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Tau
Tau's picture
Kata for on-line learning

I would just like to run some thoughts past you.

As most you know I'm a multi-style martial arts practitioner. Whilst I personally do Karate I actually teach Jujitsu and Kickboxing. In those arts we don't have kata which I recognise as being to our detriment, especially at this time. Why don't I put kata in the syllabus? Two reasons: 

1. We already have a very thorough comprehensive syllabus in which I don't feel I can add something as substantial as kata

2. Which kata? I feel that just having one wouldn't be doing that kata justice. Arguably something like Tekki Shodan could work but relatively-speaking that's quite an intricate kata with a massive amount of bunkai and the study of it would take up too much time (see above)

But the times they are, as we're repeatedly told, "unprecedented." Like many instructors I've begun running classes via Zoom. My thoughts are that this could be a grand opportunity to study a kata that would work in this format. We learn the solo form via Zoom and then look at application when we get back to class. So which kata?

My feeling is that for this type of teaching kata with a lot of turns and certainly 180 degree turns would be very difficult to teach. Frankly everyone would lose track of which way they should be facing. Kata that I'm therefore thinking of that I am familiar with are Tekki Shodan or Matsumora's version of Rohai. These basically just go in one direction, relative to the watcher. I actually did teach Rohai to my Kickboxers before Christmas because they watched me doing it and were interested. My feeling is that the movements are less intrication than Tekki and it "looks" more interesting to perform.

I welcome your thoughts.

Zach Zinn
Zach Zinn's picture

Here's what I've been doing:

Open class with warmp ups and kihon, my wife is willing to be uke to demonstrate the use of techniques throughout class, as she is also a student. After Kihon we move onto Kata, but I do only 2-3 movement sections, and usually a maximum of two of these Kata chunks per class. So for isntance for the last three classes I have focused only on three consecutive movements from Seuinchin and technically four from Naihanchin. So far I've only done sequences that move in one direction. people get confused quickly on Zoom with angles.

Personally I find that this is working well and giving people a depth to practicing the movements they weren't getting before. I could conceivably do a whole kata this way, but it would be difficult, just setting things up so that we are both fully visible was a bit of a chore.

With Naihanchin we have been doing only the Hand+ Elbow combination then the head grab/punch motion ("downblock") that follows it (no cross step yet, that will come once they have this down better). This is enough to keep most people busy, and I imagine that if you are teaching people who are not typically "Kata types", just two or three moves at a time is more than enough.

Then during the week I put out a video which usually relates to the class content.

Joseph O'Neill
Joseph O'Neill's picture

Hi Tau, 

When I did kickbox, it was with ECKA, who have a number of their own freeforms, which are more ring-sports based than traditional kata, and which I believe were created by the chief instructor. So you could take this route for the kickboxers at least. Alternatively come up with shorter sets of kickboxing combinations for them to work through. I also think Iain has a Tai-Sabaki kata on Youtube (might be on the App) which is based on sport kumite principles which might work better than one of the "traditional" kata. 

For the Jujitsu guys (I'm assuming Japanese Jujitsu from the spelling, correct me otherwise), do you use any set of formalised drills such as goshin-jutsu-no-kata? Could you take Tori's element from these and practice them solo? There are attacks from the front and back, so you could do a front facing one, one from the rear (for the turn), then another front facing etc. The people you're training might then be more familiar with the movements, and it might act as an interesting insight for them into how other martial arts got their solo practice drills. 

You may have had and then discarded these idea already for your own reasons, but they were the first ones that popped to my mind.

If you definitely wanted to go with a karate kata, my thinking would be that it should be the one you enjoy doing and teaching the most. If it's not something that you're going to be instructing them in long-term, and you don't need to worry about teaching lower grades a later syllabus kata, I don't think you need to have too strict a decision criteria. I put together a train-along at home video for the Shotokan club I train at, where I used Gekisai-Dai-Ni, because it's new for absolutely everyone regardless of rank and I enjoy doing that kata. My entire decision making process was those two points. 

Regarding the concerns about the bunkai being too in-depth, again I don't think you need to worry about this with people who aren't going to be training the kata long-term. I put together a short video on some Tekki Shodan pad drills for the same club which i consider fairly simple to apply (excuse the condition of my flat):

 

If you have to simplify the bunkai you use to make it work remotely, I don't think this will have a detrimetal effect as it's not something they'll be expected to use later. It will just be a really interesting eye-opener for them as to the purpose of kata.

As Zach says, I think how it's taught will be more important than the choice of kata. When I did the gekisai demonstration, I broke it down into sections by direction, explained which direction we were moving in the solo form, the turn from the previous section, demonstrated it in in the correct direction relation to the camera being shomen, and then demonstrated it from the best viewing angle, followed by the correct direction again. As long as you're clear with "here we're moving back towards the starting point, facing the opposite direction to where we started, I'm just doing it side on for clarity," it should work.

One point, I didn't put bunkai in my train-along (thought it might be overwhelming as they're a 3K club), but if you are going to include bunkai, what kata lends itself best to solo bunkai?

Hopefully some of that might be useful,

Joe. 

Tau
Tau's picture

Joseph O'Neill wrote:
When I did kickbox, it was with ECKA, who have a number of their own freeforms, which are more ring-sports based than traditional kata, and which I believe were created by the chief instructor. So you could take this route for the kickboxers at least. Alternatively come up with shorter sets of kickboxing combinations for them to work through.

Thanks for the reply. We do have Kickboxing combinations. But what we can't do is padwork and sparring. We do do a little pragmatic stuff as an addition to the KB syllabus. So I'm thinking kata for interest.

Joseph O'Neill wrote:
For the Jujitsu guys... do you use any set of formalised drills such as goshin-jutsu-no-kata?

No. The only "traditional" Jujitsu kata that I'm familiar with is the one for Shodan from (I think) Yagyu Shingen Ryu. It was over a decade ago that I learned it. I still practice it for interest but don't teach it to my students because it's not congruent with our methods.

Karate kata works for me/us because of the congruence of methods. Indeed, interestingly, the biggest influence on my Jujitsu is Iain and our fellows such as those on this forum.

If we're going to learn it at all then it'll be with bunkai (post-pandemic). Otherwise it's almost pointless. But no, I don't plan on this being a long-term pursuit.

Heath White
Heath White's picture

Probably people already know this, but a handy way to give directions in kata is to stipulate that you begin the kata facing "North" and then subsequent directions are East, West, South, etc. That  will not solve all your problems but it might keep people facing the right way.