Martial Arts that have no katas

[bushido_man96]

"You must achieve formlessness".....

The formation of formless sensation...

The aquiring of Deformation through formationlessness.......

HAHA, beat that one!

[baronbvp]

Form...oh, heck. You win!

[bushido_man96]

Form...oh, heck. You win!

VICTORY!!!!!!

[yingampyang]

I've been wanting to start a martial art for awhile and I'm going to join some people on my school's campus in doing BJJ. I'm interested in grappling arts but don't know any place near school that offers them (at a reasonable price) and next summer I'm planning to do Judo through the park district that I live in when I'm at my mom's house. I'd also like to do submission/grappling contests eventually. I also want to be a well rounded fighter so I can defend myself if need be.

Here's the problem. I have issues with katas, I just want to learn striking without having to memorize katas (I have memory impairment issues too but I'm not sure how that will affect my martial arts training). As far as I know there aren't many striking arts that don't have katas, and they aren't all just striking. From what I know there is: boxing/western kickboxing/muay thai, krav maga, pankration, and that's all I know.

Can you all recommend a striking art (or combined art) for me? Thanks.

You could add some more free styles , like capodiea , or western boxing. But as far as no kata's thats somthing you have top get over because you need kata's to really absorb the content.

[bushido_man96]

You could add some more free styles , like capodiea , or western boxing. But as far as no kata's thats somthing you have top get over because you need kata's to really absorb the content.

I don't agree here. There are many different ways to absorb the content of Martial Arts. Kata is one way. Applications and drills are another.

[baronbvp]

Figure out the focus of the school, your overall training philosophy. Then you decide details like which arts, kata or no kata, training spaces and equipment, etc.

[sangngak]

Kata are a means of practicing when you are alone. When I entered Karate in the 50's, we did the Kata, but then we also do the "shadow" form. By that I mean look at the moves in a kata. Each one has you reacting (or acting) to an attack. So we'd learn the "attack" side of the kata. Then we could do a solo kata, or a solo "attack" kata or a two man kata. We actually learned a lot from this. When doing it solo, we visualized the opponent and we re-acted to his moves. IF you do this you keep getting faster and faster as you can visualize the opponent getting faster and faster.

Today, kata are disassociated from combat. What we did was to practice each move in the kata (turns included) until we could do them as one-step sparring, and do them very fast, with power. When we began to learn jiyu kumite (Free Fight) we were made to do it using our correct stances and moves as in the kata. When we could do this, THEN we could move in a free manner.

Today I see people do one thing in kata, another thing in one-step sparring and then free fighting contains nothing of what they had been learning.