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VIC
VIC's picture
maybe it's the bunkai?

 Branching off from another thread as to whether the Pinans were merely excercise or meant for teaching school children the  title question occured to me.The bunkai many of the  westerners came home with was that taught to children not having put in the time to advance beyond that .Some came back with no bunkai at all and had to "wing it".Out of this came many ludicrous explanations and comments that kata is useless and kid stuff something you have to do for your next belt level a warm up excercise.

These ideas became entrenched and still are in a lot of people's minds. Iain and others are doing much to rid people of these ideas but would you teach that to children?

vic

Andrew Carr-Locke
Andrew Carr-Locke's picture

I don't teach bunkai to children, because I dont teach Kata to children.

we only teach fundamentals- Kihon. We will experience the use of those techniques with a partner, so I guess we teach the Kata process, just not the combinations of movements. Each movement is seperate. Example the inside block (Uchi-uke in Shotokan). Block for movement in air. Then with a partner. Wrestlers call this move an underhook. It is a way to grab the shoulder. The 'block' actually happens behind the opponent. Funakoshi called it a 'hooking block' in his To-te jutsu book. The action happens in conjunction with a front kick and reverse punch in Heain-Nidan (Shotokan). When we teach kids, we don't teach the full combination chain. Just the hooking block for positional control.