Bunkai question...

[NewLevel]

Hey guys since I'm a newbie to the groove of things in MA, I have some questions.

My local MA class has about 7 people currently. We are focusing now on kihon in the styles we're studying which is Shorin Ryu Karate, Wing Chun, and Kobudo. My Master told me today that he basically, since we have a small group that we will be focusing more on the bunkai area after basics, since he specializes around that area. He said would focus on things in self-defense that work and things that don't work.

He told me we would also be doing kata. Since we have a small group sparring might not be practiced until we get a larger group. He said the traditional approach has everyone do the exact same thing for a period of time. But that method for a small class might not work well, but a larger class..yes. So...

Does it matter if I'm learning how to spar or are the techniques we learn from kihon or kata apply to sparring?

Do Kumite and bunkai differ from school to school since it is up to the instructor to develop them?

Do all dojos in all forms of MA teach self-defense?

Is there a separation between the art of MA and the fighting...or is the art basically training for fighting?

Thanks again!

[JusticeZero]

Does it matter if I'm learning how to spar or are the techniques we learn from kihon or kata apply to sparring?

Well, sparring is just another training method. It is no more 'realistic' than kata, etc; a real fight simply doesn't work like sparring. People who spar a lot focus on a lot of bits of form and such to achieve ends that are silly from a self defense viewpoint. 'here's how to move to close the gap!' if the other guy isn't plowing into you hard, you aren't in a fight, why tweak your techniques to learn how to chase someone who is running way from you? Stuff like that. Sparring works on different things tan forms, but the other stuff is important too. Don't obsess over which ones you use to much, since if you ever have to defend yourself outside of school, probably your first thought will be 'That wasn't anything like sparring!'

Do Kumite and bunkai differ from school to school since it is up to the instructor to develop them?

Probably to some degree... I pull things out of my techniques that had never occurred to my teacher. My students focus more on differen techniques than his students to some degree.

Do all dojos in all forms of MA teach self-defense?

Yes and no. Yes they do, but how effective, how much time they devote to it, and a lot of other factors will vary. I do a lot more self defense than my teacher does, and I study a lot more on the subject than him. On the other hand, there's a lot of things that he was never really able to explain to me well enough, or that I know he knows and hasn't yet taught me fo various reasons usually involving geography and distance.

Is there a separation between the art of MA and the fighting...or is the art basically training for fighting?

Yes and no; your art is training to fight, but since fighting is not the only thing but just one goal, if you really want to learn to fight you're going to need to go after that knowledge on your own. I personally recommend the book Meditations on Violence (Miller 2008) if you want to get some better ideas of what you'll need to do to prepare yourself mentally if that's your focus. It's the one source i've seen that really well defines what a 'street fight' that isn't a bar fight actually IS. (if the story starts 'I was at the bar..', it has NOTHING to do with 'self defense' unless you are actually being paid to be there, and not a bouncer.)

[tallgeese]

True sparring is just another training tool. It should be viewed and valued as such. And no, it does not perfectly mimic a fight but this can be overccome by working with differnt sparring focuses.

I do have to respectively disagree to it's just as realistic or not so than other methods. When done correctly, it trains one much better for a real conflict than do non-resistive methods such as kata and trad one steps.

Based on my experiances, a fight is much more like sparring than any other thing I've used as a training modality, outside of defending agaist armored attackers which should also be included in the mix. It really depends on the type of sparring done and the mentality behind it. Not to say other stuff isn't important, but it's hard to overstate the importance of a fully resitive partner.

Personally, I'm not a kata/bunkai guy. There are plenty of others here who can answer that aspect of your question better, so I'll let them.

As to the last two, I'll kind of group them under the same heading. There should be no seperation between the art and defending ones self and all training should be geared to fighting. The idea of haveing a "self defense" part of class is foreign to me. The whole class should revolve around the idea. However, this is not always the case these days and many people don't even join ma's wanting them to be this way.

The best bet is to see if what you're doing is meeting your needs and realistically addressing the concerns you have.

[bushido_man96]

Ok, here we go, question by question, because I liked JusticeZero's approach....

Does it matter if I'm learning how to spar or are the techniques we learn from kihon or kata apply to sparring?

I think it does matter. Some schools don't spar as much as others. My Aikido club, for example, doesn't spar. However, my TKD school requires sparring as part of higher rank testing requirements.

However, techniques you learn from kihon/kata might have sparring applications, but you have to spar in order to learn to see them. I think after a while, when you do begin sparring, you will see this take place.

Do Kumite and bunkai differ from school to school since it is up to the instructor to develop them?

They might differ from school to school, and definitely can from style to style. In my TKD, we don't do any kind of bunkai (although I have found resources for it). I think instructors do develop their own (I know of one experiments constantly with them), and sometimes there will be bunkai handed down, that makes a good base to start with. Eventually, you may develop bunkai that your instructor did not.

Do all dojos in all forms of MA teach self-defense?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. My TKD school mentions "self-defense" in its flyers, ads, and tag lines, but we don't do a lot of rote self-defense work. It could be that my instructor expects the students to develop good self-defense skills through basics, one-steps, etc., but that isn't a guarantee.

Is there a separation between the art of MA and the fighting...or is the art basically training for fighting?

Anymore, there is a seperation. Some arts have more of a SD focus than others. Many times, the sparring training, although it can have some SD cross-over benefits, is usually done with a rule set established for competition purposes. JusticeZero put forth some good information in his post on the subject.