned, it really reinforces your statement that if you throw a kata out, then you are throwing out useful technique that needs to be replaced.

I argue that in most karate systems, the unfortunate truth is that good applications are rarely taught for kata movements, and therefore, if you throw out a kata, you really don't have to replace it, because it wasn't providing anything that needed replacing.

On top of that, the common practice of doing these kata 50-100 times a year makes any hope of practical use very unlikely.

 

[Old Fat Kenpoka]

Shuri-te: You might look for some of my posts earlier in this thread...even though you might not like all of them...

Anyway, Kenpo is very different from J/O Karate in that the techniques in Kata exist separately as techniques. That is to say that the techniques are taught separately from and usually prior to learning the kata. Each technique has a unique name like Glancing Salute or Delayed Sword. The techniques are practiced with an Uke first slow, and then fast with plenty of contact. They are practiced on both sides and a lot of "what-if" is done enabling the kenpoist to modify the technique as the situation changes.

This is one of the key points of my earlier argument -- considered inflammatory by most on this thread -- that Kata practice is not necessary for the improvement of technique.

 

[Shuri-te]

OFK,

Thank you for the clarification on the practice of kata. I had a feeling that was the way it was taught. The techniques are taught as applications quickly, and this is virtually the opposite of the way the techniques are taught in karate.

One of the things I borrow from Kenpo (and other fighting systems) that I apply in my kata interpretation is the notion of multiple counterstrikes. In many Japanese/Okinawan systems, there is a heavy emphasis on single counterstrike applications from kata. To me, the notion that I could ever drop a large attacker with a single counter is comical. But in the kenpo I have been exposed to, you hit the guy several times, and use all sorts of locks. Great stuff.

I hope you don't judge all kata by the Kenpo kata you do. Okinawan kata are not just techniques strung together, but overlapping techniques strung together, and the practice of kata can really help as part of the overall development.

I didn't consider anything you said inflammatory. Some of the replies, I might not view the same.

I am a staunch advocate of kata, but I also believe that the way it is taught and has been taught is woefully deficient. But that is another thread if someone is interested.