Kata Footwork "Modification"

[Wastelander]

I'm curious as to how many of you change your footwork in kata training, in order to further your understanding of the kata, its applications, and variants of those applications. My Sensei and I occasionally work Naihanchi, in particular, with different footwork than normal--we still transition to kosa-dachi (cross stance) and then Naihanchi-dachi, as the kata says to do, but we get to those positions differently. We aren't actually changing the kata, but we are exploring it in a different way than normal. Here are two kind of awkward examples I recorded a couple weeks ago (sorry for the poor video quality; I used a smartphone):

[sensei8]

We change our footwork all of the time because it's a part of Oyo.

You did all of the filming on your smartphone? And your editing too? I've no excuse to not do my own!!

Your two videos have created two new kata's...very nice!!

[bushido_man96]

Interesting, with the turns, especially the use of the cross step to uncork the body to face behind. Its a nice twist, pardon the pun, but it looked smooth and natural.

This one seemed a bit more awkward to me. Why is the sabaki in the spots that you show?

Have you also been using these changes in any applications? I'd be interested to see those. Thanks for sharing the videos with us, I think its a very cool idea.

[Harkon72]

If you do this, it becomes a variation of the kata, that's all. The Bunkai is yours, of course.

We call the Kata Tekki Shodan, it's the same but the stance is deeper; this JKA karateka demonstrates a similar form to the way my Sensei was taught it.

http://youtu.be/f9Pa-JRpY5c

[Nidan Melbourne]

We often change the footwork to further our understanding of the kata. But it doesn't change the dojo version that we do.

It is a lot of fun and very interesting way to do it. Say seeiunchin where there is a lot of shikodachi we will change that to say zenkutsu dachi.

[Wastelander]

sensei8 - Haha, well, I recorded it on an old iPhone 4S, so the quality isn't great. The editing I did in Sony Movie Studio 12.

This one seemed a bit more awkward to me. Why is the sabaki in the spots that you show?

Have you also been using these changes in any applications? I'd be interested to see those. Thanks for sharing the videos with us, I think its a very cool idea.

I haven't been doing that exercise as long as I've been doing the mawashi exercise, but I actually like it more. The basic idea is that your attacker is coming from straight in front of you, wherever you happen to be standing. Essentially, we've simply turned Naihanchi at every step into kosa-dachi, so that you enter side-on into your opponent's attack.

We do work applications that use that exact footwork. In fact, it's actually the primary entry used by KishimotoDi for all of its Naihanchi applications. For simplicity, I only let my body lean forward as I moved, but different applications will have you lean differently, or not lean at all. We also work applications that use the mawashi footwork--usually joint dislocations and throws.

[Lupin1]

We've done the turning Naihanchi before. We've also done spinning crescent kick Naihanchi where every step is a spinning crescent kick. I've also seen our resident TKD Yondan do jump spinning crescent kick Naihanchi.

[RAM18]

Nice use of stances...

The other thing that struck me is how different Nihanchi is in my Wado Ryu style. Our kata is purely lateral so not sure if different stances would be as effective?

[Wastelander]

RAM18 - Your version isn't all that different--I'm just doing all three Naihanchi strung together. Our Naihanchi is also completely lateral:

[Zaine]

I often change the kata that I learned in Shorin Ryu to be more Kung Fu oriented by utilizing the deep stances in Kung Fu with the movements and patterns in the kata. It's interesting to see the way that the power generates when changing stances and how it affects the techniques that I perform.