Kata is a waste of time

[dafabe]

I also belive that it is not the best martial art to get fit, a brown belt came to our class for the first time and he was sick arter the work out, (thai boxing).

 

 

[Ai Hate]

On 2002-07-26 05:15, dafabe wrote:

 

I also belive that it is not the best martial art to get fit, a brown belt came to our class for the first time and he was sick arter the work out, (thai boxing).

lmao..

 

what a conclusion

[ramymensa]

Well about Kata. It's hard, but it's the essence of karate. i train in Shotokan and though i hated kata because of my lack of coordination, I've come to love it. Why? Because somebody (well, my Sensei ) showed me the applications (the so called bunkai). I realised then this is not as harmless and useless as I thought it to be at a first glance. Funakoshi taught his students karate ONLY by means of kata. For him kumite at first seemed useless and too bloody. I think kumite is important, but kata is as important as it.

 

And this is why I chose Shotokan (Karate if you like, because I appreciate the other styles in connection with Shotokan , not just the style I train in.)

 

If you want karate live with kata too, if not ... there are plenty of other styles more fight orientated.

 

And to come in terms with another "poster" here ... I also think Karate is a way of life. For me a great one

[LeaF]

I found this great article addressing the kata (If this has been posted before sorry I don't have the time to go trough 7 pages of posts )

 

check it out here

 

http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=137

[ramymensa]

Thank you LeaF for the link.

 

I've already added it into my favourites

[Taokara]

Kata is very useful to tone your body and put mind spirit and body together. It is also useful when remembering techniques it is a intergral part of almost any art.

[SD]

i don't do karate, but i love watching people do their katas. They look like a good form of building stamina, power, accuracy, technique improvment, speed as well as concentration. Kata is a huge part of karate (traditional anyway). And i beleive it should be practiced.

[Mark Groenewold]

Interesting thread.

 

It was quite by coincidence that I wrote an article for my site that follows some of the arguments mentioned so far in this thread.

 

http://karatethejapaneseway.com/articles/karate_sucks.html

 

I had fun writing this one...

 

Cheers to all,

 

Mark Groenewold

 

Kanazawa, Japan

[aes]

Interesting article Mark.

 

I had a talk with Kyoshi at my dojo about this topic of Kata. His strong belief is that Kata creates automatic repsonses where you don't have to think to react etc. Your body will just know what to do. He feels this makes the student a better fighter. There may be other ways of doing this, but for me I enjoy this aspect.

 

I would agree with some of the posts here that maybe some of us have a bit of a masochistic streak in us and enjoy some of the punishment our bodys must undergo to do the traditional training including Katas. I know I enjoy pushing my limits in this respect.

 

I am studying Shorin-Ryu style of Karate btw.

[Mark Groenewold]

Hello aes,

 

And thanks for the nice comment. Glad you liked the article.

 

I have to agree that sometimes there seems to be a division between what kind of karate different people do. Are you a kumite player? Are you a kata specialist? It seems that in some contexts you have to choose one or the other.

 

In my dojo I train a fair bit in kumite, although I am finding that I am slowing down.... ahhhhhh!!! Some "karate types" seems to be ear-marked for kumite rather than kata, and vice versa.

 

So I think that for me, in order to really improve my karate, I need to do more kata. There are a whack of them I have yet to really learn, and then kata outside my own style.

 

The road goes on and on. But it is good travel and the weather is fair.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark Groenewold

 

Kanazawa, Japan