The form may only "record" 1 principle, or 1 application. It's up to the individual to dig out the rest of the information. One day I was training the "diagonal strike" solo drill that my teacher taught me. - I step into left bow-arrow stance, - My left hand grab from right to my left and pull back to my waist. - My right palm strike out shoulder height. My teacher was living in my house at that time. He walked toward me and asked what I was doing. I said I was training the solo drill that he taught me. He then said, "If you want to train - single leg, your left arm should move a circle below your left knee. - front cut, your right leg should move in a curve and hook up. - ..." After that day, every time I trained my solo drill, I would map into the application that I tried to do. My solo drills were always different from the original solo drills that I had learned.
My thoughts are: A) Kata is demonstrably not necessary: a point easily substantiated by way of example from a multitude of unbelievably high level fighters across a range of contexts. B) whatever ancillary benefits it has to training as a support exercise, in terms of muscle memory and somatic awareness has to be measured against how closely the movements replicate the actual combative expression. C) as above for how it is used as a teaching mechanism. I've seen some frankly ridiculous reverse engineering in karate bunkai from people who are heralded as champions of authenticity and function in modern karate. This disconnect makes me wonder why not go straight to the technique and cut out the blatantly unrelated source material but then I've seen ridiculously poor drilling from the same... So what is so cohesive and informative about this practice? C) I reject the comparison between Kata and shadowboxing. I drill things solo ALL the time - because I suck and I need to - but I'm exploring my own body and frame and moving exactly as I plan to on the mits, bag and in combat... I never ever see that in the kihon, Kata, kumite model from anyone. My current belief is that MY solo time is better spent on the above or on conditioning but if people feel their Kata has aided their somatic awareness and it's translated over into their mechanical efficiency then fair enough. The benefits don't seem significant to me and therefore while calling them useless might be inaccurate I don't thinks it's a billon miles off the mark. Just thinking aloud.
Haha. I’m sure Steve would not care one bit what your issues are. Nor would anyone who has trained with him and benefited from his sessions, in which he is very honest and giving of his knowledge and which is practical, evidence based and proven to be effective in the session by way of his method and approach.
As are 1000's of other instructors out there, all with success in their field and all with GREATER success than fields in which he is claiming to be the authority No dice
I’m not the hugest fan of kata for all the reasons you mentioned. But since I’m training striking at a shotokan school right now they just sort of come with the territory. I kind of think of them right now as movement training, kind of like the mma crowd using Ido Portal type stuff (or in the case of Connor Mcgregor, using Ido himself) but slightly more sport specific. So it’s not terrible, and not a bad way to warm up, maybe good for a little light excerise on your off days... but yeah, not the most efficient method of training.
The number of MMA guys doing that stuff is minimal, and the number of them doing it in class time, as a large part of their class schedule. .. Nil
I don't have a problem, although given the way Matt F demands to see videos of others before he believes they are even worthy of his acceptance I expected much more from his own video, which I thought lacking.
No dice? Huh? I didn’t know it was a game. Not sure where he has claimed authority in a certain field. Maybe reference it with a source. If he has, yea people can challenge it. He would be all for it as he challenges authority himself. That’s a major part of session I’ve been in. Will this work..won’t it. Let’s see. What’s proven to work? Don’t think he’s an authority or something says untrue? Turn up and challenge it. Other well respected guys have said he is an authority on certain things. Maybe thats the confusion. Not sure they used the actual word authority though. But shown respect and appreciation and recognition of his work though. What do they know though eh. Well we know from all sorts of areas like say, film, art, music etc that succes does not always correspond with influence and it depends what a person view of success is.
Haha, am I the target for the day. Maybe another attempt to wind me up and get me banned. It hasn’t worked other times. It didn’t work in a private message where you randomly and subtly mentioned something that I believe was a reference to a post about losing someone close to you. Didn’t work then going to that low and disgusting a level so won’t work here.
I think it's fair for students to expect to see better than they can do from instructors. Not sure that bringing up people's videos against them in unrelated threads is going to help with your desire to see more members posting them.
Yes, I totally agree there is too much focus on it during what should be training time. I get that it's a way to sort of homogenize a system, and maybe impart basics to large groups of people... but I came up as a judoka, and while we do have the goshin jutsu kata I don't know many people who practice them, or even learn them anymore. The school I'm training at is mostly kumite focused, both ippon and continuous. So while we need to learn the kata to advance in ranks, its not really the main focus of our training. Which is why I ended up picking that place to train at.
That’s a bit creative isn’t it? Blimey. It was a personal training log to help with ACL reconstruction recovery. Not in the critique section. And I simply asked for anyone posting critique to post clips too so it could be an open conversation and encouraging rather than turn in something else. No one would of been perfect and got everything perfect.
You mean like in this thread where he is quoted saying his students would win in UFC ? That sort of thing?
In fairness it was one sentence about one guy. This guy: Mark Tobin A bit of hyperbole taken out of context is a bit unfair to judge someone on.
To be fair I think he said if you are going to critique it can you put a video up showing you doing something better , that's not exactly a terrible thing to ask
Except it isn't a one off its par for the course for a man who once offered training with the proviso you trained with no one else ever Yup that was real...i know because I was sent the material for instructors back in 1997
Kata as I'm being taught it doesn't look the same for everyone, I recently put up a video on a karate social media page for critique, and something lots of people brought up was the idea of locking out. I've been taught to make it flow, because when sparring you want one technique to flow into another. There's a lot of people out there doing kata that has NO benefit for fighting beyond a slight cardio workout, but I think if you understand how to use it, then it has a place. I might do shadowboxing, kata, and kihon in the same little session.
I have mixed views on Kata/forms based on my experience. I believe you cannot tar all Kata with the same brush, on one extreme you have modern wushu, particularly changquan. The movements, although very athletic, barely resemble anything you could drill. What I would call the other extreme from what I learnt, was southern kungfu forms; You had movement that didn't need to be "translated" as you also had a catching side, where an partner would attack you throughout the form, so you essentially drill during the form. You could then take sections out to focus on in a drill. I've practised many grey areas in-between, and the further towards wushu it gets, I feel the less helpful it becomes as an assistance in training. If you can (and do) pull sections of the form out without great translation, then I can see the merit. Nowadays I barely run through my forms, I prefer to shadow box, but with that, I have my own formula for shadowboxing which could be considered very loosley to Kata.
