Kata… Gymnastic Performance or Training Tool?
Published 12/12/2015
By Spencer Sensei
Back in 1991 I was judging at a National Black Belt tournament. I was a fourth-dan at the time and I sat next to a friend that was a sixth-dan in traditional Okinawan karate. Into the ring bounded a young energetic karateka that introduced himself like a tournament pro. This was in no way his first rodeo. In a flash he was spinning, jumping, and whirling like a Texas twister. When he landed it was in perfect stances with intense facial expressions and excellent balance. Those around us were in awe of his performance. “Wow,” slipped between their lips in silent reverent tones. The crowd was impressed. To finish the performance, he jumped straight up into the air and threw two simultaneous side kicks and as his feet touched the floor he went into a perfect split. As he faced the judges, he delivered a powerful reverse punch and karate yell that pierced the cacophony of noise that is part and parcel of karate tournaments. Slowly my friend turned to me and under his breath said,” What was the bunkai of that last move?” “That’s easy,” I said. You see he was fighting three adversaries. The first two he dispatched with the twin side kicks, and the third he crushed with his groin. The pain from the groin strike was so great that he had to scream from the agony. What looked like a punch was really the martial artist asking for someone to help lift him up from the ground. “Okay,” replied my friend, but “I’m still scoring him low.”
At that time there was a rift between traditional martial artists and the new breed of showmen that believed traditional karate was too stoic and limited. This new breed of karateka emboldened their performance with gymnastic like techniques, and this change was paying dividends. Traditional katas were not scoring as high, so the non-traditionalists were walking away with trophies. Kata had left the dimension of situational self-defense and entered the realm of marginal gymnastics. It had digressed from a combat martial art, to a karate like gymnastic routine. The crowds loved it, but the traditionalists hated it. For the longest time I thought it was simply me, and that maybe this possibly was the next evolution of karate. I wondered if I was alone in my belief. One day I overheard an eight-dan in Shorin-ryu explaining why he had scored a competitor so low. He asked the competitor if his instructor had taught him the kata in the manner, he demonstrated it. The student reluctantly said, “No. I changed it for competition.” The eight-dan then asked him, “What gives you the right to change a kata that had been around for close to two hundred years.” The kyu student hung his head and made no reply. I don’t think he grasp the concept. I believe he was simply disappointed that he would not be winning a trophy.
Truthfully the meaning of kata has been lost. If you go to a karate tournament today, it is still more flash than substance. Is kata a lost art? Should it be housed in a museum with all the other extinct anomalies of this world? Some instructors believe that kata is a useless training tool. Others relegate it to the art part of the martial arts, while many see it as a repository for endless self-defense scenarios and technical responses.
I personally have trained students that won national championships in black-belt forms competition. They trained ten times harder than my other students and traveled across the country to test themselves against the best from other schools. What they have learned from competition are lessons they will carry through life, so to simply dismiss their accomplishment as trivializing forms is silly, yet narcissistic instructors that wish to minimize their accomplishments belittle what they’ve done as not being a true part of karate. If part of the martial arts is truly about learning about who you are inside and to build character, there is no better vehicle than competition. Being cheated and controlling your emotions is a lesson that is priceless. I’ve seen spoiled karate black-belts throw their weapon to the floor and pout like a child because they didn’t win. I would have been mortified if this were one of my students. The only lesson anyone learned that day was how not to respond to disappointment. He could have learned a valuable lesson, but it was lost on him. Training relentlessly, so the only way anyone can beat you is to cheat you takes perseverance. These are life lessons that these students will carry through the rest of their lives. Building a work ethic today is almost impossible. No one gave them anything. They worked for their reward. This stands in contrast to every child gets a trophy mentality of our self-esteem trumps reality society. If you do not perform at work, you will not get a raise, or worse you will be replaced. Loosing is not always a bad thing. Ironically, I’m not a big fan of tournaments, but if understanding and modifying your behavior is part of karate then I cannot stand opposed to this type of competition, and neither should any other reasonable instructor.
The elephant in the room remains is kata a valuable training tool? If some moves in the kata have not saved your life, or if you never practice them in a real-world life preservation application they are of no value. Breaking the kata into pieces and having students work their application with a partner is the only way to breath life into these potential dinosaurs. When kata becomes something, you must do for promotion, it becomes of little or no value. Black-belt is the beginning of karate training and not the end. At black-belt you know the basics and a few rudimentary kata. The black-belt student should begin to dissect the kata. Break it into pieces and try to glean its meaning. Practice these pieces and determine if they fit into your self-defense toolbox. If you continue to practice kata without meaning as you did when you were a beginning student, you are still a beginning student, or kata is a waste of your time. I have black-belt students that find little or no value in kata. It is like a thorn in their side. They are practical and train hard in what they believe are real and viable techniques that could one day save their life. They see anything that is too complicated as doomed to fail on the street. Keep it simple stupid is their motto. They believe simple technique is the most viable form of self-defense. To sum it up, “Get fancy, get hurt.” My wish is that someday they will find viable technique within the kata I’ve taught them. You cannot find gold if you never go prospecting.
Kata as I’ve often written is the unwritten texts of the martial arts. A kata is a group of drills that karateka put together, so that these techniques would not be lost, and could be transmitted to future generations. Our problem is that we cannot read the text clearly and quit when we become frustrated. Remember most good self-defense is not overly complicated. It should work over and over again. These kata were built by men like Matsumura sensei. He was a Bushi. These techniques were things that could potentially save his life or the life of one of his men. Place guards and police officers could carry these lessons with them in the form of a kata wherever they were stationed. Kata gave them a tool to practice application with their peers and keep their skills sharp. Some bunkai of kata is not application at all but are simply ways to enter a dark room. Others are how to enter a house when you do not know what is on the other side of the door. Not everything in kata is predicated on how render an attacker immobile. Theory of individual combat can be woven into the rich tapestry that is kata. Timing and broken rhythm are parts of the kata. Attacks to soft tissue areas verses attacks to bone protected areas are in kata. Kata teaches the location of vulnerable centerline targets and through repetition allows the karateka to strike them without thought. Advanced kata teaches delivery of multiple blows, and how to utilize a single blow to strike multiple targets. Kata is not a folk dance unless you make it one.
When trying to pry meaning out of kata, you first must know in what manner you’re being attacked. Why would you need to remember a hundred ways to counter a reverse punch? The applications of these techniques were tailored responses to a certain scenario, and not some homogenized response to any and all attacks. A perpetrator chokes, punches, kicks, and throws his/her victim. It only makes sense that one would need a practiced response to each type of attack. Level of force is another issue. A police officer’s response is not to always knockout the criminal. In many cases he must subdue the criminal and bind him or hold him/her until help arrives. This too was inserted into kata. Jujitsu is a large part of the kata as-well-as pressure point manipulation, but too many times these advocates try to make every move in kata align with their specialty. Punchers and kickers are no exception they want a knockout in every scenario. One mistake martial artist makes, when mining kata for self-defense, is they try to make it fit what they like and not for what it was intended. Lastly, a series of bunkai can end in a defensive position. This does not mean you have not dispatched the adversary it simply means you are alert and ready for another attack. If you’ve seen films of people being attacked, it happens mainly when they are caught off guard. Being alert and prepared is what separates warrior from victim. Kata reinforces this self-defense axiom. You cannot begin to understand the self-defense woven into kata until you explore how and when the attack may occur.
Kata is only what you make of it. A computer is simply a paper weight if it is not utilized properly. Forms have a certain beauty to them, and it was only natural that they would be exploited and given to competition. It is man’s nature to test himself against other men. This is especially true of younger men, and kata competition is a safe and valuable way to test their limits or would you have them brawling on the streets. Competition teaches life lessons, but only when the victor is rewarded. When all competitors are rewarded, it is a hollow victory and true waste of time and money. Why train hard and develop a strong work ethic when all you need to do is show up? There are many drills one can teach students to develop their fighting skills. Kata is simply a reservoir of responses to certain types of attacks and pulling from that reservoir is not always easy. I must admit when one of my black-belts comes to me with a nugget they’ve gleaned from kata, and I see that it is a viable response to a certain attack it makes me smile. This is what growing in the martial arts is all about. It’s not about omnipotently parading around the dojo with your thumbs thrust into your black-belt. It is learning how to better defend yourself in a given situation and then handing it off to another like-minded student. We have the kata textbook, but it too is metaphorically only a paper weight if it is not utilized properly.