Kata as a Training Tool - Dogmatic Adherence to Originality

Kata is a wonderful training tool. It is a drill. It is perceived to be the source of technique application against an assailant. This is true yet do we actually utilize kata tools adequately for real attacks?

Some do and some don't. I speak once again to those who have come to believe completely that all kata "must be practiced as originally taught by the systems founders/creators." As my past post on this speaks, this is limited, stifling and stunting.

When you truly lean and understand how techniques must be trained and drilled for real life violent encounters then analyze these original kata forms you will find they are missing many of the principles of martial systems.

Ok, you will here those who believe in this dogmatic doctrine of kata originality say that all those principles are "hidden" within the kata but I would disagree. Why would they hide them? We can also receive those "stories" that is was to protect and hide it from the Samurai conquerers but I find this also hard to accept since the practice itself was hidden so why hide the techniques.

Kata as a tool for beginners should remain intact as originally intended yet for the kata to become a tool for drilling or the use of drills, etc. must "change" or "meta-morph into more" to become adequate and applicable to combat. Once a novice learns the gross movements, then the finer points and the fundamental principles-applications then it needs to be adjusted if it remains a tool for combat.

My systems kata do not provide for the movement off-centeredness. They tend to move forward, reverse and then left/right as applicable. None of them actually promote moving or visualization of a move to either 22.5 degrees to the left-forward/right-forward/left-rear/right-rear to name just a few. You will notice when seisan-no-te starts with the first three moves it is directly into the attacker. In a nutshell this is not how to apply the principles of martial power.

So, use the kata with adherence to the originals but allow them to morph as the practitioner needs so the come "alive" and become "applicable for combat drilling and training."

Make sense? Yes? No? Maybe?

p.s. those who have professed in the past that kata have not use or real combat purpose make that distinction because they are not aware that kata must be more than the dogmatic original set patterns, etc. but fluid and allowed to morph and grow to the uniqueness of individuals. If they were taught how to do this then the kata would take on meaning and substance to combat.

p.s.s. allow that mind-body to achieve success in the martial arts. Don't allow the mind to become fixed and rigid; allow it freedom to expand and encompass all that is and all that can be ...