Step by Step we move Forward

 

 

 

At times I think I came from a different age. When I studied Isshinryu there were not application studies of kata technique. Only the most general explanations were given for unusual kata technique. But it was very powerful karate, just using a different paradigm than most talk about today.

 

I never really wanted to change the nature of the way I address Isshinryu, but too soon after ShoDan I was alone, with no others to continue my Isshinryu in the manner in which I was taught. I began to have thoughts about what kata technique might be used for in the study of my karate, and thus my journey began.

 

For the next few years I trained with many people, learned more than a few things, throwing myself into teaching kids and also my studies with friends. That study included many arts, none of which I mastered. But the most valuable thing I learned was what potential could lie within my karate technique.

 

Then the work began.

 

I realized the most powerful tool we have is to be unpredictable to our opponent, never letting them anticipate what was coming. And that works whether we had but 1 technique or 1,000,000 techniques. It was not the number but skill in execution that was what was important.

 

This was before I heard of the term bunkai, well remembering when others began to use the term. I do not have the energy to comment on what other do, but perhaps because of the way I was originally trained, chose not to use the term as I do not speak Japanese. From one friend I had an extremely unique definition (the only one I ever accepted because I learned his explanation before others began using the term. But while I came to understand how he used it, I was not truly trained in that tradition. Instead I gradually came to realize what I was talking about was just kata application potential. First as analysis, then as application realization, a much vaster study.

 

Eventually I incorporated concepts I worked out or observed in action with other instructors that made sense to me.

 

As I was taught kata application study when I learned Isshinryu, that also made sense when I saw a program that incorporated decades of kata application study which only began as a black belt. The idea there was there were far more important things for the kyu to work on, such as learning kata, developing power, speed and skill of execution.

That always made sense to me, and that was where I started.

 

However nothing was hidden from any student ever. All of them from day one was shown that each movement they were studying could be used in many different ways, all of them requiring skill to be developed. For example the beginner would be shown how to strike with one fist while chambering the other. Then it would be explained when still was developed that technique was a much a strike to the front, as a rear elbow strike driven behind them from the chambering hand. And at every level of kyu study they observed more and more examples of what dan study would be doing, just not doing so yet, rather other more important things to study.

 

Developing the student ability for unpredictable response did not mean learning hundreds of applications for kata movement. Instead they are introduced to a small number of techniques at varying belt levels, All to be prepared for black belt initiation and ready for greater study down the road. But even though a small number that still led to unpredictability too.

 

Never at the expense of the Isshinryu that I studied, more thought of as additional studies.

 

At white belt 6 striking studies. At yellow belt 6 kicking studies

At blue belt a range of grab defenses, many were shown but the dan requirement was to be able to really free themselves if grabbed a wide variety of ways.

At green and brown belt there are studies in 10 aikido/karate responses to a variety of attacks.

 

Then at Shodan the study of what kata application potential really represents begining.  Dan study is not just more kata, though there are more kata (karate and kobudo).

 

First there are about 100 kata application studies for just one technique from the beginning of Seisan kata.

 

That alone makes an opponent not know how you can respond. But that is not the main purpose of the study.

 

Rather it is to grasp the underlying principles behind kata application potential study, to more understand how a technique can really be used. And another thing they now begin to realize that kata application realization is a much vaster study than grasping the potential, for you really have to learn how to make that potential really work against committed attacks. Of course it never ends, but in time more and more becomes clearer.

 

After that initial study the real work begins. No longer structured on a single movement, the dan now beging a wide ranging study among all the kata they have studied. More and more and still more seeing how those principles apply to more and more kata. In a very real sense that begins decades of study, of technique potential and of technique realization.

 

Now you might say’Why does one need so many studies ?’ A far smaller study is more than enough to present yourself as being unpredictable. Yet that is not the goal, to understand thousands and thousands of potential applications.

 

For one thing as the year pass, it keeps ones mind occupied to continue study. One discards older studies, into memory, and makes new choices how one would respond to an opponent’s attack, it keeps one from getting stale.

 

But the movement through your time is not to accumulate answers, rather to become deeper and deeper into the principles after working so many studies. To get to the point you favor no technique whatever. Rather to learn how to use each and every movement from all of your kata and then insert that technique into any attack at all and destroy that attack.

 

Man attacks then see man fall down and go boom!