Is there a reason for the progression of the kata in the syllabus?

The way it goes taigyoku, saifa, bassai dai, seiunchin etc...

Apart from it generally seems to alternate between shotokan and goju based kata...

Why?


Mick

no idea Mick - but I did read somewhere (dubious as to factuality - I'll try and check up on it) that Sanseru used to be a brown belt kata. If it was then it would seem to indicate not much logic at all. Also I would consider Bassai Dai more "complex" than Sanseru and Hangetsu, so why is it only a red belt kata?

Also why have I never wondered this before?

I have noticed that other schools place bassai dai much higher in the grading syllabus, up around 2nd kyu or higher. Maybe though they teach more than just the pattern?


Mick

:thumbwink:
hi mick, we were told by our sensei that Kata Bassai Dai was a black belt Kata in some styles.Although he didnt say what style.
By the way an excellent question
Nigel

Hi All

I dont think the order realy matters as long you improve each one as you progress through your grades.

I have been told that some styles use sifa as there black belt kata.
They do it differently to us but the patten is pretty much the same.

David

From memory, I believe Bassai Dai is the 1st Dan kata for Shotokan Karate. Don't quote me, but I know it's somewhere around 1st Dan.

Thanks Brodius
Nigel :thumbwink:

The kata progression of a particular association reveals the level of such an association.

If there appears to be no logical structure to the order of kata then you can bet that the kata are simply taught as exercise routines.

If the group is competition orientated then the kata selected will be the fancy ones that are taught as dance routines.

If there is an order which runs from the simple to the more complex then you have a physical education type mentalityin place.

By the way, none of the above approaches are necessarily better than another, its what suits the members of the group.

There is the old school way though, and introductory kata such as Sanchin or Naifanchi develop a karate body and the fundamental skills necessary.

Within the Naha Te (pre-Goju system) the progression was Sanchin, Seisan, sanseru and Suparenpei.

Within the Shuri Te (pre-Shotokan/Shitoryu system) the progression was Naifanchi, Passai (Bassai), Koshokun (Kanku), and Ueseshi(Gojushiho).

Teachers would often know more kata but students learned a system which required 3 years for the study of one kata. As Mick pointed out above, it is not likely they spent this time learning the pattern.

Once one kata is memorized, other patterns can be learned in a day. It is the analysis (bunkai) and the synthesis (sogo) which leads to practical application (oyo) and preferred variations (henka) that is the end result of kata study.

Regards,
Boz

What an excellent post Boz. That puts a lot of things into perspective.

Taekwondo kata's/patterns/forms follow a definate logical structure. The school usually teaches one of two (that I know of) series of katas, the Taeguk or the Pal-Gwe. Each series has 8 different katas, building on the previous one and utilising the techniques you are required to know for your particular belt level. It is interesting that Taeguk 5 is very comparable to Bassai dai - both being equivalent of 4th kyu katas.

As you said, not saying that system is better, just the way they chose.

Perhaps next time kancho does one of his speaking visits someone might field him this question?

Greetings All


Found this forum and as a karate practioner thought I would have a look around.


I train in Goju Ryu style Karate and through my training the Kata progression is as follows.

10th Kyu Taikyoku
9th Kyu Gekisai Shodan
8th Kyu Gekisai Nidan
7th Kyu Sanchin
6th Kyu Tensho
5th Kyu Saifa
4th Kyu Unshu
3rd Kyu Sanseiru/Naihanchi
2nd Kyu Seienchin
1st Kyu Shisochin

thought this might give you something to compare against.

Regards
Dropbear

resurrecting the old threads to bring back some embarrasing moments??
You'll fit in well here

One kata per grade? thats a lot of kata do you think?

Hi Dropbear

Not that I've seen many Goju schools, but I was under the impression that often Saifa came after Gekisai I & II...

Unshu.. is that the same as Unsu of the Shotokan flavour?

But I do know of a couple of clubs who have included the Naifanchi/Naihanchi kata at upper kyu grades.


Mick

thanks for the welcome Matt and Sionnagh

Mattt- some would say it's a lot of Kata , but I actually prefer learning Kata over most anything else.

To me when you get a kata right, you can just achieve a sense of peace and relaxation where the movements become almost natural and automatic. Sometimes when I was stressed I would spend an 30mins or so doing a Kata and just feel the stress drain away.


Sionnagh - depends on the Goju school I guess. But I think the Sanchin and Tensho katas have some valid lessons to teach before a kata like Saifa.

for example Tensho is the tension kata, teaching muscle control and reverse breathing.

Unshu being the same as Unsu in Shotokan ? possibly but I haven't seen any Shotokan practioners or dojos so can't really comment.


For info on the dojo I train at you can go too www.goju.com.au. Currently I'm back to white belt as after a 10 year break I'm resuming training(have to get rid of this pot belly). But when I finished training intially I reached 1st Dan

Hi all, seems like a good rebirth of a thread.

We have similar Kata to Drop Bear but less rigid alignment to rank.

we go


Geikisai Dai Ichi
Geikisai Dai Ni
Saifa
Seiyunchin
Shisochin
(Plus Sanchin)

Sanseru
Sesan
Sepai
Kururunfa
Suparinpei
(Plus Tensho)


You do the first five kata's before blackbelt Sanchin is started early but not linked to a rank.

The next five kata are taught up to 5th Dan with Tensho being added before 2nd Dan but sometimes earlier ie i learnt it at 2nd kyu.

We also have 2 man kata such as Geikisai Dai Ichi Bunkai where there is a attacking and defending side. The kata is as normal but done is a straight line with oponent doing opposite moves. You would learn Geikisai Dai Ichi Bunkai before black belt and Geikisai Dai Ni Bunkai before 2 Dan beyond that im not sure.

Their are also between 3 and 10 applications for each kata except Tensho? these are taught 1 kata behind ie when you learn Saifa you know the application for Geikisai Dai Ichi & Ni etc.

After 5th Dan it is just more 2 man Kata, as far as im aware.


Cheers
Freek

Resurrected threads are sometimes good. For instance I scrolled back through this one and found this one - http://www.gkr.net.au/forum/index.php?show...findpost&p=1288 - which in itself did not have anything new but reading it again brought something else to mind for a moment.

The core kata in my (adult) syllabus are:
10th-7th kyu - Taikyoku Shodan, Pinan Nidan
6th-4th kyu - Pinan Godan, Naifanchi Shodan
3rd kyu & up - Bassai Dai, Rohai

A bit of a different approach perhaps in not having specific kata per single grade, and Taikyoku Shodan is not assessed.

I have given a bit of thought to a kata syllabus for a kid's class which might be something like:
Taikyoku Shodan
Pinan Nidan
Pinan Shodan
Pinan Sandan
Pinan Yondan
Pinan Godan
Naifanchi Shodan
Bassai Dai
Rohai
And linked to specific grades. But a junior syllabus would not have joint locks, throws or some of the other fun stuff

Also, "core kata" does not mean "all kata", it just defines the kata used for rank assessment. But since at last count I had learnt over 30 kata (patterns) [/boast] it just seems foolish to include them all, particularly since some are different versions of a single kata (a great way of confusing yourself ) and nobody really needs all of them unless they want to collect kata. Which wasn't even my intent... Plus some of them aren't karate kata!


Mick

Does it not seem strange that some kata are used in so similar styles for vastly different grades? How does that correlate?

Yeah, it does seem strange. I just think it is a reflection of the understanding of kata. For most, the progression is based on complexity of performance.

Cheers,
Boz

What about those people who learn kata above their grade in their style, but in another style, that kata would be below their grade...

If GKR for example has bassai dai as a lower grade kata, and sanchin as a BB kata, but a style such as dropbears goju has sanchin as their 7th kyu kata, how do you define how complex a kata actually is?
Even when considering the application of the kata, if you apply different applications to the movements, then the katas will change in their level of "difficulty".

I guess that with different styles choosing to include different katas at similar levels, the order becomes less important then it may have been years ago but still...




It seems like (even if only in the ACT) perhaps we are moving away from kata's looking fancy and flowing, aka looking like dances, more to improving the strength of the kata. One thing I picked up at tryouts last night was that moves had to be stronger, and that we had to consider the application of the move, not just throw a kick or punch out for the hell of it.
I think that's a positive step, as I would much prefer to do a strong and straight to the point kata instead of a flashy and perhaps therefore less strong kata...

Which is kind of odd... yesterday I was practicing saifa with a couple of other people (we intend to enter team kata in a tournament this year), and I find I am having to re-learn bits of saifa to make it more of a performance thing and less as a learning aid type thing... if that makes sense.
It is really changing the flavour of saifa for me though.

Hi Goyle,



Forget comparing ranks between styles and where they place their kata in their syllabus as they mightn't even know why.. 'that's our tradition' is a likely response GKR kata have been both simplified and modified in a way that makes some analysis quite difficult. The start of Bassai Dai has been mutilated and Hangetsu should be dropped altogether the way I've seen it being performed

The complexity I mentioned is based on performance and nothing else. That complexity would include aspects such as the length of the kata, the level of difficulty in various turns, manouveres and sequences. Jumps and side kicks might be a valid indication in Shotokan kata.

Modern karate is more about teaching kata than teaching karate as I see it now. This is better for most students who don't know it but really prefer to 'play' at karate rather than learn how to defend themselves. Therefore in many different schools and styles, they keep em coming through the door by allowing them to 'play'. They learn kata and brag about the brutal applications that they could never be able to apply physically or have the required mindset to actually hurt another human being in that way.

GKR is one of many that are teaching their 'brand' of someone else's kata. It is fair to say that most karate dojo teach recreational karate, including my own. I make sure my students have the necessary skill and tools to develop their own self-defense plan but 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink!' I rave, sorry!

Cheers,
Boz

Makes sense, Boz

The number of times I go to a class, and people are there to "play", not really to learn is annoying. I could name one person in particular who really doesn't seem to want to learn at all....

However, I guess it keeps people happy to "learn" a kata every couple of months... If they had to spend years on it, they would probally go elsewhere.



LOL, the groin grab from bassai dai comes to mind...

I think it's interesting how different clubs change kata for their own purposes.. you would think though that there would be SOME degree of similarity between styles, regarding the order of kata.

I would like to find a happy medium between the "players" and the 3 year perfectionists.. Hopefully I may this year with TT, etc.

The trouble is when you 'learn' a kata every few weeks or months you never ever 'learn' how the kata is intended to be used as a training tool. The technique you mention in Bassai Dai doesn't actually exist. It was planted in the kata in modern times and probably came from jujutsu.

There is a similarity within mainstream Shotokan groups and Goju groups; it is usually the independent schools such as GKR and even my own school that are different. GKR has kata for rank advancement and competition. I have kata to teach a karate foundation and others for personal study and also a pool of kata for kata competition.

cheers,
Boz

Thanks Goyle and Boz

the points you both raised about the emphasis of kata was very informative and has put some thoughts I,ve been having into perspective, particularly since I am learning Bassai - dai at the moment.

I look forward to reading more in the future.

Happy Karate

Hi Boz, going off topic here - just wondering where things like basics fit into the scheme of things for your students?
We were drilled about basics being the foundation (without any real idea what that meant really) of karate.

What skills and tools do you consider necessary to develop this plan?

Cheers,
Matt

Hi Matt,
I teach my students basic karate techniques in a different manner to most. They learn to punch, kick, block, strike and utilize stances both solo and with partners. There is little marching up and down the dojo and no dreamed up on the spot combinations to 'improve' balance and coordination yadda yadda yadda. I teach them a series of joint-locks and counters to being 'locked'. I teach throws as they show up in the kata.

Kata is where the form of basic movement is trained and then practical examples are taken from certain karate kata to practise fundamental principles. I use kata to teach kumite and self-defense but the kata don't teach that, the teacher either knows how to use kata as a training tool or it is an art form and the focus is on aesthetics only.

I use old school kata like Pinan Nidan and Naifanchi Shodan to teach fundamental principles and techniques. I use Tensho to teach escapes from grips, and Rohai, Seishan, Niseishi, etc. to teach self-defense examples. I use modern kata from a variety of styles to prepare my students for competition. I extrapolate some applications out of these kata to get a point or two across but basically they are taught as dance.

Does that answer your question?

Cheers,
Boz

Very much so.....especially that middle paragraph.

Interesting

We work on a similarly restricted list of katas. If I remember correctly, the katas we are required to study are Pinan Nidan, Pinan Yodan, Seinchin, Naihanchi Shodan, Chinte and Enpi.

Slammy
Im currentley looking into the wado kata, as my two are teetering on the brink of leaving a style,and starting Wado as apparently it has links to Ju jitsu, which they practice.
Up to 4th kyu the kids would need to know all five pinan katas?, 3rd kyu add Kushanku?, 2nd kyu add, Nianchi, Seishan,1st Kyu add, Chinto, and Bassai.1st dan add Jion,Jitte,Rohai,Nei sei shi, Wanshu.
Seems a little excesive to me! so many kata, how many does your style of wado practice?
The kids have been assesed and have been told they can keep their current grade, but wont progress until they have learnt the new sylabus(very fair).

I know what you mean about huge numbers of katas - a quick web trawl of a wado clubs seem to confirm this lot as the standard wado katas:

Pinan Shodan, Pinan Nidan, Pinan Sandan, Pinan Yondan, Pinan Godan, Kushanku, Naifanchi, Chinto, Seishan, Wanshu, Bassai, Sei Shi, Jitte, Jion, Rohai and Suparimpei.

To be honest, I have to confess the style I study isn't strictly adherent to your usual Wado Ryu. My sensei has studied aikijutsu, shotokan (under Vince Morris) and ao denkou jutsu (under Prof Rick Clark) in addition to Wado and all have some influence on what we get taught.

The reasoning behind the restricted kata list is more down to the idea that knowing a handful of katas well is better than knowing lots of them superficially.

As for Wado Ryu having a jujitsu overlap, thats down to the founder of the style, Hironori Ohtsuka Sensei. Apparently he was the chief instructor in Shindo Yoshin Ryu jujitsu, so that no doubt infulenced his training ideas to some degree when he developed wado ryu.

Hi Nigel,

I'm sorry to hear that you and the kids haven't found the right dojo as yet. The main thing should be that the teacher is a decent human being who has the necessary experience to take your kids through to a high level. Chopping and changing from one instructor to another, or from one style to another is detrimental to their progress as a lot of muscle memory has to be overcome in unlearning kata and relearning same. I strongly suggest you look hard and make your next leap the last. There is jujutsu type technique in all kata, even the GKR modified versions still point to grappling techniques when you know what you are looking at so I wouldn't change based on Wado kata. I must admit that I personally dislike the look of Wado kata.. no offense to Wado practitioners. Wado is twice removed from the early Okinawan Kata and no doubt the current generation of teachers are making changes of their own and adding kata as is the fad these days

Cheers,
Boz

Thanks for your thoughts Slammy, it seems to me this style of wado you have to know all the kata that there is lol.Think i will ask sensei why there are so many in his sylabus.

Boz
ive pmd you on this.

Maybe it's just me but now it seems that most schools have a lot of kata...


Mick

Maybe they feel that kata is a necessary thing for martial arts of this day and age. Maybe they think that students won't enjoy a martial art if they don't have something new to learn as the progress upards through the levels.

Is this a reflection on the lack of depth perhaps? That people are becoming teachers without having both range and depth in their knowledge?


Mick

In early karate (Te) the goal was to be prepared should the need arise to defend yourself, your family or your property. In times when there were no telephones one had to be self reliant. The working man had little time for other pursuits outside his work and home, and the number of teachers were few. Some students walked great distances to learn karate and their main practise was carried out at home. Things such as striking a makiwara, using home made weight training implements to condition the body, and practising kata over and over again was the usual training regime.

Nowadays all the training and practise is usually done in the dojo. Teachers worry that students may become bored and leave so they keep them busy with new kata. As few know how to teach applications of karate (kata and kumite),students are told to perfect their kihon so endless repetitions and mindless combinations are dreamed up to fill in the time. Instead of working in depth on a few things, a lot of techniques are performed at a superficial level and little progress is actually made. Progress determined by how many kata you 'know' (pattern only) is no progress at all.

In the dojo where kata is not practised and only kumite training is carried out are far superior than the dojo where the riuals exceed the realistic. A dojo that teaches karate that includes kihon, kata, kumite and applications of the karate is what every teacher should be aiming at IMO. Teaching a lot of basic combinations and loads of kata interfere in a student's progress in being able to apply their techniques. There are other dojo that don't compete in 'sport' karate because they believe they are 'traditional' when their training is geared on karate-show rather than karate-do.

Students need to learn very few kata to learn karate. If they hang about for a long time then more kata can be taught. Those who want to teach can learn more kata before they go out teaching. Teachers need a pool of kata but kyu grades need
to be taught more application of the techniques than a large number of formal exercises that without substance or purpose can be best described as line dancing.

the happy chappie
Boz

I reckon if all else fails you could produce a list of the top few common assaults and make it a class exercise to go through and see how they might mesh with kata sequences... Do it right and you could even make it seem like a plan instead of an act of desperately trying to keep your students interested...


Mick

I think Boz has hit the nail on the head. The only reason for having lots of katas must be so that people think they are learning more as their grades get higher, and not 'running out' of fresh things to learn.

A local Shotokan club has a mind numbing 29 katas in the syllabus! Yet from what I've read I gather Gichin Funakoshi (Shotokan founder) studied Naihanchi (Tekki) alone for around 9-10 years at the start of his own training, which gives some idea as to how highly regarded it was and how deeply it was studied. IIRC the Wado founder claimed that kata alone would take more than a lifetime to master.

I also vaguely remember reading somewhere (I have a suspicion Iain Abernethy mentions it) that Passai (Bassai), Rohai, Chinte and Naihinchi (Tekki) had in the past been considered as complete arts in their own right - essentially those individual katas encapsulate all you need to know to learn a complete fighting system.

If all your instructor can manage is showing you how to make them look good enough to get a new belt, doesn't it make you wonder what you could potentially be missing out on?

Maybe it is the opposite. Maybe holding people back on katas and only showing them a few is due to lack of knowledge & worry of losing students if u show them too much too quick. Shito-ryu do 40-odd kata. So it really isn't that much. I think a lot of instructors have a lack of knowledge and are scared to pass on what they do know cause there isn't a lot of it. Therefore their students become even worse than the instructor. Just an opinion.

He didn't learn Naifanchi (take it that is the kata u meant) from Funakoshi by the way.

This is only a personal opinion - but isn't 40-odd kata in one style a little too many? If we have anyone here who studies Shito-Ryu, or anyone else who has an angle in this, I'd be interested to see what they say.

I know I have trouble with the 5-6 I know - I dread to think what I'd do with 40

I can relate to that
I am having enough trouble trying to learn the floorplan for seiunchin.

I can't imagine having the memory capacity for 40 kata's...

Part of the philosophy of Shito-ryu is preservation of kata. Mabuni was known as a kata collector and so it stands to reason that his system would contain a great many kata. It does not make it better or worse, it just is the [main] reason they have so many kata in their syllabus.

Most other systems have fewer - there are I think 26 kata in the complete Shotokan syllabus, and were something like 15 originally which Funakoshi thought was still too many. It seems to be characteristic that schools which lack depth make up for with number, and with a finite amount of time available for training and practice it becomes difficult not to sacrifice one for the other.

It seems that people add kata to their syllabus for what they feel are good reasons. But rarely do people drop kata from a syllabus. Does this not seem odd given that originally it was considered that a mere handful of kata was sufficient for a system?

20/30/40 kata is not such an impossible task, it just requires practice more than anything to remember the patterns. But without a specific reason to have so many kata it quickly becomes an exercise in remembering patterns.


Mick

there are only so many techniques and applications you can do..... by doing so many kata you'd find many of these applications coming up all over the place.... wouldn't it then be a waste of time learning two kata which contain the same basic principles and applications???

Well you just have to look at how many versions of a single kata there are. Take Saifa... without investigating things like where variations were introduced or by whom... the GKR version differs from the Shito-ryu version which differs from the Kenshikai Okinawan Goju-ryu version which differs from the Kan Zen Ryu version which differs from the JKF shitei version... each are different in some way to the others yet the differences don't invalidate the applications.

Then if you add another kata to your set when you already have a kata so rich in applications there will inevitably be overlap. The more kata you add then the more you find overlap and redundancy. And the more it becomes apparent that you only need to practice a small number of kata for application, and others can be practiced for a bit of variety.

In one of his books Funakoshi said something to the effect that if you learn a kata well then you will recognise the applications in other kata quite readily, even if you have never seen that kata before.


Mick

Wow - that sounds so simple after you've already read it.

Hi guys,
I'm kind of new to this so you'll have to forgive me if this isn't as well written or violates any forum eittiquette that may exist. I'd like to agree with Boz about not chopping and changing instructor to try and find "the holy grail" of styles/systems etc. As a practioner of Wado for some years (although am not anywhere near what one could call an "expert" by any matter of means) I'd like to stress that although Boz's statements regarding Wado kata as being 'twice removed' are perhaps ture, the point behind wado kata is that Otsuka interpreted his kata in terms of his own jujitsu style (my sprelling of his original art is rather poor so i won't attempt it) and made it his own. That, for me, this is the true essence of what learning kata is about, taking it and making it your own. I can't remember who said this but i remember one poignant observation from a particularly erudite master of our style saying of someones kata "you look like you've borrowed it from someone else".

Personally speaking the thought of 'kata competition' doesn't sit particulary well with me, as surely the real litmus test of how well one knows ones kata is when you have to use it for real - in a kumite situation? I've studied pinan neidan since i was around 8 years old and (after a hefty break from training and a move from one end of the country to the other and a new instructior) feel that i've only just started to understand what the kata is all about, so how can i say that i really "know" this kata, or any other for that matter, even though i've danced through it multiple times in class or for gradings? Let's not forget that back in the day people used to study one kata for around 5 years - and not just twice a week at the dojo but every day! So not wanting to bore anyone any longer my main point is that what katas you learn, what order you learn them in or what style it is that you learn them under, you should always be trying to advance your comptence, understanding and personal appreciation for all of the katas. Just because one is learned before the other offers in no way a guide as to the difficulty or effectivelness of that kata - after all in certain camps the "hardest" katas are taught first as those are the ones that requrie the greatest length of time to master.

Apologies if i've started to ramble but i just feel that kata is one of the most enlightening and personal aspects of your training that you will ever undertake, something that you can be sitting in bath one night and suddenly think "Eureka!" as to what a particular aspect or movement means to YOU. Please don't fall into the trap of thinking that one style etc is better than another, talk to others, research the origins of the katas and most importantly make your kata relevant to your own experiences and principles.

Thanks for reading,
melrose

Hi Melrose,
Welcome to the forum and no need to apologise for a well worded and thought out post.

I would like you to elaborate on the 'make it your own' concept if you could.
How far is it acceptable to go in this regard before you've completely bastardised the kata, and at what level is one competent to do this?

Cheers,
Matt

Hi Matt,
i suppose what i mean by 'make it your own' is to not just concentrate on the asthetics of the kata but to try and understand the ideas and concepts behind the kata - to try and decode it if you will. My historical knowledge is not the greatest but i believe that katas such as naifhanchi are very old indeed, far older than most of the styles that use it within their syllabus, and as such has synthesised to a point that is significantly different to the original - so technically are we not all practising a bastardised form of kata one way or another? I suppose that last statement's taking your point out of context as it is not within our control to somehow retrieve lost/ forgotten knowledge but it is in our control to try and prevent things from diverging further from the original concepts upon which these fighting systems were derived.

Back to the point though, my 'make it your own' statement (that i should have perhaps ellaborated on more fully) relates more to what's in your head whilst doing the techniques contained within the kata, rather than taking a kata and changing the movements themselves. Perfect stances and being able to return to the same spot that one started from whilst blindfolded etc are all very asthetically pleasing to witness, but i have found recently that asking oneself "why am i doing this kata" rather than "how do i do this kata" (to purely tick it off the list for the next grading) opens a whole new world to the learning experience.

The (what i now perceive to be a) throw in Yodan had been described to me many times in the past as a simulataneous block of a kick to the abdomen and a block of a punch to the head, for instance. I took this at face value for many a year but when you think of kata in terms of a fighting system derived to defeat untrained opponents (i.e. thugs etc) it becomes very hard to try and imagine ANYONE (let alone an untrained fighter) trying to attack you in this manner. So you're left with the question of what this technique really means, and in searching for definitive answers you can sometimes find many varied views as to what is "correct"- so what one do you choose? Perhaps all of the alternatives are 'correct' (as the movement one executes is the same for each application) and this variation in possible applications merely highlights kata for the highly dynamic and adaptive fighting systems that i believe them to be? For my lowly level, however, i feel i need to have a very strong idea of what each move, and each transtion from one move to the next, means to me - the 'intent' if you will - to make the kata come alive and become a uselful learning tool without the need to change the actual movements themselves.

To address the question regarding what level one is competent to 'make the kata their own' I would say that the process of asking yourself (and your instructor obviously) what the heck all of these weird movements are about starts from the first time one encounters kata and, for me anyway, will hopefully never finish.

Thanks for the welcome Matt, most appreciated, and i hope that this has perhaps cleared up any confusion that i may have caused with my last post.

Many thanks,
Melrose

This is a point which has been raised from time to time - is the attack realistic? There have been a few articles which have asked the question about whether an attack is realistic as a test of the possible validity of an application. If it's awkward to attack in the specified manner which allows the techniques in kata to be used effectively surely we have to wonder whether it's right?

It does seem though that most people are happy to accept what they're told and not attempt to think for themself.


Mick