Theory, Practice, and Kata - The Thesis of my Practice - In Progress...

[Makalakumu]

Here is an outline...

Kata Analysis

1. Direct Applications
2. Teaching Principles
3. Physical Fitness

Every move is all three

Application in Kata

1. Bunkai - analysis - What you do.
2. Oyo - analysis - What your opponent does.
3. Henka - Variations of bunkai and oyo.
4. Okuden - That which is hidden.

Layers in Application

1. Atemi - striking
2. Tuite - Joint locking, throwing, trapping
3. Kyusho - life preservation, comprehensive of all techniques.

Basic Kata Principles

1. Blocks are strikes and strikes are blocks.
2. Strike to grab and grab to strike.
3. Instinctual movement.

Timing

1. Block and counter.
2. Simultaineous block and attack.
3. Disruption - attack before - sense attack

Before I elaborate, give me your thoughts on this outline...

 

[Makalakumu]

Here are some personal observations based on what I have read of Itosu's writings.

What is a move? Every move has two parts, intermediate and end.

1. In general, the intermediate positions are defensive.
2. In general, the end positions are offensive.

Kata Sequences

1. Applications are no more then three moves.
2. Every sequence starts and ends on the same move.

 

[MBuzzy]

I think that it is a pretty comprehensive outline, although I would look to add a section regarding how it all comes together for an effective performance of a kata. Or just go into performance versus application.

 

[Makalakumu]

I think that it is a pretty comprehensive outline, although I would look to add a section regarding how it all comes together for an effective performance of a kata. Or just go into performance versus application.

I am not really intersted in performance of kata anymore. For too long, what looks good has trumped what actually works...and now, for those of us who are attempting to look at the other side, we have a mess to unravel. One literally has to go and trace the root of where the kata came from and what was being done with application in order to see how some moves apply.

 

[MBuzzy]

That is an excellent point - much is lost in the attempt to make things look pretty.

Do you plan to attempt to publish this? It could be an excellent area for a Thesis, a lot of room for new research and discovery.
Will it be focused on General Kata/Hyung or Korean based or Japanese based?

 

[Makalakumu]

That is an excellent point - much is lost in the attempt to make things look pretty.

Do you plan to attempt to publish this? It could be an excellent area for a Thesis, a lot of room for new research and discovery.
Will it be focused on General Kata/Hyung or Korean based or Japanese based?

The first thing I'm going to do is turn it into an essay and post it right here on MT. If I can get it polished to a point where the information is accurate and coherent, I may publish.

As far as its focus, I will be focusing on TSD hyung. This would be for all TSD practioners.

 

[Makalakumu]

Introduction

Tang Soo Do is a popular Korean martial art that has practicioners all around the world. The art has incorporated elements of Chinese, Okinawan and Japanese martial arts in a synthesis that has produced a great art to practice.

Yet, along its syncretic lineage, Tang Soo Do has lost some things. Important elements that were part of the Japanese, Okinawan, and Chinese roots were left out of the synthesis. The purpose of this essay is not to discuss the history surrounding the subtraction of these elements. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the incorporation of these elements into the practice of Tang Soo Do so that every practicioner can deepen his/her understanding of the art.

I do not claim to be an expert in the martial arts. I am a student and I am a teacher, that is all. The information I am presenting is rooted in my experience in Tang Soo Do, in other martial arts, and in the five years of research that I have put into this topic. Thus, with an open mind, we proceed...

 

[exile]

Obviously, this is all music to my ears. I do think it would be good to have a final section on how to implement this schematic outline of the strategic structure of the kata, and the various ways this structure can be realized tactically, in an actual, practical curriculum that takes the instructor from white belts to advanced colored belts (by the time one gets to dan ranks, the hope and expection should be, I think, that practitioners will be trained to do their own research and 'destructive testing' on hypothetical bunkai possibilities; and by that point, of course, they'll probably be doing their own instruction).

The curricular aspect is non-trivial. It's like anything else: there's content, and there's the packaging of content for delivery in a coherent sequence of instructional units that makes it as digestible as possible, as rapidly as possible, for the naive learner. A curriculum built around kata/hyungs will in a sense be a reversion to the old Okinawan roots of TKD and TSD, where the kata was the martial art. But the old master/apprentice structure in 19th century Okinawa that delivered that training isn't compatible with our 21st century western societal norms and expectations. So a different kind of curriculum that has the same instructional content is needed... there have been some earlier threads that touched on this point, I know, but I don't recall anything extremely detailed (although, if I'm not mistaken, kidswarrior had some very good ideas about this; but I can't find his posts on the topic...)

 

[Makalakumu]

I'm going to be writing this thing right here on MT and my hope is that we all can work on putting it together. In the end, I hope to be more a facillitator then anything else. I want to do this to improve everyone's practice, so feel free to contribute. Link some threads you may feel are important. Throw out ideas and well discuss as we go.

 

[Makalakumu]

Obviously, this is all music to my ears. I do think it would be good to have a final section on how to implement this schematic outline of the strategic structure of the kata, and the various ways this structure can be realized tactically, in an actual, practical curriculum that takes the instructor from white belts to advanced colored belts (by the time one gets to dan ranks, the hope and expection should be, I think, that practitioners will be trained to do their own research and 'destructive testing' on hypothetical bunkai possibilities; and by that point, of course, they'll probably be doing their own instruction).

The curriculum aspect is touchy, but I will address it. I'm going to offer my curriculum up as an example. People can take from it what they wish.

 

[Makalakumu]

The Missing Pieces

Tang Soo Do is like a building constructed from the materials of neccessity. We have pieces of arts spackled here and there in order to fill in the cracks and hold the whole thing together. Yet, there are some common elements that most tangsoodoin share. These elements are Kicho (basics), Hyung (forms), Ill Soo Shik (One steps), Ho Sin Shul (self defense), and Deh Ryun (sparring).

These curricular elements are shared entities throughout many other Korean Martial Arts and they owe their roots to Japanese Shotokan. Kihon, Kata, and Kumite form the backbone of the immediate root art for Tang Soo Do.

The missing pieces involved all of these elements and it cannot be addressed by attempting to deal with each individually. This is because of the haphazard way in which the art came together. There is a manifold discontinuity in this edifice that needs to be addressed. The lack of a coherent thread that pulls all of this together to acheive ultimate instructional goals has lead to the general disarray in the tangsoodoin's understanding of what it is they are actually practicing, why they practice it, and how they practice.

My corrective suggestion for dealing with this problem is that we focus on our hyung when building our curriculum.

Traditionally, these objects were designed in order to transfer an art that could be used to preserve one's life in dangerous situations. As this is a central goal for many people's practice of Tang Soo Do, probing the root arts for clues as to how this was done and innovating new solutions to meet the needs of our current environment is paramount.

The following is meant to form a philosophic basis for the formation of a hyung based curriculum. These principles will inform how we practice the traditional curricullar elements that most tangsoodoin are familiar with. The end result of all this will convert the ramshackle edifice that we currently deal with into one that is focused upon clear goals and provides a clear vehicle for a student's progression towards those goals.

 

[Catalyst]

I'm really looking forward to the end product of all of this.

For too long, what looks good has trumped what actually works...

Amen :asian:

 

[Makalakumu]

Kata Analysis

Before we can move foreward with the construction of our curriculum, we need to learn veiw our hyung. The moves in our hyung are not the singular sequences we typically see practiced as kicho in most dojangs. The real "moves" crushing strikes, breaking locks, bruising throws and takedowns, and paralyzing nerve strikes.

If this is the case, how does one view the moves in the hyung in order to "see" their real nature?

The answer to this question starts with Itosu Sensei, the man who is largely responsible for the popularization of Kara-te worldwide. If you look at modern kara-te, the kihon, kata, and kumite pattern is ubiquitously shared amongst many styles. They basically follow the model that Itosu Sensei created for Imperial Japan's Ministry of Education. The line drills of basic techniques, sanitized kata, and a limited form of sparring were all created to be practiced safely by children in school.

Personally, I think that one of the reasons that Modern Karate is so attractive to parents and kids is because this is what Itosu's intended to create. As a teacher, I think that he had an intuitive understanding of development so that he could really go about designing something that would be appropriate for children. Kara-te was intentionally watered down and made safe and this is what was passed on to most of us originally.

Yet, Itosu left us clues so that adults who knew the key could revert the kata back into the deadly art that it once was. One of the keys that he specifically states is the way we need to look at moves in the kata. There are three qualitative statements and three rules relating directly to function that we need to keep in mind when reading kata.

Qualitative Statements

1. Every move has two parts, intermediate and end. In general, the intermediate positions are defensive. In general, the end positions are offensive.

2. Applications are no more then three moves and every sequence starts and ends on the same move.

3. All punches can be moved to the head level. Punching to the middle is less dangerous then to the head.

These statements make a marked distiction between how many karateka view moves in their kata. In other styles of karate, an entire move may be the traditional "low block" we see marched up and down the floor in many dojos. What Itosu is telling us, however, is that what looks like a single move actually has layers. You need to pay attention to the entire movement.

The second statement tells us profound things about how to read kata. The second rule gives us an idea as to how we should be looking at the structure of kata application. This is very important because kata are generally viewed as textbooks. This rule tells us how long the sentances are and how they are punctuated.

Lastly, the third statement indicates that certain moves were changed in order to make kata safer. Changing the location of a strike in order to cause more damage is something that we need to consider when pondering a kata's applications.

Itosu also gave us three rules regarding the functional purpose of each kata move.

Every move in the kata has a threefold purpose.

1. Direct Applications
2. Teaching Principles
3. Physical Fitness

Although it may seem that some kata moves have no purpose or may only fit one or two of the above, this in no way reflects what Itosu intended. Itosu specifically armed us with the qualitative statements so that we would have insight into the threefold purpose of the kata moves. We just need to work harder if we don't yet understand.

 

[Sukerkin]

This, as Exile said earlier, is music to my ears .

We've hammered at this topic a couple of times here and I think in those threads there can be found a lot of good sense which may be helpful in your essay.

A suggestion I have for a broader discourse on the nature of kata is to not only look at what gets lost in an attemt to make a move look "cool!" but also what are in the effects of 'dilution' in an art as the lineage to the source gets more distant.

We're starting to see it now even in koryu arts wherein very venerated (and rightly so) teachers do not bring their senior students up to 'standard' quickly enough and kata begin to be changed because the heads of the arts can no longer demonstrate them accurately i.e. the sensei is prevented by physical infirmities from showing how a kata should truly be and the 'limited' version gets passed down the line.

You also get Kata 'creep' by which I mean that there is an acceptable variance in a technique and as students become teachers the boundaries of what it acceptable can become blurred. In the end this can mean that a teacher is no longer instructing in the style he or she thinks they are but is actualy performing a variant.

 

[Makalakumu]

Sukerkin - That would be a great analysis, unfortunately, it goes beyond the scope of what I wanted to accomplish. Basically, I'm writing this in response to all of the other threads we have the topic. Hopefully, I can lay out the guidelines that one needs to think about if they are looking to revert their curriculum back to a kata based system.

 

[Makalakumu]

Application

Now that we have laid down a general framework in which to view hyung, we are at the point where we can begin to talk about using hyung. There are some basic terms that need to be clarified before we continue. These terms terms describe the nuts and bolts of hyung application.

Bunkai - analysis/application - this is what the defender is doing in the hyung.

Oyo - analysis/application - This is what the attacker is doing in the hyung.

Henka - variation - this term refers to variations in bunkai and oyo.

Oku-den - hidden - this term refers to secrets or secret teachings.

As far as the way a hyung is constructed, there are two basic parts, bunkai and oyo. Bunkai is easier to see then oyo because this is what the person performing the hyung is typically doing with the movements of the hyung. However, if one remembers that bunkai is the reaction to oyo then you can see what the oyo part of the hyung.

Henka describes variations in bunkai and oyo from what the kata is directly showing. If oyo calls for a kick and the bunkai is a defense for that kick, henka for the oyo could be to switch that kick to another kind of kick. Henka is a very deep aspect of a hyung because it relies on the principles that are being illustrated by a hyung. Typically, a student should not engage in henka until they have acheived some skill in the regular applications for the hyung.

Oku-den are moves that are not shown in the hyung. They typically are secret moves that a teacher would show when a student reached a certain level. Oku-den techniques can be found in all kinds of sequences. This essay does not deal with the Oku-den parts of kata. It is my personal belief that this aspect of hyung will not be particularly helpful to the tangsoodoin. The disconnect between the creator of the hyung, that lineage, and the syncreticism involved in the creation of our art, presents too wide of a gap for that information to cross.

This does not mean that it wouldn't be a valid area of research. I would advise caution, however. The presence of oku-den can turn a hyung into an inkblot if the researcher is not extremely careful when they examine the roots and a hyung creator's intentions as well as the teaching lineage.

 

[exile]

Sukerkin - That would be a great analysis, unfortunately, it goes beyond the scope of what I wanted to accomplish. Basically, I'm writing this in response to all of the other threads we have the topic. Hopefully, I can lay out the guidelines that one needs to think about if they are looking to revert their curriculum back to a kata based system.

UpN, I don't want to derail the exposition of this framework (which I intend to appropriate whole, once it's all put together :ultracool) But I'd like to interject a note here to register my sense that Sukerkin's point is not at all tangential to the points at issue. Just as in, for example Biblical or Shakesperian studies, a great deal hinges on whether or not something is a textual error, introduced by carelessness or misunderstanding on the part of an intermediate scribe, so it's the case that distortions of kata forms under cultural pressures (or something very much like that) can seriously affect, and distort, the combat interpretations involved. Comparison of the KMA versions of Okinawan kata are very revealing in this respect.

So take the Okinawan/Shotokan Empi kata, which becomes Eunbi in Song Moo Kwan TKD. The performance is very, very similar... but the differences are very revealing. There are a series of knee strikes in the Empi forms, set up with a strike to the throat—which via muchimi becomes an anchoring grip—bringing the defender into close range to deliver the abdomen/groin knee strike, and continuing with a followup punch to the abdomen with the other fist, followed by a 'down-block' strike to the groin. What's happened in TKD is that this knee strike has become a high front kick—a move which doesn't seem to me to fit in any reasonable way as a followup to the high punch-then-grab, simply because the respective ranges of the punch/grab and the kick don't appear to match up well; and the followup moves are also out of synch. The clean, effective bunkai for the O/J version gets lost under a literal interpretation of the TKD version as a high kick. But the rule seems to be, any kick you see in an O/J 'source' kata becomes a high version of the kick in the TKD version; and in the case of Empi, those kicks originally weren't even foot strikes, but knee techs.

The point is, there is a kind of rule that seems to be in place in TKD, even very traditional 'Kwan' type styles such as mine: regardless of the original bunkai, kick high when a leg tech is involved. So it's not a matter simply of taking advantage of availability, doing it when you can or when it looks as if it'll be useful, but of something more like a built-in rule, part of the culture of the art, apparently, that you interpret the leg tech as a kick, and the higher the better, regardless of what the original SD basis for the tech was.

Given the by-now uncontroversial status (at least if we go evidence, as vs. wishful thinking ) of TSD/TKD as the particularly Korean development of Karate, nothing more or less, this kind of cultural pressure cannot be ignored in carrying out bunkai/boon hae analyses. As I say, there is a very natural, simple and straightforward application of the relevant moves in Empi along the lines I've indicated; in the Eunbi version, things are a lot more... problematic, the direct result of the alteration of the form in response to the seemingly automatic 'translation rule' applied by the Kwan founders, possibly, or maybe some later development, that all raisings of the knee to deliver a leg tech are to be interpreted as mid-to-high kicks with the foot as the impact surface. Textual correction, it seems, as per Sukerkin's post, has to be applied prior to the analysis if the form's most effective techs are to be properly understood, no?

 

[Sukerkin]

Why is that you manage to make what I say sound a whole lot better when you rephrase and reframe it for me :lol:?

One other thing to bear in mind with any Asian art that we in the West have taken to our hearts is that of simple translation errors and misunderstandings.

For example, my sensei is convinced that there are some stamping motions in certain Karate kata that are not meant to be there at all and have filtered in to 'canon' by repetition when in fact all the original Japanese sensei was trying to do was emphasis the karateka being "strongly grounded" or somesuch.

 

[Makalakumu]

I see that aspect as Part II to my research. Part I is just forming a coherent philosophic basis in which to train hyung for combat. Actually reverting hyung back to their earlier, deadlier verson is a far more difficult game. One needs to find several closely matching versions of the kata, from styles that share our lineage, and then go through the kata move by move until you are sure know the root of every move. I have been lothe to go to that place, because I'm still working my way through appliations. One has go to be very careful not to throw away gems just because you don't know they are gems...

 

[Sukerkin]

Oh so very true on the caution factor, Upnorth. You can easily lose something important otherwise.

For example, there's a seemingly useless and purposeless bobbing up and down in an MJER kata called Iwanami. When you first learn it the motion makes no sense at all and just makes you feel ridiculous ... then it is revealed that what it is actually for is to entice and then duck a horizontal swordstroke (tho' I reckon you'd have to have honest-to-goodness real-time combat reflexes to pull it off) under which you then perform a thrust to the belly.