Forms/Kata/Poomse/Sets...How much is too much?

[kchenault]

I never thought of it that way. I too like forms and could use the extra practice time. That would be a good concept for my school, forms class to perfect our forms! Hmmmmm.....

[karatekid1975]

My Tang Soo Do dojang used to split everything up evenly. We do forms, at least twice a week. We do self defense twice a week (usually on thursdays and fridays .... they were my fav classes), and sparring and one steps twice a week. Our classes were and hour and fifteen minutes. The extra fifteen minutes was for warming up. Then he split the classes up. We would do forms for 15 minutes to a half hour (depending on how many students and/or ranks). Then we do self defense, and maybe spar at the end of class. Or we do self defense, one steps, and something else. It depended on the instructors mood LOL. But he mixed it up pretty good, so we'd get a chance to do everything twice a week.

[LeaF]

Through my expirence, it is best not to devote any classes fully to one thing. I prefer to spend the classes doing a few different things. At my school we have separate specialized classes that are separate from our regular class ie sparring class and kata class. This offers time to pratice specfic things and doesn't mess up normal class, also this is not to say that we do not spar and pratice kata in normal class, we do but this gives us the opertunity to do it on a weekly basis, for a fair amount of time

[KickChick]

As you can see by our class curriculum calendar .... we sometimes devote a major part of a class to a certain instruction. But as of this month all classes (white belt to brown) will include forms and sparring.

 

http://www.aitkd.com/2/calendarcurriculum.htm

[BKJ1216]

I think I"m going to enjoy sparring more than kata. I'll probably spend a lot of time at home practicing kata.

[ZeRo]

i would say that 4 out of 5 times is abit to much. 2 out of 5 or just abit every lesson would be better IMO

[karatekid1975]

I'm not a fan of sparring, so I'd rather do forms LOL. Or like this past week, we did breaking woooohoooo!!!!

[G95champ]

We do kata almost everyday. Some days more some days less.

 

Kata is a nice mix of basics and sparring. So you do get both while doing it. However it can not replace either one.

 

We usually only spar say one class out of 10 with the lower ranks only because they have not picked up enough control and techinques. In other words its to eaisy to get someone hurt before they know what they are doing. In our advanced classes we spar more often but still prob. not as much as we should.

 

I don't know that I can put % on a breakdown cause it just depends. I will spar more when certin people are not in class and less when they are. Meaing older people don't like to spar as much as younger ones do. I still think Kata is the backbone of karate and it has to be the focus of all training.

 

Funakoshi set up the pyrmid where basics were the bases, Kata was the middle and sparring was only at the main top. So it takes less but it is the focal point of MA.

[ZeRo]

I'm not a fan of sparring, so I'd rather do forms LOL. Or like this past week, we did breaking woooohoooo!!!!

 

yeah im not the biggest fan of sparring either. but breaking i love.

[karatekid1975]

It was so much fun. My dojang has breaking week every year (around march). I want to go to class this morning, since I didn't get my butt outta bed for Judo. It's the last day of breaking.