I was at a leisure centre and there was a karate competition ongoing. It was a Wado ryu comp and they are associated with the WKF. People were doing their Kata and to me there looked to be no difference. Obviously I'm not a karate person, so the finer points were probably lost on me, but has anyone been a judge at one of these things? What do you look for, or do you have any good examples of what a good performance is??
varies too much. i think the wkf has a series of attributes they judge on, although it's been years since i last competed or did a judging clinic so i don't quite remember them (but i may be confusing them with the scoring criteria for kumite)
IMO, the general guideline should be your body should move as one unit. When your arm start to move, your leg start to move at the same time. When your arm stop, your leg also stop at the same time. Your - hand should coordinate with your foot. - elbow should coordinate with your knee. - shoulder should coordinate with your hip. In the following clip. her form has met those guideline quite well. If you watch her body turning, her arm and leg all move together. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65QCHZDXKmA&ebc=ANyPxKr3ONCQjgTU65AfelaL0I_7Qx2HYrUmvLZLw_c5I5-ogCMC59fLhD_bFfAD9pdGlVzEPGtXmtOCZYm7SPqwtsFzPMo6WQ"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65QCHZDXKmA&ebc=ANyPxKr3ONCQjgTU65AfelaL0I_7Qx2HYrUmvLZLw_c5I5-ogCMC59fLhD_bFfAD9pdGlVzEPGtXmtOCZYm7SPqwtsFzPMo6WQ[/ame]
Badly.... Well many of them. Too much politics and subjectivity for my taste. That's not even mentioning the ones which try to look as fancy as possible and veer so far away from being training tools and into wushu territory.
I was tempted at one point to put on a Karate Gi and do my KF form in the guise of Karate Kata at a comp For the lulz. And for science.
The last and only kata competition I was at actually had a guy doing some form of Kung Fu form (haven't the foggiest what it was, I was only about 6 months into training). I still to this day don't know how the judges could have scored him since he was the only Kung Fu guy there and as far as I know the judges were all karateka. But there you go. When I discovered what kata was really for I decided I never wanted to compete. Time on kata performance can be better spent elsewhere.
This guy did his Kung Fu form in a Dallas Karate tournament back in 1973 (I recorded this myself). He won the 1st place in form. The judges were all Karate guys. IMO, a general standard can be applied to both Karate and Kung Fu. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMpf7vn1cRI&feature=youtu.be"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMpf7vn1cRI&feature=youtu.be[/ame]
Had some capoeirista friends who went to one and just made up a pattern as they went along. They won their division, then went on to win the weapons division with a bottle of sand on a rope. I'm not saying thats the usual judging standard but if the ratio of crap to quality at competitions is the same as it is school to school, then it isnt looking good.
open/freestyle competitions vs the formal karate circuits (wkf, wkc, jka, jks, et al) are two very different things, mind.
