The Three K's of Karate: Part II (Kata)

The second of the three Ks, kata, means “form”.  In karate and other striking arts like various types of Kung Fu, forms are a series of stylized prearranged movements done versus an imaginary opponent.   Different practitioners will vary in the amount of value they place on kata (and thus the amount of time they spend on it), but it’s generally considered necessary to spend at least some time learning forms in most traditional martial arts.  This is a good example of a well-performed karate kata:

One of the benefits of kata commonly cited is that it builds muscle memory for your karate techniques so that you can use them under the stress  of a real fight without conscious thought.  This would be logical if one practiced techniques in kata the same manner they applied them in real-time sparring (much like how boxers shadowbox), however, anyone can easily see that the techniques are performed using the same stylized form as kihon which means it is those specific motions which are being ingrained, not the technique one wants to actually use while sparring.  In my own early karate days, we started out with one or two months of kata and kihon in a basics class, then moved to the regular class where more time was spent on fighting drills and sparring (though always devoting at least some time to kata and kihon).  It was always painful to watch the new people who had just graduated from basics class sparring for the first time, getting beaten up while trying to use their robotic kata movements.   Before long they would learn to fight correctly, but you’d never see them attempt something like ude uke again. 

Another supposed benefit is that kata contains the hidden grappling that makes karate a complete art. This is bordering on fantasy and most of this hidden grappling nonsense only began to become popular after the explosion of MMA when casual fans of martial arts realized the importance of grappling.  Many martial arts businessmen felt the need to claim their art was all-inclusive rather than just admitting they could teach half of the important skills and a person would have to cross-train if they wanted everything, because no one martial art has it all.  Yes, there are some locks and throws included in kata, but isolated techniques do not form a coherent system of grappling any more than learning two punches and a kick in isolation means one has learned karate; it’s the “inbetween stuff” (which includes footwork, transitions, how techniques are set up and important positions achieved against a free-thinking and moving opponent, and a sense of timing) that makes techniques work and this can only be learned in partnered practice under the guidance of a qualified coach, whether it’s striking or grappling.  Furthermore, even if karate kata had us practicing realistic instead of stylized movements, it is a totally ludicrous idea that one could practice grappling techniques alone and in the air.  Boxers shadowbox, but wrestlers do not “shadow-wrestle”.  Grappling techniques require another body to practice on.

Still, some people find it interesting to drill bunkai (application of kata movements) or explore the kata movements themselves attempting to recreate an application.  Playing karate archeologist can be an interesting intellectual pursuit and there is nothing wrong with it, so long as one keeps the practical value of the activity in perspective.  If one wants to learn grappling, there is no possible debate that it is a much more direct route to success to train under a qualified coach in an established grappling art than to fiddle around with kata, especially if one doesn’t have a proper base in a grappling art to help them make sense of the mechanics of any possible techniques that might be there—it’s even worse than trying to learn from a video or book.   Furthermore, the grappling techniques of arts like judo and wrestling have been tested for hundreds of years (thousands in the case of wrestling) which makes them more well-refined, because with a large international population practicing and competing, improvements are constantly being made.  This is akin to the difference between a solo inventor laboring in his garage workshop versus a multi-national corporation with a large team of scientists and limitless funding, both working towards the same discovery. 

Kata does improve one’s balance, their leg strength if they do low stances, and hip mechanics.  These are all good benefits, though none of these things require kata to achieve and can be acquired through exercises and drills that are either more relevant to practical application or more specific to building those physical attributes.  The best that can really be said for karate-style kata is that it is a collection of techniques the original creator thought was important.  Kata was possibly a useful device, in the days before dvds, for recording techniques to be preserved and passed on within a system.  At the time these techniques needed no interpretation, they were drilled regularly as two-man sets and the movements were plainly understood.  Kata has changed tremendously over the years, however, both intentionally and unintentionally.  Funakoshi and others made drastic changes to kata and modern forms competitors take many artistic licenses.   Even when one attempts to preserve the past exactly, transmitting movements from teacher to student to their student and so on becomes a gradual game of telephone.  No matter how meticulous the practice, some minor nuances begin to change and these things snowball over time as students become teachers, which is yet another reason why one shoudn’t take bunkai  too seriously.  Many of the forms are shared between various styles of karate and one only needs to observe the same kata performed by two traditional-minded practitioners of different styles to know this is true.  Here are two such examples of the same kata:

Now, I do not think traditional kata in karate needs to be totally forsaken in the same way I argued kihon needs to be drastically revamped, but many schools could stand to deemphasize it a bit, spending more time on sparring drills and jiyu-kumite.  Even the schools and individuals who choose to spend a lot of time on kata would benefit greatly, in terms of kata, by learning less of them.  Gichin Funaskoshi, who was quite the kata collector, recommended that karateka find kata that work for them and then focus on practicing those kata.  Learning 2-3 new kata per grading, and nearly 20 or more by the time one has reached shodan, is simply far too many and students are only learning the forms on a superficial level before it’s time to learn new forms.  In terms of Shotokan, I think reducing the curriculum to the five heian and tekki shodan would be more than sufficient pre-black belt, at which point the student should choose which advanced kata speaks to them to learn.  Better still, I think would be three kata, pre-shodan: one for beginners, one for intermediate, and one for advanced.

Personally, I think the best thing I took away from kata was the idea of trying to perform something perfectly, every movement in its place, practicing the same thing over and over continually making minor improvements.  I can apply this mentality and the same critical eye to other things, such as drills and padwork.  One doesn’t really develop this mentality if they’re approaching forms like cramming for a college exam.  Nowadays, I won’t even teach forms during regular class time and, unless someone is grading for shodan, I’ll only show people if they specifically ask for it.  I still feel there is plenty of the 2^nd K to go around though.  What we think of as a kata in karate (a prearranged solo pattern) are actually quite different than what is called kata in various jujutsu and kenjustu ryu, which are much older and more traditional arts than any form of karate.  Observe:

And then there is judo (which is far more modern, yet still older than any surviving form of karate) and its nage no kata:

To these arts kata is a two-man set and, despite koryu jujtusu and kenjutsu being among the most traditional of the traditional martial arts, it looks, more or less, how one actually applies the technique.  I see no real difference between this and a compliant drill used to learn a technique (which pretty much every martial art will start with) before practicing it in free drills and later sparring.   Furthermore, I don’t think this has less artistic value, even without the ritualized squaring-off.  Real technique, when done well, is very pretty to watch.  Frankly, I think karate kata should be more like this, distilling the most essential and fundamental techniques into two man sets for practice.  In fact, chances are your school or gym has some drills very much like that, drills you practice regularly to improve your most essential techniques, in which case, I say you are practicing kata.

The Three K's of Karate: Part I (Kihon)

It’s interesting that various styles of Karate can be as different from one another as any two completely different martial arts, yet nearly all of them subscribe to the idea that the so-called three K’s (kihon, kata, and kumite) are Karate’s foundation.  In my classes and personal practice, I no longer do many stereotypical Karate movements.  You don’t see people sitting in horse stance punching at the air.  You don’t see anyone memorizing and performing artistic katas.  Similarly you’ll never see any ritualized ippon or sanbon kumite.  This doesn’t mean I've forsaken the three K's and I'm doing kickboxing in a gi. I just take a more liberal interpretation of them.

Kihon are basics. Typically in Karate this involves using exaggerated and hyper-stylized form, different from what you  would use during sparring.  Students get used to low postures and exaggerated movements in the beginning for strengthening and  progress to using a more natural stance with compact movements when they are more advanced.  By practicing this way they wind up committing one set of movements to muscle memory which they need to completely retrain later on.  This is inefficient, especially as most of us are hobbyists with a limited amount of time to practice.  It's even more of a problem if you begin Karate later in life as an adult and don't have five years to throw away on something you'll need to unlearn later.

Many of the bad habits you can develop from kihon (such as hands pulling back to the ribs instead of to the jaw to guard yourself) can be very difficult to untrain and can get you into trouble during sparring.  That isn’t to say no good effects come from traditional kihon.  Proper hip-rotation mechanics can come as a result of it, but boxers develop identical mechanics without the need to learn two completely separate ways of moving. 

In short, karateka want to be able to move like this:

Yet most spend countless hours practicing their basics like this: 

Compare this to a boxer practicing his basics.  It looks just like what he will use in an actual match:

  

Still, focusing on the basics is a good idea in Karate, or any activity you want to excel in.  The key for more modern, efficient training is simply to focus on the actual movements you plan to use in sparring from day one.  Judo also has some training movements that are intended to be more foundational than practical.  For example there is a throw uke goshi, that is generally not very effective, but needs only a slight addition to become harai goshi or uchi mata, both of which are very useful in competition.  Uke goshi is simpler and lays a foundation for doing the more advanced techniques.  Furthermore, there are classical, textbook techniques where you learn the mechanics that make the throws work, as well as competition variations which aren’t as pretty, but may suit one body type better than another.  The difference between Judo’s method and Karate kihon, however, is judoka are not expected to learn two completely separate ways of moving.  Instead, the student learns a basic way and continues to build on it as he progresses.

So, instead of having new students punch the air in kiba dachi or sanchin dachi with their hands on their hips, I teach them how to punch the same way I got proficient at it: by holding focus mitts for them and correcting their form while they punch it.  The very first thing I do is get them into their basic fighting stance, keeping their hands up the entire time, and drill them on the footwork involved with no upper body involved at all.  Then we add the hips turning to the footwork, but no actual punches are being thrown yet.  After this we begin throwing some light punches in the air.  Shortly after, we move to performing the punch against the focus mitts.  Finally students progress to moving around, as if they were fighting with the pad-holder, while performing their punches.  The pad holder will often help them practice their defense at the same time by striking back at them with the pads after the punch. 

This all seems so basic (kihon are basics after all), but the majority of Karate schools, even the good ones, are not training with this practice-it-like-you-use-it-from-day-one mentality.  This fact saddens me, because it dooms students to a much longer path than is necessary to become proficient, which means most will quit before ever experiencing how enjoyable Karate is when you’re decent at it. Karate is, by its nature, a very minimalistic art compared to Judo, Jujutsu, and most other arts that have a much wider array of techniques, so a strong emphasis on continually practicing the basics should remain central to the art.  That being said, instructors should reconsider what parts of our own development were truly building blocks toward becoming proficient and which were hurdles.

Judo: the Ideal Martial Art for Children

Martial arts are a popular, healthy hobby for children across America.  It’s a common adage that no martial art is superior to another, and that it is the natural ability and hard work of the individual student that determines its ultimate worth.  This, however, is only one part of the equation.  Like any weighing of value that takes place in the real world and not just on paper, there are multiple factors to consider.  Judo is less commercialized than other martial arts and has maintained better quality control, grappling by its very nature is more appropriate for children than striking martial arts, and Judo is the best applicable martial art to real-world self-defense situations a young person is likely to encounter.

In most cities across America you can find numerous Tae Kwon Do dojangs or Karate dojos filled with young children.  Most of these schools are run for-profit and many are notorious among serious coaches and practitioners for shady business practices and substandard instruction.  Besides charging exorbitant rates, some of the common shady practices include signing students up for lengthy contracts (meaning you are locked into a year-long payment plan, which you must continue to pay even if your child quits), grading kids for new belt ranks every couple of months (each new rank of course accompanied by a hefty fee), making it mandatory for students to buy ordinary gear from the school at a marked up price, and luring parents to enter students into a “black belt club” (essentially paying more money for fast-tracking students to gain ranks sooner regardless of whether they’re ready).   A person who has no background in a quality martial art is unlikely to be able to recognize substandard from good instruction and tends to be easily duped by disreputable instructors that are usually good at selling themselves.  They are often better sellers than quality instructors who may be good teachers and practitioners, but often have no mind for business. 

The simplest solution for the average well-meaning parent who doesn’t have the discerning eye of an expert, is to choose a martial art for her child that has been touched less by commercialism and has maintained better quality control over its instructors.  Many Judo clubs are non-profit institutions.  They are often housed in community recreation centers, universities or YMCAs. Very few Judo coaches make their livings by teaching Judo and rather do it purely for love of and dedication to the sport.   Although an Olympic sport and very popular in other countries, Judo is less popular in the United States and thus has not been corrupted by the almighty dollar as much as other martial arts.

Judo clubs are usually much less expensive than other martial arts programs despite often providing a much better standard of training.  Also, unlike most martial arts, Judo is controlled by a central organization in Japan with national “helper” organizations here in the United States.  All rank and coaching credentials come from one of these organizations which means while Karate and other martial arts have many self-proclaimed masters and self-promoted tenth degree black belts, it is very difficult to set oneself up as a Judo instructor if you are not qualified or claim rank you don't have.  For a prospective customer, finding out if a Judo club is legitimate is as simple as asking, “Does your club compete in Judo tournaments?”  A club must be registered with one of the three legitimate  national “helper” organizations to participate for insurance purposes and only properly credentialed instructors are allowed to run clubs.   Not only will an experienced coach of quality provide better instruction, but he will ensure their safety and minimize chances of injuries much better than a pretender.  This is not to say there are no good Tae Kwon Do or Karate programs, but the average person will have much better results seeking out a local Judo club rather than searching high and low for a rare gem of a quality Tae Kwon Do program.

The nature of Judo’s physical mechanics makes it more appropriate for children to learn than striking martial arts.  All martial arts, regardless of origin, can be classified as either striking (punching and kicking) or grappling (throwing and wrestling).   To learn to do anything well, you must practice the activity under conditions similar to how you expect use it.  Swimmers really swim; they don’t practice their strokes on dry land and expect to be able to win a swimming race when the time comes.  This seems like common sense, but this “dry land swimming” is exactly what many Tae Kwon Do, Karate and Kung Fu programs largely consist of, especially for children.  Stylized prearranged forms, compliant drills, and non-contact tag sparring bear little resemblance to fighting and cannot make up the bulk of your practice if you want to become competent at a martial art.

In order to become proficient at punching and kicking people, you must punch and kick people, with solid contact to distinguish incidental touches from cleanly landed blows with good technique behind them.  Few parents would want to sign a young child up for such a program, and for good reason, as repetitive hits to the head are harmful for a child’s developing brain.  So the choice for striking martial arts usually comes down to either putting a child’s well-being at risk or “faking it” to some degree.

Judo, on the other hand, does not involve striking, but rather focuses on wrestling, throwing, and pins (chokes and joint locks are also part of Judo, but are never included in the children’s curriculum).  Nearly everything you learn in Judo is not only practical, but also safe to practice at full-force once you have learned to fall correctly.  Children don’t need to fake it; they can really wrestle with each other, and try their hardest to throw their classmate or pin them helplessly to the mat, and because they are not hitting each other, no real damage is caused.  Accidents can happen, just as any they can happen in any contact sport, but the injury rate in Judo is far lower than in American football, which thousands of school children still manage to play every day with their parents’ approval.

This type of training is better practice for being able to really use your martial art under the stress of a real attack, because the students apply what they're learning during class against a fully resisting opponent within the safe, wholesome context of sport play.   Beyond being more effective for imparting physical skills, this style of instruction is generally more enjoyable and engaging to children.  Common sense tells us younger kids would prefer to wrestle with kids their age instead of spending time memorizing forms and having to stand in strict lines while they punch the air.

One point important point to consider is that I have been practicing and teaching a striking martial art (Karate) for nearly two decades and taught high school and middle school in the NYC public school system.  I'm not unfamiliar with violence in schools, what it looks like and what repercussions can be expected when the incident is over.  Simply put, while a striking martial art taught by a quality coach may manage to fill the needs of a child in danger of being bullied or threatened at school, it is not the best fit.  Firstly, most school fights quickly turn into wrestling matches anyways, which striking arts don’t prepare you for.   While being wrestled you usually can't rotate your hips freely to deliver punches with force (and it should go without saying that if you're being grabbed the opponent is already too close to make use of kicks).   Unlike striking exchanges, during which you can move freely between different distances, once one combatant grabs hold of the other, both are usually stuck wrestling, usually until the conclusion of the fight.

Fights in school tend to begin at a very close range, with the aggressor getting in the other’s face to intimidate him while and psyching himself up to attack.  At this range, the person trained in a striking art’s options are already very limited and the best option, tactically speaking, is to hit the aggressor preemptively, before his options are even further reduced by being grabbed.   In a school setting this will undoubtedly make the repercussions worse as one of the first things the administration will want to know when assessing what needs to be done about the incident is who hit whom first.  Lastly, even if you do manage to effectively defend yourself with a striking art, you cannot do it by hitting a person with half force.  Punches and kicks need to be delivered as forcefully as possible, which will lead to black eyes or more serious injuries, which can get the victim in more trouble than the aggressor.

Conversely, Judo provides the victim with a wider array of options.  While it’s entirely possible for a judoka to slam an opponent in a very damaging way onto a hard floor, he can also opt to take him down in a more restrained manner.  School administrators are likely to look more favorably upon a student who, when attacked, takes the attacker down and pins him helplessly, waiting for a teacher to break up the altercation.  Instead of becoming more limited the closer the aggressor comes, the situation becomes more favorable for the judoka who wants to grab hold of his opponent as soon as possible.  This not only improves the victim’s position, but also means he has more time to attempt to de-escalate the situation verbally and hopefully avoid a violent confrontation altogether.  In the worst case scenario where the incident progresses to violence, witness reports that the victim continually attempted to persuade the attacker to not fight will factor in positively for the defender.  

Parents should keep in mind that their very young children are not future Olympians in-training, nor is the world so dangerous that they are in dire need of self-defense skills by the time they can walk; kids come to class to have fun and there is nothing wrong with that.  This does not prevent them from having fun while learning something of real value.  If you sign your children up for little league, it’s expected they will be playing actual baseball, not baseball-themed games while being told they’re playing real baseball and martial arts are no different.  In short, while it is possible to find quality instruction in other martial arts, Judo is a more consistent choice for quality, grappling martial arts in general are more appropriate for young people to learn than how to best hit each other, and Judo is more suitable to the self-defense situations that a school-age person is likely to find himself in.

Why am I writing this blog?

I had to ask myself before beginning this blog if it was worth writing in the first place.  There are many people already writing about martial arts, and while I certainly would not be one of the worst qualified to add my two cents, there are definitely many people out there far more skilled than I, with professional fight records, higher ransk and a larger wealth of life experience to draw from.

Knowing this kept me from writing for a long time, but I decided eventually to try, because writing about martial arts is a bit different than practicing martial arts.  Certainly you should be proficient in the activity you write about, but it also requires writing ability and an introspective mindset which not all people -- and certainly not all martial artists -- are inclined to have.

Many of the best martial artists are naturals who learned by simply jumping in headfirst and never had to think too much about what they were doing.  This isn't to say they didn't work very hard to become experts, but those who struggle and take a little longer to reach proficiency often are forced to think more about what they're doing, ask questions and perhaps revise how they train in hopes of better results.  This sometimes makes them better teachers and, perhaps, better writers on the subject.   The natural has no need to question so he is less likely to reflect or innovate, as there is no need to fix something that is working just fine.

I've been doing Kenkojuku-type Shotokan Karate for 18 years at the time of this writing and Judo for 3 years.  I began teaching about 22 hours of classes per week for my instructor while I was in college and began, like most people, teaching as I was taught.  I had several quality instructors, however, each with his own style so my early classes were a bit of a mishmosh.  I was aware of the difference between my head instructors' lessons which were seamless and flowed logically, and my own which were typically collections of useful tidbits wedged between conditioning and sparring.  Students also needed to know kata for grading purposes which left me little opportunity to consider how useful it was or wasn't, much less what might take it's place.

When I graduated college I began teaching high school.  While the experience of being in front of a class teaching Karate made me more comfortable teaching academics, the experience of being a teacher also helped me in terms of being a coach.  As a schoolteacher I constantly questioned my lessons and why they might go over so well with one class yet be a flop with different group, how to reach kids with different learning styles and how to motivate different types of kids to want to do well or believe they can.  My head instructor, a former schoolteacher himself, would also discuss Karate-teaching with me once a week during which I learned a lot.

Fast forward a few years and I'm in my 30s, have moved from NYC to NC, have gotten into Judo, and started teaching Karate again, with no organization, official curriculum or head instructor to guide me.  My first attempt is in a metal workshop fitted with wrestling mats with no uniforms, no katas, lots of contact, adults only, and few students.  After a year and a half I moved two cities over into my Judo instructor's dojo, losing most of my students in the process and making a couple of minor tweaks for commercialism's sake (gis reappear and I agree to teach teens as well).  

Keep in mind, it is not my intention to invent my own system of Karate, but rather take what I've learned and make my new students learn it, not how I did, but in a more efficient way.  It took me three years before I could spar and apply anything resembling good technique.  My students on the other hand are able to get to that point within a year's time.  I still teach them many of the same things I've learned, but the methods used are often different.  While I have nothing against tradition, Karate is not a koryu martial art (where the focus is on historical preservation not practicality) so I've trimmed away many things that I never found useful.

Perhaps this blog will encourage discussion and introspective thought about our training, to reconsider the value of the things we teach in Karate and whether there might be a better way to transmit that information to students or reach our personal goals.  If nothing else, writing will force me to continue to think about what I'm doing and not take anything for granted.