Kihon kata of karate

[EJC]

Personally? I think Taikyokus are a waste. Everything in the Taikyoku series is captured in the Pinan/Heian series.

I've done away with the Fukyugata and Pinan series. Neither adds anything to the practice. I start with (Matsubayashi) Ananku for everyone to teach the basics, then the kata taught are personalized to each student

[aurik]

Sure, kata could be added, or the kata you have could be honed and trained on more. If kata are going to be added, there should be a pretty good reason for adding them, aside from just adding more curriculum.

I have studied other styles in the past, including Shuri-Ryu, where at each rank you are expected to learn 1 or 2 new kata. And in class you generally ONLY practice that rank kata. When you get to dan levels, you have a LOT of kata to practice and remain current on. One of the things I've learned to appreciate about Uechi-Ryu is that there are only 8 kata in the entire system. We practice Sanchin at the beginning of almost every class. That leaves 7 kata. When we do kata in class, we can practice all of the kata in the system in about 10-15 minutes, depending on how many advanced students are in the class. If we don't have any students above shodan, that's only 5 kata.

One of the fundamentals that our CI drills into us as we advance through the ranks is that as you gain experience, you will learn a new kata which teaches some new fundamental technique. For example, at shodan you start learning the kata Seiryu. The ending technique for Seiryu involves a wa-uke (double circular block/double boshiken strike sequence) in which you start the first circular block, and once that first block gets to a certain point, THEN you step forward to complete the technique. I had watched a number of videos on this, and most of them show the technique done subtly differently; for example, Kansho Uechi

and the technique in question is at about the 0:57 mark. My CI indicated that that's okay... if you are learning the kata, but as you are getting ready to test for nidan, you should be doing the kata the way he indicated.

So as your understanding improves, you are then expected to take these techniques and push them back into your earlier kata. So we do this same wa-uke sequence in Sanchin, Kanshiwa (required for 9th kyu) and Kanshu (required for 6th kyu). So as your understanding improves, the way you perform even your beginner level kata should change to reflect that new knowledge.

[bushido_man96]

I think that's an awesome approach.