Do you still remember and practice the early kata?

[Sandan]

I used to practice on the landing of my building, but had to give up 'cause the neighbours were complaining!!! Well not really, but they were giving me strange looks

[Master Jules]

Although its not kata.....talking about strange looks.....you should see the looks I get while doing my forearm banging against the iron pipes at the gym where I work......ahhhhh but they just dont understand....LOL

[baronbvp]

I built a gym into my house with a 12 foot long mirror on one wall. It works great; I realize I am very fortunate. I also sometimes do just one or two moves when I am out and about. You have to be a little careful because you'd get funny looks if you pivoted down into a nice forward stance at Home Depot or somewhere when you thought no one was looking.

[G95champ]

This is a growing problem that I have seen.

A brown belt walks in class a few weeks back and says hey Im a brown belt. I say ok show me your kata. He does the kata he is testing on. I say ok show me your early kata. He can't! What this tells me is that this person is not worried about the art. They are after a belt to look cool and nothing else.

Before you take a test you should do your kata thousands of times. To the point you will not forget it. Upon completion of that test you will study a new kata but should always warm up with each kata you know before you get there.

Kata are very alike at times a person who does not know them well will forget them.

You can tell a good martial artist from a poor one by watching them do their kata and espically when you aske them questions about it.

[cathal]

]

Lucky you I wish i had something like that! I have nowhere to train for kata outside of the dojo and my wife insists on having furniture in every room of the house so I have nowhere to practice kata at home either.

furniture can be moved. do you not have a backyard or garage, or driveway? even if you cannot perfomr the kata as you would at 100% as far as power, speed, proper spaceing, etc. you can stil go through the basic patterns in minimal space. i'm ure your wife would unerstand if a piece of furniture is moved for an hour. mine does.

Do you have a yard? I practice in my back yard and side yard whenever I get a chance.

[korin]

It's been a good read so far but no one's brought up the point,

that in terms of old-school karate, a student may have only studied 2-3 kata's in their entire life.

I'll play the devil's advocate and say, "Do we really need to keep up on our Pinan/Heian katas, a set of katas, that were developed 100 years ago so that beginner highschool students could learn karate?"

It's true we can always develop the basics from the "learner's katas", but Itosu created them by borrowing techniques from the traditional katas. Once you've begun your studies as a BB why not get everything from source?

I think a lot of people's training suffers by "biting off more than they can chew." Perhaps focusing on a few may be the way to go. How many katas can you really improve on during 2 hour practice, during a year?

And as to instructing, I think most BB who have developed some of the more advanced katas, and may have forgetten a Pinan/Heian kata, can take a look book and be able to perform it very well within 10 minutes.

Most beginners can pick up a Pinan/Heian kata in a day, how long would it take an experienced practitioner.

Just my two bits.

[Shorin Ryuu]

In most cases, even in "old-school karate", people knew much more than two or three kata. Most people knew far more kata than they actually taught, as is the case in schools nowadays.

But again, even in the old days, people knew many kata.

Of course, they spent more time on the kata, more time focusing on each. But to say they only knew two or three (or four or five) is in most cases, plain wrong.

[Sandan]

I have to take issue with the point that

It's been a good read so far but no one's brought up the point,

that in terms of old-school karate, a student may have only studied 2-3 kata's in their entire life.

This is kind of true, but the truth is that the school was generally known for a type of kata, i.e. tekki, gankaku etc. But people were encouraged to know as many kata as possible, they would generally also have known weapons kata. My weapons instructor from Japan speaks of many kata that are all but forgotten and he will say that he learned it from such and such a person...

[korin]

Ok, point taken 2-3 was a bit of an hyperbole but you know what I mean. The number of katas around in Okinawa 150-200 years ago were probably less than half of what's out there today.

On top of that, schools or teachers were not as open as they are today, they were very private and students were selectively chosen, usually coming from family, friends or friends of family. How much information was shared? How many techniques and katas did one "school" have access to? Perhaps not until karate was more public and students had multiple teachers did studying more and more katas become the norm. (Anyone know any good books on this?)

Anyways, I think more time on fewer katas is the way to go. I think that although they are a very useful tool, students can survive without the Pinans/Heians in their later karate studies. Though I don't advocate forgetting them all together.

Getting away from the 2-3 thing, what are people's thoughts on the second half of this and my last post, 3 or 4 up?

PS. I was trying to think of the name of the guy who only learned the Naifuhanchi (sp?) when he was young. (Okinawan history) The teacher who taught him Naifuhanchi refused to teach him any more after he found out he was street fighting. Choshin Chotubu? nicknamed Monkey boy. Something like that, Shorin-ryu students might know. Perhaps a good case in point.

[harleyt26]

I think korin may be speaking of Motobu Choki.