Kitchen Kata!?!

[Dobbersky]

All

Just wondering if anyone has the same mindset as I do.

I always practice my Kata before I go to Bed every night, all 16 kata twice and 4 times for the more senior kata.

This I suppose is not much of an issue but I find that the best place to practice is in the Kitchen! Ok my kitchen is not huge, I can't do any spinning round kicks or head kicks due to the space available but I compensate by changing them to shin or thigh kicks.

So does anyone else practice their Kata in the Kitchen or any other room in the house or is it just me.

thanks

[sensei8]

At home; only in the garage or my wife will KILL me!

[brickshooter]

After a nasty incident with the kettle, I now do only the Tekkis in the kitchen.

[Dobbersky]

It takes about 1 hour to do all the kata properly, I get a good sweat on too. so burning calories too.

I have to wait for my Baby Son to wake up for his feed so rather than going asleep then waking up an hour or so later I just do kata whilst I'm waiting.

To add, does anyone find that they tend to do things in a "karate" type way, like opening doors with an empi/hiji tsuki (elbow strike) or doing a kata whilst stood waiting for the kettle to boil?

I'll make sure I wont do any extravagent techniques where the kettle is though lol

[Lupin1]

I find the kitchen has a lot of room, too, although I have a spare room in my house that is completely empty that I've sort of turned into my personal "dojo". It's a little small, so I still need to motify some of the kata with lots of huge stepping, but for most of them it's perfect. Other than that, I usually do different kata in different rooms depending on what kind of space I need for the way the kata moves.

[Jeffrey]

Thought you might this interesting..

http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/kitchen-kata#comment-826

[sperki]

I usually only practice the handful of kata that I'm learning or learned recently. And I'll do them in the kitchen, or the bedroom or anywhere else. Often it means I can't take all of the correct steps/leaps/spins, but I'll take a step back in the middle or visualize a jump and make a small leap just to help me commit the movements to memory. My wife got a little mad when I accidentally punched the wall. I wasn't going hard and there wasn't any damage, but she thought I was going to punch a hole in the drywall.

[Sokusen]

Several posters have mentioned needing room to do there kata at home. I say leave that for the dojo. When at home try doing your kata in a neutral stance without moving your legs, i.e. no stepping no turning only arm movements and kicks. You will find very quickly how poorly you know your kata! It is amazing how we rely on certain movements to remind us what comes next in the kata.

[Lupin1]

Several posters have mentioned needing room to do there kata at home. I say leave that for the dojo. When at home try doing your kata in a neutral stance without moving your legs, i.e. no stepping no turning only arm movements and kicks. You will find very quickly how poorly you know your kata! It is amazing how we rely on certain movements to remind us what comes next in the kata.

Haha. My instructor had us try that once just for us to see exactly how poorly we knew the kata. I thought it was funny that I, the lowest ranking in the class, was the best at it-- probably because the others have gotten so used to the kata they don't think about them much while I still need to think about each move. It is very hard.

And for the more advanced (my instructor wouldn't even let me try this)-- try doing the kata backwards.

[KarateGeorge]

Several posters have mentioned needing room to do there kata at home. I say leave that for the dojo. When at home try doing your kata in a neutral stance without moving your legs, i.e. no stepping no turning only arm movements and kicks. You will find very quickly how poorly you know your kata! It is amazing how we rely on certain movements to remind us what comes next in the kata.

Haha. My instructor had us try that once just for us to see exactly how poorly we knew the kata. I thought it was funny that I, the lowest ranking in the class, was the best at it-- probably because the others have gotten so used to the kata they don't think about them much while I still need to think about each move. It is very hard.

And for the more advanced (my instructor wouldn't even let me try this)-- try doing the kata backwards.

Another great way to learn just how well you know your kata is to mentally get rid of the four walls of the room, and just face a random direction. It can throw you off at first, but it gets rid of the reliance of the walls and allows you to perform the kata no matter how you're oriented.

As for practicing at home, I find the best place for me to do katas is in my living room. Its nice and roomy there. All I have to do is slide my coffee table out of the middle of the room and I have plenty of space.