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Marcus_1
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Help wanted transferring from Heian to Pinan

Ok, 2nd week at IKK Karate East Kent club an I am really liking it. I have been told by the Shihan not to worry if I am doing Shotokan forms as they are very similar.  BUT I WANT TO GET IT RIGHT AS A PINAN!!!

Anyone able to help?  My main issues are the minor changes in some of the stances but mainly it's the total difference in shuto/knife hand

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

If you looking for books best in my opinion is Kyokushin Kata IFK by Hanshi Steve Arneil. If you looking for clips Kyokushin Encyclopedia is good. I'm not going to post the link as I'm not sure who got rights to the clip. If you looking for application I can recommend my channel shin ai do Karate, but our kata are bit different then Kyokushin. Good luck in transition

Marcus_1
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Osu, thank you.  It's going to be a long road but I am determined to get to where I want to be.

Last week it was a case of I wanted to get fit again, but didn't want to do gym work as I find it dull.  Now I actually want to transition into a Kyokushin karate-ka and see if I can get some grades under my belt.

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Im sure you will succeed, I have guys in my dojo from Shotokan, Seiki Juku and Kuk Sool Won, they slowly changing their ways. I don't mind if they do kata their way nothing wrong with that, take it easy and don't get stressed about it, it will come.

Marcus_1
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That's the plan (for now)

Marc
Marc's picture

Hi Marcus,

it sounds like you want "immediate" success in your transition from one style to another. But as a karateka you know, learning and building muscle memory takes time.

The easier thing will be those parts of a kata where your new style expects you to do a completely different technique, angle or stance. You can learn them as a variation of your known kata. Maybe you have to learn an entirely new technique (despite the same name). Think of Gojushiho Sho and Dai in Shotokan - same kata, two variations, at some points very different techniques.

Knowing Shotokan and having glanced over some Kyokushin Pinan videos, it seems like you can get pretty far with this approach. Of course it takes time and lots of practice to learn the unfamiliar moves.

What will require even more time and dedication is overriding the details of specific techniques that are basically the same but are done slightly differently in your new style. To the quick observer gedan barai in Shotokan an Kyokushin might look the same, but maybe there are nuances in your Shotokan technique that just don't look quite right to the Kyokushin eye. - If that is the case then the question is: Does it matter? And if it does to you, how do you go about it?

Does it matter?

When we talk about the obvious differences in the katas, I'd say, of course it matters. You want to do zenkutsu dachi when everybody else does it, and not kokutsu dachi because that's how you've learned it. You also want to adopt the "new and weird" way of doing shuto uke. Think of it as a new technique. Learn the new variation of the kata. Keep the old one in the back of your head. When it comes to bunkai you will appreciate knowing those different representations of the same principle. The application should make sense for both variations.

With the minute details of how to exactly move your arm according to style, I'm not so sure that it matters too much. I would expect to see differences in the nuances from dojo to dojo or even between teachers in the same dojo that are greater than those from style to style. When it comes to technique it is all about how the body can generate power, how the body can provide a solid structure, how the joints move in a healthy way. Correct technique is a result of those parameters. It should not be a matter of doctrine. When you see two different ways of doing the same thing, try to learn both and then decide which one works better for you.

How to relearn the nuances?

It depends on how long you have trained so far.

If it has just been two years, you haven't got all the details yet anyway. Trust your new instructors to do their job and teach them to you.

If you've trained for over a decade, you will have developed an eye for the details. Again, trust your new instructors. And watch the black belts in your new dojo. Ask them to show you how they execute a technique differently. Maybe you can video yourself and others doing the same technique a few times. Study the differences (slow motion).

And when you've got the nuances figured out, ask yourself which version makes more sense and why. As I said, I don't think the small details are really style specific, they are about health, efficiency and effectiveness.

Take care,

Marc