How many katas?

[AnonymousOne]

I personally believe there are too many Kata. I could happily train with one Kata for the rest of my life. But most people would find that utterly boring.

I feel its better, far better, to find a Kata that covers a wide range of technique, that perhaps covers the “majority of self defence situations” and master that. Does one exist? Not that I know of.

To me a Kata is a challenge. It takes years and years to master a Kata, assuming you practised it diligently for 2 hours a day until you dropped from exhaustion. Today most students do not have the determination to put that much effort into their training. But those that do, will become first rate Karate-ka.

In many ways we need to return to the old ways of training. One Kata studied for 3-5 years.

In the old days, most of the old masters were from rich families and didn’t need to work and studied Karate fulltime. They were so highly skilled because they had the time to invest and that time was expected of them.

Its my opinion that todays students training only 2-4 hours per week is sending a poor message.

The boxing world is way ahead of us, with 6am roadwork and then 2-3 hours of training in the evenings 6 days per week.

We need to return to less with more.

[cross]

Why not learn many katas really good? Who says you cant be as good as the old masters at the katas they practised and at the same time be good at more katas then them?

Most probably because the old masters trained all day everyday and in modern society not many of us have that luxury.

[karatekid1975]

I heard that Shitoryu has a lot of kata. Is that true?

Anyways, as far as how many kata is too many? I have to agree with Sauzin, "Less is more." There's a saying in TKD (some other styles as well), K.I.S.S. "Keep it simple stupid." I didn't agree with this at first (because I love doing forms), but the longer I train the more I do agree with it. I'd rather learn a few kata and get good at them, than learn many sloppy ones.

We have one form per belt level till 2nd gup/kyu (about every three months you learn a new one). At this level, we learn a bo form, and a TKD form. 1st kyu is two forms, also (At 2nd and 1st kyu's, it takes longer to grade than previous grades). I think this is ok, but any more than that is too much.

[Bleeding Lion]

you can always combine every kata you know to form a longer one. I saw somebody do that, he just created a few transitions between katas. that looked pretty sweet.

[mindsedgeblade]

I like that idea. It wouldn't be too hard to do either. But then I'd really get my kata mixed up =:-}

[Gyte]

To answer the question of how many kata's is enough, I can say the following for Shotokan Karate. I think the Heian kata series, Tekki Shodan, Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai are more then enough to learn from. These 8 kata's are all the kata's that are required to be known for the black belt (1st dan) in Shotokan.

More you don't need. Besides, most of the higher Shotokan kata's aren't style specific, as Funakoshi wrote down in his books. According to the rule "3 years, one kata", you would be busy learning these kata's for 8x3=24 years. That's plenty of time to be busy, I think.

[RaidenTB]

15 is the number I've heard from a shito-ryu sensei, when he was asked that same question. I've learned 12 so far and I honestly think that's more than enough to work on. For now... If I get a chance to learn another one, I think I'll grab it. I feel that every new kata I learned helped me improve my technique in one way or another. And there's nothing I like to train more than katas.

But I understand and accept the less is more point of view. That's why I'm mainly practicing just one masters kata, the first one I've learned.

[pers]

In shotokan there are 27 katas , I don't know them all ,maybe about 15 or 16 and I still think that I need to work on these ones for many more years .so personally for me I have enough on my hands to work on and improve upon .katas like unsu ,gojushiho daie and sho ,sochin are some of the katas that take years to master and fully understand the applications to make them like second nature ,so i am not in a rush to learn more katas just to say that I know all shotokan katas !

[Uechi Kid]

Uechi Ryu has eight Katas. When Kanbun Uechi brought this style to Okinawa from China there were four but he would only teach three of them. After he died the senior masters created five more katas.

I think that fewer are better. There must be a reason that Pangainoon had only four katas. Like other activities we participate in, keep it simple and get real good at the basics.

[Kaminari]

In Shito-ryu, there are around 60-65 kata, with a possibility of up to around 80. However, those extra 15-20 are not practiced by many.