I don't really like bunkai videos anymore. I used to like them a lot, but they don't really do it for me anymore. It's not really that they're bad, or that the ideas wouldn't work, but that they don't teach people to come to their own conclusions. They don't really teach people how to analyze kata for themselves.
I kind of think of kata as a spring board now, a template for possibilities and not so much as even different techniques. It's like a spring that gives rise to many different streams. The kata is the spring and the streams are the techniques, but the stream is not the spring.
I can come up with a bunch of drills, and techniques and variations of techniques and drills, and then make a flow drill to tie all of them together, but I don't think that would help people understand what a kata is in a helpful manner. A kata helps you build the tools to become a navigator. It's not a set of directions. If the directions are bad, or something goes wrong than there is no room to adapt. If you know how to navigate than you can come up with your own directions. You learn to adapt.
Practicing kata should start with identifying the principles that give rise to all techniques. Teachers should give students the analytical tools they need to find these answers for themselves. This way they can surpass the teacher instead of just following.
I kind of think of kata as a spring board now, a template for possibilities and not so much as even different techniques. It's like a spring that gives rise to many different streams. The kata is the spring and the streams are the techniques, but the stream is not the spring.
I can come up with a bunch of drills, and techniques and variations of techniques and drills, and then make a flow drill to tie all of them together, but I don't think that would help people understand what a kata is in a helpful manner. A kata helps you build the tools to become a navigator. It's not a set of directions. If the directions are bad, or something goes wrong than there is no room to adapt. If you know how to navigate than you can come up with your own directions. You learn to adapt.
Practicing kata should start with identifying the principles that give rise to all techniques. Teachers should give students the analytical tools they need to find these answers for themselves. This way they can surpass the teacher instead of just following.
