Poor bunkai

[Ueshirokarate]

Anyone else tired of the plethora of poor, impractical and completely unrealistic bunkai on youtube? I think it really makes karate look somewhat ridiculous.

[ShoriKid]

Like the old eight attackers with the kata performer in the center? Low block, pivot 180 degrees, low block, single reverse punch to the solar plexus etc., etc. Or just the really bad application? Or both? I've seen both and they both kill me.

There is some good stuff out there on youtube, but you have to wade through mountains of video to get to it.

[scohen.mma]

hey i've noticed that! seeing stuff liek that on youtube BEFORE i actually started Karate made me think "ha, wow. i'm glad i dont do that."

Now i look at some of that stuff and just think of some of the stuff i've learned in class on my own. I hope more people actually TRY Karate before judging it based on those videos.

however, i'm assuming that some of those videos are just giving you an IDEA of what a Bunkai could be like, but not actuallly doing teh Bunkai's that they do in their real classes. thats just an opinion though

[Martial Walrus]

It's even worse if you're trying to find applications for Taekwondo forms, you're lucky to find a single video on it. There just aren't a lot of people in Korean styles interested in actually understanding forms. The next best option is to look at Shotokan bunkai, since the forms are so similar. Of course, you do run into a lot of the very simplistic, unrealistic bunkai.

I think the "fighting eight men" approach to demonstrating bunkai gives people the wrong impression. Kata don't teach you to fight eight people at once. It teaches you to fight one person in a number of different ways. You turn so you don't run into the wall, not to face a new opponent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz2sS8MwLh8

I found these guys on youtube, their bunkai is by far the best I have seen. Very detailed and realistic. They also show multiple applications for each technique.

[ShoriKid]

Okay, no to defend the old literal "bunkai", but there is a reason it's done. Well, a couple of reasons really. There are those who are showing the literal application because that's what you show the world. Other application is to be shown behind closed doors. Then there are those showing that application because that's what they were shown and were told that's it, there is no other application.

A more Westernized approach is to share more openly, that hiding behind closed doors is pointless. Now, some of what is shared is questionable. It may be due to the starting point where the person sharing hasn't got a good grasp on physical fundamentals of movement. Or, they are trying to find meaning, grasping intuitively that there has to be more to kata than just walking through the motions. But, they didn't have any guidance before hand to start them down the road to good application.

Also remember with youtube, it's youtube! It's people doing stupid stuff, cat videos, cute babies doing cute stuff and a whole lot of garbage.

[Ueshirokarate]

Mostly, there are no bad "applications" in other forms of martial arts on youtube. Bad bunkai in my opinion is purely due to the history of karate. Think about it. GIs from the Allies who just beat Japan in a war were being taught karate by those they just defeated. They were shown Mickey Mouse karate in many cases, intermediate karate at best. They took this incomplete understanding of karate back to the US, the UK and other countries and then their students opened schools, etc. It is only in recent years that most have started to understand true applications of karate. That doesn't mean I can't laugh at absurd applications I see, especially when they are being shown by obviously physically unfit instructors.

[Montana]

Mostly, there are no bad "applications" in other forms of martial arts on youtube. Bad bunkai in my opinion is purely due to the history of karate. Think about it. GIs from the Allies who just beat Japan in a war were being taught karate by those they just defeated. They were shown Mickey Mouse karate in many cases, intermediate karate at best. They took this incomplete understanding of karate back to the US, the UK and other countries and then their students opened schools, etc. It is only in recent years that most have started to understand true applications of karate. That doesn't mean I can't laugh at absurd applications I see, especially when they are being shown by obviously physically unfit instructors.

This is true. Most Okinawan masters taught a watered down version of karate to the GI's in the 1940's-60's because the GI's were in Okinawan for usually 18 months or so then were redeployed usually back to the states. It wasn't really until the late 60's or 70's that the masters saw that Americans were really serious about their karate training when they started coming back to Okinawa to train, and the masters started giving American karate-ka more detailed and indepth training.

That, and wounds and bad feelings from the war were fading and not so vivid in the Okinawan's minds.

[Cayuga Karate]

I have significant doubts that when the current group of karate schools (styles, systems, etc) came into existence between 1900 and 1950, that there was meaningful empty hand bunkai taught for the vast majority of kata sequences.

I am not arguing that no bunkai was taught. Nor am I arguing that all bunkai taught is ineffective. On the contrary, I strongly believe that many schools have passed down meaningful applications for some number of movements from their kata. However, I find it difficult to overlook the remarkable disconnect between kata and application in virtually all karate schools today. What I mean by this is that while there may be some good application for some movements, most of the sequences of kata are just completely overlooked. What we often find is that there is really quite a large percentage of kata sequences that either are not practiced with application, or the applications simply don't map to the way fighting typically unfolds. It's poor bunkai. When we do find good applications, we also often find that they include only a small piece of the actual kata. Or we find that the application is quite different than the movements in the kata. Good bunkai often requires signficant changes and additions.

It's my opinion that across a broad range of bunkai practiced in traditional karate schools, there are all sorts of deficiencies. One doesn't have to look much further than the standard "attack" to observe a fundamental disconnect between kata application and the way way humans generally fight. As any MMA student with the most limited of training can recognize, attackers don't charge in and freeze in fixed (often long) stances with a hand at the hip, and a strike to the torso (aka solar plexus). Any fighter, with the most mimimal of training, would likely not step forward in a long stance, but rather instead choose to shuffle forward with his feet under him. He would likely not freeze in place with one arm out, but choose instead to be be mobile, and retract an arm immediately after striking. He would likely not choose to have the heel of his rear foot firmly on the ground but choose instead to have his weight on the ball of his foot, enhancing his mobility. He would likely not keep one hand on his hip but choose instead to protect his head with it. He would likely not punch to the torso, but choose instead to attack the head and neck. He would likely not limit his attack to a single strike, but rather choose instead to have second and third strike combinations ready to be thrown in an instant.

Plain and simple, if one is training to deal with realistic attacks, the standard "karate" attack doesn't fit the requirements all that well. If the ultimate goal of a specific "bunkai" (application) is to improve self-defense, then we should all recognize that to a significant degree, bunkai designed for single torso strike lunge punches are designed to defend against a very unlikely attack. Many would agree that this may not be optimal training for self defense.

Now I am not arguing that karate systems should throw out the old applications, the old ways of training, simply because they don't map to modern fighting. Instructors have many options in how to effectively train their students. In considering bad bunkai, and unlikely attacks, we should also consider the benefits of training with these lunge strikes. I would argue that while the benefit to fighting may be debatable, the benefit to training is clear. A key aspect of this strike is the combination of its power with its predictability. The very nature of this predictability can play an important role in any teacher's effort to reduce injuries. Students can practice these strikes and the defenses against them with enormous intensity, (speed and power), without risking serious injury. If you have large numbers of students, without protective headgear, and choose to have them regularly throw full power, full speed hooks at their partners' heads, you shouldn't be surprised when a serious injury occurs.

I argue that we should recognize the benefits of this kind of practice. But I also argue that we should all recognize that these lunge punch movements, and many of the bunkai applications used against them are not modeled on the way fighting actually occurs. And perhaps most important, I argue that we all should recognize that effective training designed to prepare students for actual fighting requires students to train against more realistic attacks. It's not that training against lunge punches is not optimal. It's that training extensively against lunge punches to the torso, without corresponding training against more realistic attacks is simply not an very effective way to train for self defense.

I would be remiss if I didn't share my thoughts on odd way in which some defend this whole concept of poor bunkai. It's a surprisingly prevalent attitude. You have likely read it on this forum.

Many will argue that it is up to the student to develop his own bunkai. In this alternate universe, the teacher provides the basics, the principles, and the kata, and the student applies the basics and principles himself, to the kata. Bunkai is a task done by the student, not the teacher.

I have had the great fortune to have had exposure to a great range of systems in my 36 years in the arts including: a wide range of karate systems, a smattering of Chinese systems, PMA, Indonesian arts, Muay Thai, Japanese grappling arts (judo, jujitsu, aikido, aikijutsu), Western boxing, kendo, naginata and fencing.

And in my 54 years of living, I have had the opportunity to observe numerous kinds of physical human activities that include instruction and training, in all sorts of sports, music, dance, arts, cooking, etc.

And what I have found only rarely is this concept of:

"It's the teacher's job to show the student X (kata) and Y (basics/principles) and it's the student's job to figure out how to put the two together."

That's not to say that there is not a concept of creativity in much of what we do. But when a beginner with no experience is shown kata, after kata, in often incredible detail. And then the student is told that he can use these motions to protect himself against a vicious attack from a large aggressive attacker, but it is up to the student, not the teacher, to figure out how to do it.

In other fighting arts, this is just about unheard of. Now that is, in large part, because so many fighting systems, outside of Chinese and Okinawan systems, don't have long complex kata. Where kata exists (Judo, Aikido, Kendo, Iaido), they are often short and often appear, even to the novice, to have an obvious and direct translation to application. And this is often the case. The two (kata and application) go hand in hand, from the beginning.

This just isn't so with the old Chinese kata practiced in karate where in many schools, the practice of kata is fundamentally divorced from the practice of useful application. Students are expected to train in a kata for years before "earning" the priviledge of being shown application.

I don't expect to change anyone's mind with this post, but if I were able to get someone to reconsider something they have seen or learned, this would be it. It is very strange to expect students to be given very detailed instruction on each specific movement in a kata. But when it comes to the often very complex way in which those movements can be used for self-defense, combinations that might help save their lives, that, they are supposed to figure out for themselves. This whole notion is just bizarre.

I think that when we find instructors that teach this concept, we should anticipate that they may do so, in part, out of simple ignorance. Instructors often want to appear to students as authorities in their arts. And as a result there can be a reluctance to admit what they don't know. What is a teacher to do, when after coming up in a system that didn't teach much bunkai, is asked by a student what a movement could be used for? Perhaps there are responses that gracefully deflect the question. One Oyata student has written "when I ask my teacher what a movemnent means, he often says "what do you think?"" One of Itosu's students, Gusukuma (Shiroma) is said to have taught that some movements have no meaning. Itosu himself wrote in one of his ten lessons of tote (in one translation) that students themselves must figure out which movements are for improved health (qigong-like) and which are for fighting.

I would argue that we should consider that this entire challenge of poor bunkai is not some new development. Rather we should consider that the poor bunkai (or absence of bunkai) that we see today is either reflective of what came before, or perhaps even an improvement. Students weren't taught applications, and in the absence of such instruction, they have tried to do the best they could do, taking basics, applying them to kata, and often coming up with what today we call poor bunkai.

When looking for explanations for poor bunkai, this, I believe is the root of the problem.

There is another aspect of this problem. There is a school of thought that there really is this great bunkai, but it is secret, and available only to those that train a really long time. This argument is used to support the notion that the Okinawans didn't teach the Japanese the old secrets, and both the Okinawans and the Japanese certainly didn't teach the American invaders the "good stuff".

I imagine there is some truth to this, that there are some movements in kata that have applications that were passed down, and you have to earn those. But I also expect mostly that this is just a canard. It's just so remarkably easy to say, "Oh, we have bunkai in our system, but it is secret and I can't show you."

Discussions like this hit a wall. I say "I don't believe you have a meaningful application for sequence X in kata Y. You respond "I do but I can't show you. It's just unfortunate that my teacher doesn't permit this, because I could prove you are wrong."

I doubt it. I argue, as I stated above, that many systems have some reasonably effective bunkai for some movements for some kata, and maybe even a kata or two where they have pretty complete bunkai. But when you look at all of their kata, many sequences, probably most, will have either no bunkai or poor bunkai.

Those who have read some of my other posts might recognize that I am not bashing kata as being of limited value. Kata practice is my life's work, so please don't think I am criticizing kata.

Rather, the reason I argue there is so much bad bunkai is a natural extension to my argument that kata probably weren't designed for empty hand fighting. If I am correct and that is the case, I argue that we should be very grateful that at least some kata sequences lend themselves so readily to effective empty hand fighting. (Good bunkai)

Once more of us begin to accept the notion that bunkai may not have been handed down with the kata, we can consider the potential reasons. If we explore the assumption that maybe it is because there never really was any, then maybe, just maybe, some of us might choose to begin to reconsider the answer to the question that I see at the very core of this issue.

Why did Chinese military personnel hand down these kata to the Okinawans?

We can update that question with the following addition:

such that 150-200 (and more) years later, applications for these kata would routinely be practiced that had no real relation to empty hand self defense.

[Ueshirokarate]

I am pretty sure that Itosu and his peers knew every aspect of the katas they worked, inside and out and could fight with them.

[shadowspawn]

I was always under the impression that the turning was merely a simulation for an attack from the rear. ie.

You turn and do techniques A and B: That is one scenario where opponent approaches from left.

You do a 180 and do techniques A, C, and B: That is another scenario where opponent approaches from rear.

You turn and do Technique A and technique D 3 times: That is 2 scenarios with the first being an attack from the left and another an attack from the front.

There are some kata that do string together though so I'm not saying that every time you turn it's a different scenario. Just that I feel any one kata was meant more to prepare you for as many different scenarios as possible by meshing together a web of ippon kumite-like drills into one continuous flow of movement. In a sense, all you would need is one kata mastered and you should be able to defend yourself.