I found an older comment on Hidden Techniques in my private Principles file

Interesting topic: hidden techniques. Of course it depends on what you mean by hidden techniques. What are hidden for some are openly taught by other system, provided of course you were taught them.

 

1.   I am sure there are explanations which were not shared at times. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there, just not shared.

2.   Or there were systems where techniques were shared at various levels of training. Until you reached those levels those techniques were not shared. Such as at 20 years of training. The need for those techniques may well have not been needed, except in the past, so no reason to study them. Want is not necessity, one can teach as one chooses.

3.   Another tradition was planned extra movements between the kata sections. This was shown by the writings of Shiroma Shimpan and Mutsu.

4.   Other traditions did not share but the most basic applications, and you were encouraged to discover your own, but under the eyes of the instructor to guide them.

5.   Itoman shared many applications from Toude, which fit many of today’s karate traditions.

6.   There are family traditions which teach applications only after Black Belt.And those applications have nothing to do with the kata. Those are training tools, and the movement points are mnemonic devices to remember the actual techniques.

7.   Or you can define a technique as you will from a kata, and seek the skill to find each possible application there and develop the skill to make them work.  One of my Isshinryu instructors, Sherman Harrill, spent 40 years working makiwara so that each strike could,drop anyone no matter where he struck, and along the way shared 800 applications for the 8 kata of Isshinryu, and I only had a piece of his studies and work.

 

Whether there are instructor favorite applications, of course theoretically all you need in one movement, and the time to deliver it with skill to enter the attack and make it work. Of course that is the true secret of any technique.

 

Or perhaps you have two techniques, and then no one knows which you are to use.

 

I have a simple answer, any techniques which works is  real. If it drops an opponent it qualifies.

 

I have experienced several of these answers, enough to know that each of them can work.

 

A system or practitioner may or may not share as they choose. They are under no obligation to provide you with answers.

 

For myself the past several months I have been working on the use of a kamae found in the Isshinryu SunNuSu (Sunsu) kata. Having realized ago that kamae tend to be most viscous when fit into an attack.

 

Are there Hidden Techniques”? Depends on what you define hidden to mean. Be sure you don’t confuse the question with understand the meaning of a movement, with the different task developing the skill to effectively use that meaning.