The idea to write this piece started with a question I saw on Facebook in the Kyokushin Budo Dojo group. The OP trained in a dojo that no longer practiced kata and wanted to know what we thought about it.  For many of us who responded, it was a surprising question. Among those of us who practice traditional karate, particularly Kyokushin, kata is simply part of what we learn. For martial arts in general, though we see that there are those who will question what it is supposed to teach, and debate how much emphasis it deserves in training.

Kata is seen different ways by different people. Some see kata mainly as a way of preserving the art and passing it on. Others look at it as a practical training method, with movements that are meant to be understood and applied. And there are people who see little practical value in it at all.

Kata as Cultural Practice

Some people may see kata as just a way of preserving tradition, something that gives students a set structure to follow, that reinforces basic techniques, and develops coordination, balance, and control. For people who approach kata this way, practical application may not be the main concern. The value is in practicing the form itself, repeating it, improving it, and preserving something that has been handed down from one generation to the next. I think it’s more than that, but at the same time I’m not going to criticize that either. Those who see it as primarily a cultural practice also seemed to have no problem understanding that performed at its proper speed and rhythm, kata can be physically demanding and provide a challenging conditioning workout as well.

Kata as Functional Solo Training

Others look at kata much more practically. From this point of view, kata is a way of practicing fighting principles when you do not have a partner in front of you. In that approach, every movement should mean something. A turn may be creating an angle, repositioning an opponent, or helping you escape a grip. What looks like a block may also be a strike, a joint lock, or part of a takedown or throw.

When kata is approached from this angle, bunkai and oyo become the primary focus. This approach sees kata as more than just performing the techniques, you also take it apart, look at what the movements could mean, and even test those ideas with a partner. For someone who trains kata this way, the form is not separate from fighting. It is another way of practicing movement, distance, timing, rhythm, and application.

I suppose that places me squarely in the “kata as functional training” camp.

Kata takes patience. Its value is not always obvious in the first hundred repetitions, or even the first thousand. At first, the movements may feel like choreography. With good instruction and enough time, however, you begin to notice things that were not obvious before: changes in balance, distance, body position, timing, breathing, weight transfer, and the different ways a movement might be used.

The fact that it does take time is part of the problem I think. Sparring gives you immediate feedback. So does hitting pads, or a heavy bag. Those exercises feel useful immediately. Kata asks you to put in the time before you fully understand what you are getting back from it, and a lot of people simply do not stay with it long enough to reach that point.

And Then There Are the Skeptics

Not everyone sees value in kata. There are martial artists who dismiss it altogether. Some of those who feel this way come from sport-oriented backgrounds. Others come from reality-based self-defense systems. Some may have practiced kata themselves and later decided it was not adding anything useful to their training. “It doesn’t reflect real fighting,” is one argument. “Nobody moves like that in a real fight,” is another.

They are not completely wrong in that observation, but in my experience, what they are missing is what the practice of kata gives us: the opportunity to practice and improve underlying principles of movement, focus, breathing, and fighting spirit, all things that are directly applicable to fighting.

I have nothing against martial arts being tested, and I do believe training methods should be examined for their effectiveness. This is something virtually all martial artists do. If someone can fight well, defend themselves under pressure, and teach others to do the same without ever practicing kata, and for them martial arts are only about fighting and self-defense, then the results speak for themselves. Nothing wrong with that if that is all they are looking for. I would argue that their experience does not mean kata has no value though.  Where I think the problem comes in is that many people give up on kata before they really understand it. They may know the movements and be able to get through the sequence, but that is not necessarily the same thing as understanding what they are doing.

What It Comes Down To

Like many things in karate, the value of kata depends on how it is practiced and why. Performed mindlessly, it becomes little more than going through the motions. Performed with intensity but no understanding, it is still missing something. But when you understand what you are doing and why, then kata becomes a useful tool I believe.

There is also another part of kata that is easy to overlook if we judge it only by whether a movement has an immediate practical application: renma—constant polishing.

My teacher, Shihan Swanson, often said that training in martial arts was a journey toward a level of perfection that we would never actually achieve. “The journey is the point” he told us. Shihan Mike Monaco, President and founder of USA-IFK, often describes it this way, “A trip has a beginning and an end, a journey never ends.”  “Karate”, he says, “is a journey”

No matter how many times you perform a kata, there is always something to pay attention to. It’s entirely possible for a martial artist to reach a level, that the performance may look flawless to anyone watching. Having said that kata is a moving practice, I think that it’s possible to make mistakes that may not be noticeable to anyone except the person performing the kata.  The self-awareness to catch those tiny errors are part of what the practice gives you. That is part of renma. Refinement is not always about correcting something another person can see. Sometimes it is recognizing that what you just did was not quite as good as what it should be.

The practice of kata is never really finished. You do not simply learn it, pass a grading, and move on. You return to it again and again, sometimes for decades, bringing more experience to it each time. The kata may remain the same, but the person performing it does not.

“One becomes a beginner after one thousand days of training and an expert after ten thousand days of practice.”– Masutatsu Oyama

This idea from Sosai fits kata very well. Depth takes time, patience, and humility. You do not have to believe kata is the key to fighting. But if you understand how it can be used, and understand the continual refinement that is built into its practice, you might just find that there is more to kata than simply memorizing and repeating a sequence of movements.  Perhaps it makes me “old school”, but given that my training in Kyokushin started over 45 years ago, it’s perhaps not so surprising that I believe that the old masters left us more than tradition. They left us a way of training. What we do with it is up to us. My teacher believed kata was so important that he felt without it you weren’t practicing a martial art. You would just be training how to fight.

My Own View

For me, kata is tradition, function, and perhaps most importantly, renma.  This is a belief that I trace back to my first Kyokushin teacher.

Kata is a living record of how karate was practiced in the past and how it was passed down to us. It is not enough for us just to preserve it. To really pass it on, we must breathe life into it. We should work towards understanding what is behind the movements. I do not claim to know everything there is to know about kata. There are still times that a new insight will come to me.

I do not believe kata is something you ever truly master and put behind you. You keep returning to it. The same kata you practiced as a beginner can teach you something different after ten years, twenty years, or forty years because you are no longer the same person who first learned it. That continual polishing and striving for perfection is part of the value.

I do not practice kata simply because it is traditional. I practice it because it gives me a way to continue working on movement, timing, balance, breathing, and technique, even when I am training alone. Those things carry over into how I move, how I fight, and how I teach. Even after all these years, kata is something I can keep coming back to and still find something to work on.

It is also one of the few parts of karate where the journey itself really is the point. There will always be another detail to polish, another level of understanding that comes with time, or something I notice now that I might not have noticed years ago. Perfection may remain out of reach, but we keep working toward it anyway. That is renma.

For me, kata is not just something to preserve because it was handed down to me. I continue to practice it because I believe it still has something to teach.

Osu.

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