The purpose of practicing karate

People really get tied up in knots over this one. Mostly because they feel like their actions are being questioned if someone doesn't believe or practice the same as they do. Karate dojo are more church than gym. Their confidence gets shattered if someone does it differently.

There are definitely many different and overlapping reasons to practice karate. The most important and long impacting one being health and fitness. The mental, tactical and puzzle aspects of it keep it fresh and enjoyable unlike 45 minutes on a treadmill.

It does come down to either form or function I believe, and I don't mean kata form, but aesthetics. Is it the costumes, ritual and tradition that you like, or is it the functional movement. There is definitely beauty in watching a person who has practiced a kata to the point of intense internalization, but this a result of his dedication to function and not the other way around. The costumes, rituals, ranks, and traditions for the most part are about as useful as drawing flames on your sneakers to run faster.

Regardless of my feelings on the matter karate is a personal practice. Personal means you practice the way that benefits you, and ignore what everyone else is doing. This is the way it should be, and you should cultivate the confidence to be proud of the way you practice. Physics, anatomy and physiology remain constant through all of the martial arts. It's only how we understand and achieve these things, which are different.

Going down the rabbit hole

When you start looking for evidence, when no one is asking for any, you will be surprised at what you find. Your view of the world, and your ego will be lying in pieces on the ground by the end of it. I'm not talking about confirmation bias research where you ignore all evidence, which runs contrary to your opinion. The evidence of the effectiveness of karate is that it is terrible, but most martial arts are terrible. The evidence which suggests that it is effective is that it survived being passed down in Okinawa. If it's use got you killed then you're not around to pass on your crappy tradition. It's positively selected as opposed to negatively selected. It's survivor bias in a good way. The fact is that adrenal decay, lack of stress inoculation, and lack of experience in violent situations counts for more than your training. Training is the compromise between lack of preparation and being a violent jerk. Rory Miller says it's luck and instinct, which gets you through most violent encounters, until you've hit about 20 force encounters and then it's luck, instinct and training. We've all heard of the people who survive violence by doing X, Y and Z, but we don't hear about those who did X, Y, and Z who died screaming for someone to save them. Unfortunately, there is this thing called reality and it doesn't cooperate the way we wished it would. We as people tend to attribute our successes to skill, and our failures to bad luck. Hardly ever do we attribute success to luck, and failure to lack of skill, even though this is more likely.

I remember reading an article about UFC training, where the trainer was explaining that fighters could achieve the same results by training much less than what they currently were doing. The training had nothing to do with power, speed or skill. It might have even been slightly detrimental. It had to do with mental toughness, and anxiety management. Do you want to go into a fight confident that you did everything you possibly could to prepare, or do you want to go into a fight just as prepared, but with a mental nagging doubt? When you're only fighting pain and fatigue, mental toughness counts for a whole lot.

Here's where this can get you hurt. If you train to fight your anxiety and become less effective than you're not doing yourself any favors. You will be over confident, and less skilled, which is a bad combination.

What does this have to do with research?

It means we need to know the aim of research, and what people are trying to achieve. If you train like a UFC fighter who is trying to manage their anxiety, you might be less effective in a life or death confrontation. You might be over confident, because you did super hard training and die, rather than being under confident, running away and surviving. Research might be comparing very minute battlefield differences, which made a difference tactically, but not much of a difference to the individual. The Thompson-Legerde tests on caliber, which is usually dismissed, was testing the wounding capabilities of different cartridges not how lethal they were. They already knew that a bullet through your head, spine, or heart was lethal. They wanted to know what the differences were when the bullets hit non-essential organs and tissue. Their conclusions were based on certain rounds allowing a person to bleed out faster than others, but this time is counted in minutes not seconds, because regardless of the round our flesh is elastic and closes the wound and our body starts trying to repair itself and stop the bleeding. A wounded enemy soldier will be taken out of the fight eventually, but this doesn't help those in his immediate vicinity. It only means soldiers who show up minutes later won't have to worry about him. The person who gut shot him is probably just as dead. It doesn't help you individually, but it helps your comrades in arms later on down the line. It has a tactical advantage in war, but has no tactical advantage in self defense where a person needs to be taken out immediately. You don't have the ammunition, time nor backup to lay down suppressive fire while you wait for the wounded to bleed out.

It was also thought that non-jacketed lead projectiles would not function reliably in an auto-loader, which is false, but has nonetheless changed the trajectory of firearms development regardless of this being a more than 100 year old myth. I just fired some non jacketed lead rounds out of one of my rifles just a few months ago, and it worked just fine. They have been relegated to the dust bin of history without even a retest to see if the original reasons and conclusions still hold true.

In the Napoleonic war the British sabre caused horrific wounds, but seldom killed. The French sword killed, but did not produce grizzly wounds. The difference between cut and thrust. A thrust kills, a cut maims. The British sword was feared because of the terrible wounds, which is a huge psychological advantage in war. Great for warfare, but not that great for a duel against a determined foe. The British sword was thought to be more effective. Was it? Maybe for fear factor, but not for killing though fear counts for a whole lot.

In the world of the stock market, research has shown that actively managed portfolios do no better than broad market passively managed portfolios. Throwing a dart at the Wall Street Journal is about as effective as the most advanced stock market analysis, because regardless of method you can't predict the future. Regardless of this there are still many companies that advertise the virtues of their management, and people are happy to hand over their money in fees.

What does this all mean?

It means things are seldom how they appear, and if you want to get to the bottom of things you need to dig deep and prepare for your ego to be destroyed, your anxiety to hit the roof, and for no one to ever listen to you because you're going against what amounts to tradition. They use anecdotal evidence, research out of context and ignore conflicting information, because it makes their tummy feel funny to face reality. If you're tummy feels funny, it means you're learning something great. It doesn't mean it's true, or false it just means you're testing your assumptions.

If you want to succeed, you need to ignore that funny feeling and look at the hard real-world evidence. You need to be okay with the fact that luck might play a bigger factor in success or failure than you are comfortable with and that people might be selling you snake oil, so you can manage your anxiety. You also have to be okay with people vehemently and even violently disagreeing with you, because it calls their fantasy world into question. Even with all of this there is freedom in facing reality. It means you can keep your head down, train, prepare, plan and know that focusing on the aspects of life that you can control directly is the only thing that matters even if you are falling through the rabbit hole.

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.

Karate is not self defense

Karate is not self defense. Karate is training to break someone, and while it is sometimes, in a very very very small way, a component of self defense, it is not self defense. It is a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. It's important not to confuse the two.

I personally try and practice karate in a historical context. This does not mean a super "traditional" style of training. The open and available aspects of classical karate allows me to practice. It is this aspect, which makes me love karate. If it was otherwise, I would not love karate. What is the context of classical karate? Oppressive.

In the United States, we have the right to bear arms. This was something that was not open to the Okinawan people. It was illegal to even practice karate. Shoshin Nagamine says in The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do that people did not really begin to openly practice karate until the ban was lifted. This may have been an open secret comparable to smoking pot in my home country. We know people do it, but that doesn't mean you can smoke in front of a cop. Those that were well known karateka seemed to be princes and bodyguards. Not exactly those who the normal rules usually apply.

What does this mean?

This means that your only weapon is your body and that weapon needs to remain hidden from the authorities. It needs to work, it needs to be simple enough that it doesn't require full time training, like the class based samurai or knight, and it needs to be easy to transmit. Funakoshi was a school teacher and trained only at night. In Patrick McCarthy's Bubishi, he says that one of the originators of this text may have been a shoe maker in China, not exactly a warrior. The fact that those that traveled to China were able to return after a relatively short amount of time, not the fifty years, which is usually touted as the time frame for mastering karate, means that it is easily transmittable.

The most important aspect is that 19th century Okinawa is not 21st century North Carolina. Medicine is different, the laws are different, the standards by which we are judged are different. Meeting in a field to beat each other to death might be normal in 1789 Okinawa, but it's definitely not the norm in the present day United States. Practice in the historical context, and be aware of how it overlaps with self defense, but don't confuse the two.

Is punch kick block wrong?

Don't get me wrong the application of karate, which is, everything is a punch, kick, or block to a punch or kick is a pretty terrible way to look at karate. But is it technically wrong?

Karate is the application of energy and structure. The PKB method is still the application of energy and structure even if it is a very inefficient means of doing so. It is also a very simple way of applying the kata. Simple is better but it's not exactly what I'm talking about.

PKB is the "see spot run" version of karate. See spot run is a sentence. It's just very simple. It's for children that have not completely mastered all the concepts of writing. PKB requires the least possible explanation on the instructor side and since modern karate is essentially a left over program for preparing little boys for conscription into military service it's all they really need. Why bother with abstract concepts when they're going to get chewed up by mortar fire?

So is PKB wrong? No. It's just simple. All of the legitimate karate training is still in the old books. It's all there in the form of concepts, but because it's not a list of super secret deadly moves, they are largely ignored.

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.

Plans for the Future

I've got a few projects going on at the same time. The blog is one. I'm trying to keep up with this thing. The book is the second, which is making progress. Life got in the way, but it's my daughter, so who cares. You mean I need to stop working to spend a few hours playing with a baby. Sounds terrible. Not. The third project will be videos, which I had almost abandoned. They won't be bunkai videos for the most part, because I don't have confidence in technique based training. It will be a ground up teaching and study of the Seisan kata, but the principles can be applied to all kata. I'm not promising video quality as good as Karate Culture, because their filming is just awesome.

I'm dedicated to spreading karate, so I think that putting out the most useful karate instructional videos for the average person who wants to learn something fun and physical is the way to go. If you read the blog you know that I think most of karate is essentially ego and monetarily driven, which creates a huge amount of artificial barriers to what is an awesome system for transmitting a martial art. I want karate practice to be as common and as varied as Yoga, where people think nothing of heading out to the park to practice a kata, they learned on the internet or from a library book.

I'm basically hitting the mind, body, soul in three mediums. Book, blog, and video. Three prong attack. I don't want to leave someone out because they learn visually, emotionally or logically.

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.

Traditional?

The way I practice karate has been described as super traditional since I only practice one kata. About the only thing that Motobu and Funakoshi agree on is that people used to practice only one kata, or at least established a firm foundation in one kata before continuing on to another, so I guess it's fair to say that it's a traditional practice, but this isn't the reason I started practicing one kata. I don't practice this way because it's traditional. I practice one kata, because it's the only way I can practice karate.

I had no money, still have no money, to spend on classes. The greatest teachers in the world can live down the block, but if you have no money to pay them, they might as well be on the moon. I did know that people used to practice one kata that it was supposed to embody a complete fighting system and that there was no definitive interpretation to any of them. I decided that if people used to practice one kata and make it an effective fighting system for themselves than why couldn't I? I had a kata, some spare time and a drive to learn. This was how I was going to study karate, or I wasn't going to study karate at all.

Is it traditional if you practice a certain way because you don't have the money? Maybe, maybe not. I'm glad I went this route though. I've learned far more than if I'd gone the conventional way. I don't really care if it's traditional. It's not really about the labels. I'm not even sure if I really practice karate. It's just a convenient descriptor, because telling someone I practice Seisan requires too much explanation.

Some More Videos

Some more Rory Miller.

Perspective

Noah Legel and the guys over at Karate Culture both put out some media on "fighting dirty." It's good stuff. There really isn't anything I disagree with in both their releases, but I think we all need a little bit of perspective. I kind of covered it in an earlier post, but I thought of a good example of what I'm talking about.

When I was in the Marines, there was a Wounded Warrior House on base, and I'd be assigned to cover events there. It was 2006 or 2007 and the house had just opened. There were two Marines there that had very traumatic brain injuries, so traumatic that they basically had half of their brain missing along with half of their skull. They walked and talked and were still basically functional though they needed some help. I also met those that lost limbs, were severely burned and blind.

I'm telling this story, because I've met several people that had very horrendous injuries in combat and survived. These are injuries where most people would have just died. This however isn't evidence against rifles, grenades and IEDs. These are highly effective and highly dangerous, but they don't work all the time. This is to say that if some people are so resilient that they can take a high powered round to the head and still live than what are the chances that your punches are going to work? It's not an argument against punches or any technique. It's just that some people are so tough that you're just screwed. It makes arguing about what's better having your hand open versus closed or whether hitting someone's skull is better than poking their neck rather moot, when you consider that even bombs don't work all the time.

Videos to Watch

I'm going to be posting some videos on here of some stuff I like, just to get some people exposed to what are hopefully new ideas and new practices. I hope it's beneficial.

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.

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.

No Nonsense Self Defense

I'd like to turn people's attention toward this website, No Nonsense Self Defense, which I've added to my links. I've mentioned it before in another post, but I just wanted to repeat myself. It's full of great information on many subjects related to violence and self defense, and I encourage everyone to read it. I use this site as my bullshit meter. It helps me determine whether someone is trying to sell me snake oil. It's big, long and somewhat complicated so prepare to spend a few days glued to your computer reading all of Marc MacYoung's stuff.

Sorry if you recently tried to click on the link. It's now fixed.