Is more better?

[tommarker]

see, that doesn't help

[Goju1]

My personal preference is to have fewer katas and work on mastering (or at least bettering) them. The discipline required to work on a single kata for years is what I feel makes karate great. It may not work for all in our modern 'instant gratification' society, but I think it closer to the original intent of traditional karate styles IMHO.

[thenakedpage]

...no more than 30 kata could be perfected in a life time. IMO.

 

Your opinion counts for 10 years of experience so it is worth something. Just wondering though, if you dedicated more time to perfecting your kata, how many could you perfect in a lifetime. I mean, how did you arrive at a nice round number of 30?

[aefibird]

Well, Gichin Funakoshi took years to master the Tekki kata, so if you have an average of 4-5 years in-depth study for each kata then a person would have to live for many years to be able to properly study more than about 30 kata, so I think that's a good number to have.

My personal preference is to have fewer katas and work on mastering (or at least bettering) them. The discipline required to work on a single kata for years is what I feel makes karate great. It may not work for all in our modern 'instant gratification' society, but I think it closer to the original intent of traditional karate styles IMHO

I agree. I think that Western society wants everything at once and it isn't really like that with karate. True understanding takes time and lots of patience!!

[Shorinryu Sensei]

I think quality over quanity is a good rule of thumb in most things. Being able to perform 50 mediocre kata does you little good if you don't fully understand them, but being able to fully understand 10 kata and all of their applications during the course of your studys is more beneficial.

[kempocos]

I feel that this is best answered by what your goal is.

 

Do you train to go the tournament route where flashy KATA and tippy tap point sparring is needed, or are you in a combative style where damge is the goal.

 

Tourney side the more kata you perfect the better range of movements you can pull from in case the person you are competing against pulls off a great KATA. Then you can switch your game plan when the bar is raised.

 

Combative side the more BUNKAI you know the better prepared you are to respond to how you are attacked.

 

I have always found that any sinlgle movement in a KATA can have many techniques drawn from it. This is also why so many systems use the same KATAS , it is the way the founder viewed the bunkai that gave rise to the creation of the new style. I love to see how differant people view the KATA and how they pull techinques from it.

[cathal]

I tend to agree with the idea that quality is better than quantity.