Learning a Kata

One of the important aspects of karate which I've neglected are kata.  There are a few which I remember and practice quite often, such as Sanchin and Tensho.  Those, with their diminutive space requirements are quite easy to practice in the limited space of an apartment living room. While relatively short, they still have enough application fodder and exercise to them that they’re effective in keeping my skills, if not sharp, at least from growing too dull.

However, those which require more space are memories of thought that have eroded with time.    

Okay, perhaps it's not as dramatic as that, but while I remember short phrases of the kata themselves, I could most likely only string the whole thing together if I were under hypnosis.  I remember stances, movements, application, but the whole shape of the kata is fuzzy at best.

How, then, should I go about memorizing the form, committing it not just to the memory of thought, but also that of motion?

Find Space

Any space will do as long as you’re not trespassing.  It should be large enough to move around freely without running into furniture or passers by and relatively flat, too.  A bit of variation in the terrain is just fine; got to work on that balance sometime.

Find Someone Who Knows It

This is most certainly the best way to go about it, though it can also be costly, or it may take time to find a teacher.  If you've no experience with a kata, it's probably best to find a teacher willing to share their knowledge.  

Since we live in the future, there's also the possibility of using video chat to actually converse with a sensei or fellow student .  While it won't replace them actually correcting your posture with touch, they may help to remind you of what's next.

On that vein, there's always YouTube, which is a fantastic tool to find all the karate kata videos you want.  But at one point you'll probably notice that there are various versions and myriad variations on the same kata.  A quick search for Sanseru gave me 206 results, and the first three are all basically the same, but quite different in their execution.

None of these will necessarily be wrong, -- unless there's something obviously boneheaded going on mid-kata -- but instead reflect differences in the schools from various locales.  Watching how others perform it may even open your eyes to an application you'd never considered.

Kata change all the time. Consider Sanchin kata, which has been around in various forms from its roots in Fujien, China, where it was practiced with open hands.  It has variously been changed to include closed hands (though many Okinawan styles outside Goju have conserved the open hand movements,) and there are versions with turns...

....and without:

For an extreme example of how katas can differ between styles, we can look toward Ishimine Ryu’s Kuma-Te Sanchin.   As Mark Bishop describes in the book “Okinawan Karate:”

Kuma-te Sanchin is unique to this style and is imitative of the bear (kuma). The stance is solid and bigger than in the Sanchin katas of other styles. The movements also resemble those of a bear; for example one of the arm movements is representative of a bear scooping fish from water.  The butt of the palm is the primary weapon and, because the finger tips are curled over, the hand resembles a bear’s paw.

If you're trying to re-learn the kata, as in my own case, I just find the ones that remind me of what I used to do, or the ones in my own library of videos --  most of which are on YouTube, which makes me wonder why I keep the collection around.

The videos you find are only guidelines, and each practitioner will have a slightly different interpretation of the form.  Some will look picture-perfect, others may look a little sloppy, but what you have to focus upon is not getting hung up on the technique and how it’s executed by them, but by your own execution of the technique.  Like a cover of a rock tune, or the taste of soylent green, each kata subtly will vary from person to person.

Write it Down

First you need to keep in mind that the written version is not the true version, since it can never quite capture the subtleties of a movement that are so much more easily explained by a teacher.  But as you write it down you give yourself yet another reference to the movement, and the thought behind it; it’ll help you build a larger set of pointers to the knowledge and make it harder to lose in the future.  

Try to commit to memory the movement itself, even as you try to capture these in prose while keeping in mind that your words cannot carry with them the actual movement or a demonstration of it.  It’s a hard juggling act to keep these nearly contradictory ideas balanced.  Try to describe movements as simply as possible without falling prey to lyrical obfuscation.  While ‘swoop like a swallow to the left’ may be quite lovely to read, you may find yourself wondering just what you were trying to say when you come back to read your notes later on in life.

Since the knowledge is heavily internalized, why go out of our way to write things down and to express in our words the forms which you’re learning?  You’re teaching yourself, in your own words by writing it down.  Not only that, but you are contributing to the body of knowledge of your art!  You make sure that there’s a record that is, in a small way, part of your legacy as a martial artist.

Try as best as you can to learn applications for the kata—the aforementioned videos often include sections on bunkai (application, analysis, disassembly) of the various parts of the kata.  These are extremely interesting to study as well as giving your mind yet another reference to the material you’re trying to learn.

Even if you forget it again, the pieces of it will remain, waiting for you to affix them to the scaffolding that the kata provides and to once again give them a framework wherein they can flow freely into one another.

Try, also, to give further context to the technique.  At the top of my notes, I'm writing a short blurb on the history of each kata.  So far they've been easy to track down, since they're quite recent; later, older ones will most likely take plenty of hunting around through articles, history books, as well as everyone's favorite go-to, wikipedia.

In Closing

Practice and study.

Practice not in the way that you usually think of it.  Practice is a more of a full meditation on the kata—not just each step, but the flow between them, their application, and even how their prose sits upon the page.   This is also study, because in this mindset you will want to answer the questions that come up when going through the motions, or pondering them after training.  Seek answers and seek further questions for yourself or others to help answer.   

It’s not just going through the motions.  Go forth and train!

Some Links:

Mark Bishop’s Okinawan Karate book is quite the read.  Short, but it gets across the point that one should approach the arts with an understanding that each style is not compartmentalized, but that each is a different interpretation of how to make use of one’s body mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Okinawan-Karate-Teachers-Styles-Techniques/dp/0804832056/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314727413&sr=1-1

The search for Sanseru (it returned even more links than when I wrote this piece just a few days ago!): http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sanseru&aq=f

A fantastic article on bunkai and how to approach it: http://seinenkai.com/art-bunkai.html

Pondering the Basics

Something I recall both my sensei -- Shihan Garcia, and Sensei Miranda (who also happens to be my father) -- telling me again and again was to ‘practice the basics.’  At the time it sounded as if they wanted me to work on kamae, so I did.  Or was it blocking?  Okay, some of that too.  Maybe striking?  Kicks? What exactly where these elusive basics?  

A conversation with my father earlier this week brought some clarity to this question, and the frustrating uncertainty of what exactly these basics are.  These elusive basics are paradoxically not basic at all, but they’re conceptually simple, basic: flow, stance, and balance.   This revelation was followed by him saying that "to understand the basics, you must first master the basics."

Circular as the argument is it is, in a way, fairly accurate.  The basics, as I saw them when I started in martial arts were the blocks, kicks, kamae (stances,) striking (tsuki, shuto, etc) the beginning kata and kihon kumite.

In retrospect, they do seem to lead one to the three basics above, and there’s a few threads that pull them together, such as kata.  Kata involve motion from one stance to another, and if one wishes to get them right, one has to exercise our balance.  They’re a small test of your skills at any particular moment in your training.  They’ve always challenged my memory, precision, and most certainly point out to me when my balance is just a little bit off.

One of the exercises that is quite helpful in improving the transition from one stance to the next, and which I remember doing many times in our old dojo in Chile was to walk up and down the dojo in one stance first, say shiko dachi, then shifting to another stance.  Our hands not doing much other than shifting forward and back to match the leading foot.  All of the basic stances (shiko dachi, sanchin dachi, zenkutsu dachi, neko dachi,) up and down the dojo again and again.

Even today I find myself doing these very simple footwork exercises.  Up and down a hallway at home, or when I’ve a few minutes to spare and no one is looking to see me walking funny.  Forward and backward, shifting from one stance to another, turning to face various directions from where I am standing.  These certainly make for a more varied repertoire of movements.

Sometimes, though, turning doesn’t quite work.  Perhaps it feels wobbly, or you plain end up facing the wrong way, and this reminds you that you need to work a little more on balance.   How?  There’s the simple ways, of course, like standing on one foot, then the other.  Practice kata which have turns built into them  -- Sanchin’s has two 180 degree turns, while Gekisai Dai Ichi and Dai Ni have both 180 and 90 degree turns (most other goju kata also contain turns, but I’m just listing some of the very basic ones) -- and pay attention to where your feet end up.   I always find myself asking if that felt rooted enough, or if the turn made me bob too much up and down, compromising my balance.  Question, experiment, try again.  You’ll always be making an adjustment for the situation, terrain, or even how much your left toe aches on a cold day after that terrible nutcracker incident.

If you’ve ever been to an Okinawan Karate dojo, one of the things you may notice is that there’s a fair emphasis on sparring.  From the very beginning, there’s emphasis on kumite.  At first it’s single-step attack-block combinations, also known as ippon kumite, then progressing over time to free sparring.  Like kata, an opponent and the repetition of the prearranged type of kumite helps with giving one a feel for the flow from one stance to another, as well as exposing that hobgoblin of balance: bobbing.  

The way I think of bobbing, especially on the upswing of the motion, is that of a car’s suspension unloading.  A point where you’re accelerating upwards, robbing you of grip, or that sense of
“groundedness” which we seek to attain.  One can go too far with grounding, though, making your movements clumsy, or giving you a sensation of being rather static.  This is stance without flow.  Balanced, but immobile, and not bad if you’re going for an impression of a statue.

Always focus on your stance at first.  Get that right until it feels properly grounded and stable, then practice moving in that stance.  Forward, back, sidestep.  This builds a feel for balance.  Don’t worry about speed yet, since that’s a function of practice and time and learning one’s balance.  As more of these motions become integrated into your movement speed rises in a natural way.  The smooth, balanced motion from stance to stance comprises flow.  This is the order that I’ve found, and with which Sensei Miranda also agrees, helps build intrinsic knowledge of these fundamental attributes.

I’ve often joked that footwork in martial arts feels very much like the rhythm section of a band; carrying the rhythm, and the general flow of the music with them and with little appreciation from the audience.  Setting the pace and the mood, leaving other instruments to carry the main themes and melodies.  The basics, the footwork, the flow are much like the rhythm of a piece of music.  The hands and arms add their own motion and flow, their overtones to the rhythmic patter, shuffle and stomp of one’s feet on the dojo floor.  

These various pieces, which in fact are the whole of a style, can then be stuffed together into the perplexing simplicity of the basics. Of flow, stance and balance.  

Links:

Good overview of the concept and the usual political faffing about that various styles and divisions within styles engage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumite

There’s nothing to learn from this other than the word kumite should be followed by kung-fu sound effects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBchPDvgmDk

Wikipedia is so full of things, so here’s a good list of the various foot positions for stances along with explanations for them.  But remember that there’s no replacement for a good teacher when it comes to correcting your form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate_stances