Introduction

The Purpose of this Book

This is not a bunkai book. It is not filled with lists of techniques, possible scenarios for use of kata, strategy or tactics even though there is a little of the latter. It is not about the outward expressions of kata that we see demonstrated every day. The almost infinite expressions of movement that people have attributed to be the meaning of kata. This book is about the fundamental essence and quality of kata. It is about putting into words in a concrete and usable manner how we can use kata as a tool for physical violence, how we can transcend the idea of technique lists and use the kata for what it was intended for, as a system. A system that is so simple and easy that with a little bit of understanding and a whole lot of training, but less than most we can use any kata we choose as the foundation for a fighting system that we can use so naturally and intuitively that we can use it as comfortably as using our birth language to speak to a friend. A way of looking at karate kata in a way that will not hamper instinct, reaction, or application through complicated scenario based learning where we match a specific technique to a specific reactionary stimulus. A way for us to use kata for the real world.

It's through this book that I hope people will gain a better understanding of their karate kata, and provide a vehicle and a guide for learning and practicing karate all on ones own.


Studying a single kata is about ingraining a mental cognitive process as much as it is about practicing martial movement. Practicing the kata, studying and understanding its component parts and how it's applied is an internal process that cannot be replicated with empty repetition or scripted drills. I cannot give you understanding. I can only point you in the right direction and help you to analyze and attend to each subsequent part and piece of a single kata practice. It involves an intense focus on the self. Each person and kata are different, so it is ultimately up to you. there is no cookie cutter set of tips and tricks. what follows will be the aspects of each level, thought exercises and different ways to practice and train, but this does not mean you should limit your practice and study to this book, it is a starting point. This book will be broken up by level of complexity. Each part takes thought and focus and knowing doesn't mean it is internalized below the conscious level. You must attend to each part and diligently think, explore and experiment until even the cognitive process becomes unconscious. No part is mutually exclusive or can be separated from the whole. It is all connected so all should be looked at as a whole and individually. Each component checked, rechecked and checked again until it becomes natural and easy. Read the entire book then go back and explore your practice with the ideas from each section. Feel free to skip around, but each subsequent part is only as strong as the preceding part like links of a chain. It‘s only as strong as the weakest link. Be patient, practice and play.

If you are trying to pick out a definitive list of techniques based on specific scenarios than it will take you an infinity of time to unlock a kata. Regardless of what a kata was, we only have what a kata is today. It is better to learn a kata's mechanics and how we can apply them to technique, tactics, and strategy. we need to let our study effect our kata as much as kata effects our study.

Movement to strategy and strategy to movement is not a one way street. Each effects the other.

You will change as you learn, so it is important to go back and reevaluate all aspects of your kata as you squire new knowledge and information.

the Harder Road

The path of a single kata starts narrow, but opens up into the infinity of possibility. It is the harder path, but the more rewarding path. It doesn't foster discipline, confidence, fortitude, or deep thought. It requires them. If you need a detailed map or set of instructions like putting together a new appliance you will fail. If you need to be constantly, motivated by the carrot and the stick than you will fail. If you require the outward signs of martil prowess, or the perception of prowess through rank, belts and costumes than you will fail. It will only give you as much as you put in and no amount of mindless drilling, borrowed bunkai, or tricky techniques will lead you to understanding. Po unlock the full potential of a single kata requires mental energy, careful self study and creative yet methodical practice. You will go from confusion, to knowing to understanding to simply being. A kata will not merely be a routine of purposeless movement, it will be a permanent part of you. It will seep deep down inside and you will not oe able to tell where one begins and the other ends. You will transcend thought, you will transcend technique, you will transcend kata.

Solo kata practice starts in the mind and ends in the mind. ihe abstract nature of kata practice requires thought, deep thought and attention to detail. Lhese are rental nechanics, which cannot be directly observable by the spectator. No amount of scripted drilling, repetition or kata practice will have any value if there is not a willingness to think and study the movements. lhis is not the study of other people's bunkai, ideas or theories. It is not what you'll read in books. lhis is a close observation of what you are doing, how you are doing it and its: meaning in regards to functionality and utility. It is a mental process of check, check and recheck. Not just of the aesthetic outer viewing of kata, but the internal understanding of movement. we have been moving our entire lives and have learned not to attend to our natural productive movements, these movements are closely linked in principle to a katads set of movements. We must learn to attend to what we have learned not to attend to. we must do this during every practice studying, observing and giving attention to every detail until the processes start to creep back to below the conscious level. They are however still cognitive functions, but we need to be able to draw our mental energy towards other endeavors, so we can flow, respond and act naturally in the face of adversity.

The Structure of this book

the order of this book will be as followed. I will first attend to the fallacy of using technique training for the single kata practice. I will describe the context of how it is practiced and how it should be approached. I will describe a variety of analytical tools, cognitive traps and rules to follow when thinking about and applying each part of the hate. I will then attend to each layer that must be tackled for full cognitive understanding, and offer ideas for how to practice each and tie them back into one another.

It is my intention that you should read through the entire book once and then use each section of the book and the suggested resources at the end as a beginning reference for your internal quest of karate, because it is internal. The external trappings of body and technique are the mere reflection of your dedicated practice, not the rewards. the rewards go much deeper.

After these rules, layers and tools have been thoroughly internalized than you can throw the book away or lend it to a friend. 

The typical karate class is made up of kata and prearranged sparring. You come to class and practice kata, you go home and practice kata, you go to class and practice kata. You might get to a higher rank, which allows you to practice more kata. When you started going to the dojo, you probably didn't really care about the belts. You wanted to learn something. You wanted to engage in the cultural tradition of a foreign land. They tell you that the techniques hidden inside of kata are practical, yet they remain somewhat mysterious. But, you don't know any better so you practice kata, you practice kata, people are promoted with you who suck. You practice kata. After about five years, all you've done is memorize the kata that they've handed out piecemeal to you over the years. Gichen Funakoshi said that it takes 3 to 5 years to master a single kata, which sounds about right, considering you learn to talk in about three years, and you were just a baby and talking is complicated. You never seem to get to those practical applications. Five years is not a long time. Three years is even shorter. Compare that to the lifetime it takes to master what is now called modern karatedo. Why spend a lifetime only scratching the surface of a dozen or more kata, when you can dive deep into the belly of a single kata. Dedicating your time to a single kata to the point where the movements are just ingraned into your being. There is no kata anymore. It's just you. Kata is merely the template, the spring board to which we use as the brush to make a single kata a martial art. Practice does not make the martial an art. It is the creative application of the martial, which makes it art.

One kata does not require a dojo, it doesn't require a lot of space, it requires no membership fees, it requires no set schedule, it does not require that you be reduced to the least common denominator in the class. It does not require you to be satisfied with the least crappy martial arts establishment in your town. It can go as far as you can take it, and it can never be taken away from you, because it's just knowledge. Kata is a weapon that can't be confiscated.

Practicing one kata opens up the practice of karate to anyone who can memorize a kata off the internet. If you can memorize a traditional Okinawan kata, than you can practice karate whenever, wherever you want. Memorizing kata is not the point of karate. Once you have the pattern of a single kata memorized you can spend the rest of your life studying it. Imagine how good you will be if you dedicate the same amount of time to one kata, which you not split between 19?

Cost Benefit Analysis

This is kind of a part two to the last post on focusing on what you can, and I think it's just a really important factor to take into consideration.

A cost benefit analysis is weighing whether the cost of something is more than the benefits. This should be done throughout all aspects of your life and it can really open your eyes to how marketing, hype, anecdotal evidence and logic not backed up by reality, can really throw a monkey wrench into your plans.

Let me give you an example from my own life.

Me and my wife are very frugal. We don't get the latest toys, but we live very comfortably and the excess capital means we have more options open to us than your average debt slave. In pursuit of saving money, we were kicking around the idea of installing energy efficient windows in our home. Marketing, hype and anecdotal evidence would suggest that replacing our drafty single pane windows would be a giant boon to our cash savings, but would require an upfront investment. We're fine with investment as long as the benefits are worth it. The cost of the windows and installation would be about $1200, which seemed reasonable, but when we calculated how much we would save on our energy bill it ended up being about $10 per month for a grand total of $120 a year. To merely recoup our investment we'd have to stay in the house for another ten years. We decided to pass on the idea. The windows would technically make the house more efficient, but it wouldn't make the money spent worth it. Now we already have a very low energy bill as it is, so if you're an energy hog these windows might work, but for us it was a no go.

Here's the rub, just because something is "better" doesn't mean the costs involved actually make it worth it. Let's take body hardening. Damaging your nerves to fight better might seem like a good idea. Full contact stress inoculation every other weekend might be the ultimate way to train. Getting into bar fights might get you that no-bull-crap experience you've been looking for... but all of these things come with a steep cost to your body.

The odds of a deadly encounter if you mind your manners and aren't a complete jerk is less than 1%. The whole point of self defense or training to become strong, or just having fun is to not damage yourself. This is the opposite of what we want to achieve. There's no point in training to survive being crippled in combat only cripple yourself in training.

Many times these more dangerous aspects of training, and the more expensive pieces of training equipment, or classes, or (fill in the blank) is merely a way for us to manage our anxieties about violence. They become a talisman, which will ward off all the boogeymen of our mind, so we can continue to deny reality.

So here's what you do. Before you make a decision, weigh the costs and benefits. Research how effective the alternative is and see if  there is concrete data beyond what your buddy says or an internet forum, which actually backs up what you want to do. You might be surprised at what you find.

Don't be perfect

How many times have you heard something along the lines of "karate is about the pursuit of perfection"? Striving for the perfect form, the perfect punch, the perfect kick. It needs to be perfect. You need to be the perfect karateka. It is a standard, which cannot be met. It is impossible, and if nothing short of perfect will do, what's the point of practicing karate? If everything just short of perfect is all junk, and you can't get to perfect than you're just left with junk. This unobtainable goal makes karate an endless chore, which only the most masochistic of us will endure. Side note: maybe that's why so many of them ask to be hit?

So don't be perfect. Don't be perfect. Give everything you've got to practice, but do so because it's fun, not because it needs to be "perfect." If it's not fun, why bother? Go kayaking or something. I think less than one percent of the population depending on where you live will experience violent crime. It's almost statistically speaking insignificant. Car maintenance is probably more important as regards to your safety. Karate ends up being just a lot of practice, and if you can't make practice fun than you aren't going to practice. You just won't do it. So go practice karate, forget about being perfect and have fun. Play with the kata. Everyday just ask yourself, "how can I use my kata to hurt someone?" and go from there. Experiment and see what you find.

Testing Spirit

Modern physical exercise can sometimes be a detriment to karate. Mostly because you repetitively use your muscles in the most inefficient means possible. It's what provides the stress, which helps grow them. In karate we want to use our muscles and structure as efficiently as possible, which is designed to not stress your muscles so you can fight longer. This doesn't mean however that muscle building exercises are bad for karate. They just need to be kept in the correct context. One very good aspect of these exercises is testing the spirit.

In many muscle building exercises, the goal is to reach total muscle failure. This means you could not do another repetition in perfect form if your life depended on it. Your muscles are completely tapped and will need a rest. There was a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps who could work you so hard you couldn't even lift your arms to type for a few hours. This takes a large amount of discipline and courage to train yourself to do. Your muscles burn, they ache, they are screaming at you to stop, and you're trying to force them through immense mental will to do just a little bit more. You're just asking a little bit more. It is a fight. Our bodies and our brains are designed to move us away from pain, to stay still and conserve energy. This is what is easy. Pushing to your complete physical limits is a fight with yourself. It is a complete test of will to do absolutely what is necessary to get the exercise done, no matter how much your arms burn or shake and your brain is telling you to stop.

This makes it an excellent test of spirit. Fighting hurts, you will get hurt, you will get hit and you have to keep pushing through, because if you don't do something it's not going to stop. We should strive never to fight, because it is deadly, dangerous and costly, so we need safe, low risk alternatives to test our fortitude. Exercise is just one small way to test ourselves.

For Children

How would you make shooting a gun beneficial and completely safe for children?

I don't know what you would do, but I know what I would probably do. I'd take the ammunition out of the equation. The gun isn't dangerous, outside of being a crappy club, without the ammo. This is the only way to make this completely safe with children, without very close and careful supervision. There's no way in hell I would hand a bunch of loaded Glocks over to a group of five-year-old children. Now without ammunition there is really only so much you can do, so instead of focusing on marksmanship, I would focus on dry firing the gun. It would be about the meditative qualities of focusing on the fundamentals of marksmanship. Sight alignment, sight picture, breath control and trigger control. It would be about striving for the perfect synthesis between these four aspects, instead of hitting a target. Now without ammunition I wouldn't even need to use real guns. I could hand out toy guns with sights and still get the same effect. Now to keep a safe and competitive environment and so the kids don't get bored, I set up a duel using Nerf guns for them where the first one to get hit with a dart, even if both are hit, is the winner.

Sound familiar.

This is basically what happened to karate. Strip away everything except the principles without a goal or a map for application and focus on the derivative zen effects of the activity. Because it was taught to children, and kids would hurt each other just by accident if they were taught how to apply it practically.

Everyone now is pretty much just trying to put the pieces back together after it was consciously smashed in the name of progress.

Please help me spread karate to the masses. Share this blog post and help karate become the creative individual pursuit it was always meant to be.

Kata for Creativity

A single kata affords us an astounding amount of creativity, despite it being a fixed set of movements. The movements themselves are not representative of technique, they are rather representative of efficient and effective body mechanics for physical violence. Each movement is merely a template for producing kinetic energy in a useful manner. It is up to the individual practitioner how this energy is applied. Karate therefore becomes more about how you apply the kata, rather than how well you perform the kata. It also allows for the karateka's own personality, tactics and style. This is how kata is used creatively. There may be value in the calligraphy style zen exercise of kata, but the creative application of kata means you keep growing, you keep pushing yourself and keep learning.

Isolate Sections of Kata

If you want to understand a movement in a kata, you have to play with it. You need to isolate it from the rest of the kata and focus singularly on that action. Maybe for a few minutes, maybe for an hour or maybe for a month. Practice your whole kata at the beginning of practice and then pick a section, which you are going to work on without any preconceived idea of what you'll find and let your thoughts develop naturally on the movement. Practice outside of the lines of performance, move freely, repeat the movement in place, flow, go slow, go fast and go too fast.

When we practice the whole kata, we only get a short glimpse of each little part. Here and gone, here and gone. There is no time to "meditate" on each movement. There is literally no time to focus on the more important parts of the kata. Structure, body mechanics, power generation, force vectors. The parts of a movement that make it useful. The template for function. Without intimate knowledge of these aspects application is made much harder.

Structure, body mechanics, power generation, force vectors equal function. The formula. When we plug in the context, the position of you, the position of the other person and the environment, we get the application. Function plus context equals application. If we know the context, but don't know the function of movements we will fail. If we know function without context, we fail.

Breakdown the kata, breakdown the movement and study these different aspects until you don't need to think about them. This will come naturally like any learned skill. You think, think, think, think, and then you don't think. Think now, so you don't need to think later.

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If you don't live your values

If belts don't matter? Take off your belt.

If rank doesn't matter? Stop using your rank.

If the uniform doesn't matter? Take off the uniform.

If karate is humbling? Make yourself humble.

If you don't live your values than they are worthless to you. They are merely talking points.

The Artificial Barrier of Belts and Organization

Karate is an idea. No one owns karate and once you know a karate kata it can't be taken away from you. It's yours for as long as you remember it. This makes it open to everyone. It's not complex enough to hold a monopoly on the knowledge, because there just isn't that much to remember.

This can pose a problem if you want a monopoly on karate instruction, because nothing about karate necessitates a teacher. Remember kata was kept secret. Funakoshi recounts a person demonstrating a kata with all the windows blocked so no one could see him. Secrecy is one way to guard the knowledge, but now karate is everywhere. Every town, on youtube, it is open to the public. This means that other barriers of entry need to be put in place. This is where organizations and belts come into play. By making an argument to authority, and not skill, reason and experience, you force people to go to a dojo and get evaluated by your organization before granting titles etc. This creates an artificial barrier to practicing karate.

Technique is not the problem with kata

I'm writing a whole book about this so I'll be brief.

It is ludicrously easy to come up with a scenario for a particular kata movement to become a technique or series of techniques. I practice one kata and I probably had 30 different interpretations for the first movement set alone in Seisan. Think about that. One little movement with 30 different variations. I'm fairly convinced that there are infinite applications. It is easy to find technique, but when you use a technique based system of practice where you try to get to a point where you can ingrain an automatic response this becomes tricky.

Let's say you need a 1,000 repetitions to ingrain a technique. Thirty applications means 30,000 repetitions. Every different technique I discover is another 1,000. So if the interpretations are functionally infinite, how do you do 1,000 repetitions of infinite? It's impossible.

Technique is not the answer. It's a parlor trick for demonstration. Technique is the visible expression of the application of principles. The context changes, the technique changes, but the movement and the principles stay the same.

If you're trying to build a catalogue of techniques based on your kata practice, you are wasting your time.

Why Love Karate?

Hard question to answer. My journey in karate, like many people's, is almost purely circumstantial. I started because there was a dojo in my hometown, which was close by and I could afford the membership fees. A traditional dojo, whose curiculum mirrors programs designed to promote Japanese militarism and physical fitness rather than martial art study. People generally are also ferociously tribal for no real reason. Right now it's a hobby, which costs me absolutely no money.

The reason I love karate now is that it is democratic, meaning it can be practiced easily by everyone, and it can be used as an intuitive and instinctual form of physical combat. Anyone can learn a kata and start practicing at home. General principles can be followed, which make a kata a pretty brutal form of violence. We must remember that the kata survived till the modern period because they were easily transmittable, people were able to learn at night or travel abroad for a few years and become proficient. They also needed to work. All those, which practiced a bad kata, more than likely were either forgotten or lost because it got you killed. In violence, what doesn't work gets you killed. The kata we see are the survivors.

This is why I love karate, which is why I want to share it with people. You don't need a dojo, or a belt, or tradition or any of this stuff that decorates most places windows. You just need a little bit of space, some patience and a few minutes a day to play around with the kata.

Naihanchi vs Seisan

The biggest difference I've found between the structure of Seisan, which I practice regularly and Naihanchi is how they show the relationships between movements.

Seisan is grouped in clumps of roughly three repetitive movements. The kata demonstrates how to move continuously with a single movement. One can ignore the lines of performance and go on to infinity and never have a definitive break. "Block," punch, move for instance. What is not demonstrated is how the different movements relate to one another. Kata is linear merely for presentation. It is impossible to have a non linear sequence of presentation. Unless you're some sort of N dimensional space alien.

Naihanchi on the other hand ignores how movements can be used continuously and instead demonstrates how the individual power movements can be linked together. Take the back hand to elbow movement in shodan. It begins with a step and then carries forward into the movement. One merely has to shift their weight and step forward again with their left foot to carry the same movement forward again. Step forward again and you return to the original position. This is not shown, but soon starts to look like the crescent steps and weight shifts of more forward facing kata like Seisan. Instead it chooses to focus it's attention on the movements being related and linked to one another, hence a mirror. Left and right.

What does this mean? Nothing really. Just be aware that the kata does not demonstrate linear application and that a kata cannot demonstrate everything at once even if you should be able to respond with any kata movement at any time.

The idea that a 100 year-old kata can predict what a living thinking human being can do is ludicrous and suggests that we're are all merely automatons.

Exercise and Efficiency

I was thinking the other day about how exercise can teach us some bad lessons about efficient movement. Not all exercise, because obviously some weight lifting movements are based on how to efficiently get as much weight up as possible by using your whole body. I'm talking more about body specific exercises, or what might be called aesthetic exercises. These exercises make us strong, but they don't teach us how to use our strength.

Using structure and body weight to power technique is about using gravity and the natural sweet spots of your bones and muscles to perform work, while using the least amount of chemical energy possible, fuel. It's about using the least amount of muscle necessary. It's harder to fight if your tired and generally dropping your whole weight on someone will get more done than punching with just your arm. Many exercises on the other had excel at being exercises because they are inefficient. To maximize the benefit of many exercises, you move in a way that stresses the muscles the most. It is literally the point of exercise to stress the muscles to stimulate their growth. In a real way, these movements strengthen the muscles, while showing us the exact opposite way to use them.

Is this an argument against these types of exercises? No, but it could be. It's only to bring up the point that we need to be aware that what goes into training something and what goes into using something can be different things. We have a tendency to confuse effort with effectiveness. We feel strong when we use muscle, because the only other time we might feel strong is when we're in the gym. Weights make us strong right? In reality, a movement is usually very strong if we feel nothing at all, because it's efficient.

More principle articles are on the way. They just take longer to put together. Cheers.

Some More Videos

Some more Rory Miller.

Finding Strategy in Kata

As I practice it, kata is a collection of principles. These principles are largely concerned with generating force to do work in an efficient manner. In the most simple terms, it's teaching you how to move to achieve a goal. The goal generally being to keep yourself safe from harm by ending a conflict, which is not just pounding the crap out of someone but also escape. If you exit the conflict, you also end the conflict, physically at least. These principles however usually have a common theme. This theme usually pops up in different incarnations, but the result is generally the same. This is the strategy.

I'm going to give a sport example. Ronda Rousey is super awesome at arm bars, and she's super awesome at hip throws. They are her strengths. They work together to achieve the goal of winning the fight. She can slam someone with a hip throw and while they're dazed she can put them in the arm bar. An effective strategy for her would be movements that exploit these two strengths. Getting close, distraction, softening blows, etc. If she were to create a kata, it would most likely involve different ways to exploit these two strengths. It would have a theme. It would be a group of tactics that work toward her larger strategy.

The common theme that I see in my flavor of Seisan is the explosive use of linear body movement and unbalancing an opponent through what could be called opposing action to knock them down. There are other things that can be gleaned, but most if not all of the movements I practice have the potential to just drop someone on their butt. There are other types of movements or "techniques" that can be gleaned from the kata, but to me these are the major themes. All the movements either help me do this, or help me get in a position to do this. This is of course just my opinion.

In short if you find the theme, you can find the strategy. You'll find the themes by studying how the kata moves you to deliver energy and what that kinetic energy has the potential to do. It's sometimes better to figure out what the moves are not good for.

This is just how I've tried to analyze it, and what I've found useful to me.

Busting Logs

I've been spending a few hours each day splitting rounds of maple. They're from a tree we brought down in my front yard, and it's been a mission of mine to get it from fallen trunk to cords of wood for the last few months. All the rounds are finally sequestered in my driveway, so they're not an eye sore for the neighbors. I'm sure they're liking that. This activity has been my chief source of strength training for the last week, making it a point to spend a few hours on it each day. It was a thirty foot maple, so it's taking some time.

I'm using a sledgehammer, wedges and an axe to split the wood, though I have a chainsaw in my basement. I could get it done much more quickly with the gas-powered tool, but that's not the point. It's a challenge and a monster. Blisters, splinters, some blood and muscles so sore that sometimes it's hard to practice have been my rewards so far, plus dropping ten pounds. What I'll get in the end is more knowledge, more resilience, more strength and a ton of free fire wood. It's worth it to me for just the challenge and the accomplishment.

It seems simple enough on the face of it. Hammer wedge into stump, hit wedge with hammer and split wood. The logs don't know this though. Usually it's hammer, hammer, hammer, ping, and the wedge pops out like it was pushing against a spring. Probably user error along with lack of knowledge, but this is the kind of thing you have to figure out on your own. These are skill based tools. You don't just follow the instructions. These things build mental fortitude as well as physical. You need to work past the frustration, the pain and work toward progress. Swinging the hammer is the easy part. I know that sooner or later it will be routine. Once I've learned the weaknesses of the wood. It will take mindfulness and concentration.

I'm looking forward to what I'll learn.

Not a Warrior

I think it's important to say that the independent study of karate does not make you a fighter or a warrior. It makes you someone who studies karate. I know I dip my toe into self defense every so often, but this is more an encouragement for people to evaluate their own practices and not to unintentionally pick up bad habits. It's pointing out an alternative viewpoint. I try and practice my karate in such a way that it won't hinder me in a violent situation, but I'm definitely not relying on it. I try and focus on the fundamentals of my kata and how I can explore them. I work on what I can and try not to worry so much about the aspects that are out of my control. A parallel would be dry firing a pistol to work on fundamentals. It will help you improve your shooting, but it's not an answer to everything.

Independent study firmly places you in the recreational category of martial arts practice. There's overlap, but as I see it the only people who aren't playing around are force professionals. Police, military, prison guards and bouncers. The people who's safety depends on it routinely. Everyone myself included is just playing around. It's a serious issue, but it's also fun to explore.

Diligent, careful and thoughtful solo kata practice can help you build a solid foundation to work from. It's about building a tool out of your body. It doesn't mean you can apply it, but you can still study it. There are a lot more benefits from karate and single kata practice than just learning how to hurt people. This is okay. I believe this opens up a door for people to get interested and practice without feeling like it's necessary to engage in what is sometimes very time consuming and expensive training. It should be fun and thoughtful.

Showing My Own Bias

I definitely showed my bias in an earlier post on guards in karate. I've taken down the post, and I'm going to provide a little bit of clarification on the subject. I unintentionally skipped an idea that might have made things a little clearer.

Karate as I see it is an infighting system. It has a very particular range where many of the movements work best. This is chest to chest. It's much, much closer than many people practice their karate. In infighting there is no real guard. This is because offense and defense are not separated. They can't be because the distance is so close that a conventional guard no longer works. To stop an attack you have to break the person's balance and structure with your own attack. It's not about intercepting attacks, it's more about preventing them in the first place. It's not fool proof by any means, but neither is a conventional guard.

Infighting I believe is a better option for self defense. It's the range for which many predatory attacks take place, and a person is able to put all of their tools and techniques to use. Striking, grappling, gouging, throwing and locking are all options. This is opposed to longer range ballistic attacks, which limit the techniques you can use effectively. If you're beyond arms length from an unarmed opponent than you're relatively safe and should work toward escape or diffusing the situation.

To sum up karate for me is an infighting system, so there is no guard. Self defense and infighting aren't really separated in my head, so it was unfair of me to make such a blanket statement. These are of course just my opinions. I'll try to do better in the future.

Choosing a Kata

If you're already a karate practitioner and would like to change your avenue of study than the kata you choose will be rather simple. It's whatever kata you like to practice the most. In my opinion, there are no bad kata. There are some pretty wonky versions of kata out there, but even the worst of these can be fixed by paying attention to body mechanics and the principles of efficient movement. This means proper power generation, skeletal alignment, weight shifts and understanding how and why the movements work. It's a tall order. You'll have to do this type of stuff anyway, but it's easier if there aren't superfluous movements added to the sequence.

If you're new to karate than I would suggest that you choose one of the foundational kata like Seisan or Naihanchi. If you choose Seisan, I'd go with one of the simpler incarnations of the kata. There are many, many different flavors of Seisan and each put emphasis on different parts. Shito-Ryu, Uechi Ryu and Goju Ryu have fairly simple versions. There are a couple of reasons why I would suggest choosing a simpler looking kata. The first is that if you are new it will be easier to learn the sequence of movements. The second reason is that flashier or more complicated kata do not mean that they are more advanced. Each kata is a collection of principles and fundamentals. If you understand the principles and fundamentals, it's possible to create an almost infinite number of technique variations, so don't sweat about how they look.

I would also advise that you ignore any labeling of techniques in a kata. In my opinion, they hinder more than they help. Blocks are not just blocks, punches are not just punches, kicks are not just kicks. They have many different layers and uses, and labeling artificially constricts our thinking. They are blinders that we do not need. This makes the movements a giant black hole of sorts, but you need to have faith that everything will come together. Karate is more abstract than concrete, which is scary at first, but it prevents you from getting stuck in one frame of mind and allows you to be adaptable later on.

It's important to remember that just because someone learns a kata from a living breathing person doesn't mean that said person knows what they're doing. I've seen very terrible kata and technique from people who have been practicing long enough to know better. Why do I bring this up? It's because you're not going to do any worse learning on your own than going to many commercialized dojo. Take comfort in the fact that you can't do any worse if you were paying for it, so relax, practice and study hard.

Patience, practice and play are the key.

Pressure Point Knock Outs

To paraphrase Rory Miller, if these pressure point knock outs were real than no one would survive a good massage.

I know you've probably seen the same videos as me. Some guy taps someone on the neck or the chin and they collapse like a boned fish onto the mat, and this guru has to do some sort of back rub to get the guy conscious again. This is stupid. People believe this stuff because they want the martial arts to be like magic. They want to power up like Dragon Ball Z, and turn into some ultimate unstoppable thing with their chi. Maybe not this exactly, but it's pretty close. I used to be one of these people. I wanted the martial arts to be magical and mystical. Some dojo don't try to refute this type of stuff. In some ways they encourage it when they say "you'll be able to unlock the kata subconsciously when attacked." It's playing on people's insecurities that they need an ultimate weapon.

I put this kind of stuff in the same category as the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, alien abductions, moon landing conspiracies and astral projection that is the utter crap category.

Edit: I'd also like to say that I don't care for pressure point fighting in general. Like I've said, I broke my arm riding my bike. Because of the adrenaline dump, I was able to pick the bike up, fix the chain and ride home. An hour later, I couldn't even lift it, so I find the idea of performing some type of vulcan nerve pinch rather dubious.