I Hated Kata Until I Understood What It Was For

For the first 3 years I practiced karate, I didn't do kata. Almost none.

I had seen others doing it, but most of my training was spent working with another person. We did bunkai (disassembly and analysis of a technique) and oyo (the practical application of a technique) before I even knew they were called those things.

There were a lot of striking drills. Clinch work. Joint locks. Escapes. Takedowns. Goodness...lots and lots of takedowns. I was usually the guy being taken down. 🥋

We drilled somebody coming at you. Somebody grabbed you, punched you, shoved you, put you in a headlock or tried to control you, and you figured out how to deal with it.

That was karate to me.

Then I became a purple belt and started learning kata.

And I hated it.

I couldn't understand why I was suddenly standing by myself in the dojo, punching and blocking the air, turning at specific angles and trying to remember a sequence of movements. I'd spent years putting my hands on actual people. I understood why that mattered.

This, kata, felt like choreography.

It wasn't until later that I realized I had learned karate almost backwards.

And strangely enough, that may have been the best possible way for me to learn kata.

Kata Isn't a Fight Against Invisible People

When I started working through my brown belt ranks, I had to choose an old Okinawan kata and really study it.

I chose the Uechi-ryu version of Seisan, one of the oldest surviving katas practiced in Okinawan karate.

I didn't just have to memorize the movements. I had to understand them.

What happens if I'm close enough to smell the guy's breath? What happens from the clinch? What changes at mid-range? Why is my hand here? Why does my body turn this way? Why am I stepping at that angle? Why am I grabbing before I strike?

And that's when kata started becoming interesting.

Because once somebody was standing in front of me and I started pulling the movements apart, I stopped seeing blocks and punches.

I started seeing elbows. Frames. Traps. Grabs. Head control. Joint manipulation. Balance disruption. Strikes from the clinch. Ways of getting off the line of attack. Ways of putting somebody in a worse position while putting myself in a better one.

Moving from a point of disadvantage to a point of advantage and opportunity.

The movements had not changed, but my understanding of them had.

Habitual Acts of Physical Violence

The 3 main instructors I originally worked with over the course of my training — and still work with to this day — have given me a great perspective on fundamentals, form, fighting and the function behind it all.

They've also encouraged me to expand my knowledge by seeking out different styles, different fighters and different historians.

One martial arts historian and practitioner whose work I gravitated toward is Patrick McCarthy. I've never met McCarthy in person, but one of my instructors attended a bunkai seminar he taught.

McCarthy developed what he calls the HAPV theory—Habitual Acts of Physical Violence.

The basic idea is incredibly practical.

Human beings have been assaulting each other in remarkably similar ways for a very long time.

People grab, shove, punch, tackle, headlock, choke, swing wildly, try to drag you or surprise attack you.

Karate developed in a world where people had to deal with those problems head-on.

McCarthy argues that these habitual acts of violence provide the original context for the understanding of kata. His approach begins with the violent encounter, studies a functional response with another person, and then turns that response into something that can be rehearsed alone.

As McCarthy puts it, kata were never originally meant to teach everything by themselves, but rather to "culminate the lessons one should have already learned in 2-person practices."

That sentence completely changes the way you look at kata.

The partner drill comes first.

The kata remembers it.

McCarthy describes the movements within kata as solo reenactments of lessons learned through two-person practice. Put those individual templates together and you eventually have the choreographed sequence we call kata.

That made perfect sense to me because, without realizing it, that's almost exactly how I learned.

I think my instructors had something when they told me that kata would come later, not first.

I spent almost 3 years learning how bodies actually interact with each other.

Then somebody handed me the owner's manual.

Kata Is a Library

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make with kata is treating the performance as the destination.

How deep is the stance? How sharp is the turn? Did the punch stop in exactly the right place?

Those things have value. Kata develops balance, coordination, body mechanics, breathing, posture, power generation and the ability to move deliberately.

But there's something underneath all of that.

The kata is storing information.

Iain Abernethy has spent decades making a similar argument about practical kata application: the movements make much more sense when they're understood in the context of civilian self-protection rather than assuming every motion represents somebody standing several feet away throwing a perfectly chambered karate punch.

Real violence gets ugly and close, super fast.

People grab you. They crash into you. The pull on you. They wrap their arms around you.

Suddenly some of those strange movements in old kata aren't so strange anymore.

Put another human being six inches away from you and try them again.

Now that "block" might be controlling the neck.

That chambered hand might be pulling somebody toward you.

That turn might be breaking someone's balance or angling yourself behind them.

That stance might have less to do with posing and more to do with putting your body in a position where you can generate force while somebody is gripping you tight.

The kata starts talking.

You just need to know the language.

You Should Be Able to Do It From the Clinch

One of the ways I like to look at kata now is simple:

Can I make this movement work when somebody is actually touching me?

Not every application has to be identical. That's part of the beauty of bunkai and oyo — taking the principles contained within the movement and adapting them to the situation.

But put me in close. Grab my shirt. Grab my wrist. Put your hands around my neck. Throw an arm around me. Push me against something.

Now show me what that movement means in those contextual situations.

That's where kata comes alive for me. And it's where the connection between kata and actual self-protection becomes much clearer.

McCarthy's research describes kata as being rooted in responses to habitual acts of physical violence, including striking, grabbing, clinching, joint manipulation, balance displacement and other common forms of interpersonal violence.

That's very different from fighting another karate practitioner across a tournament mat.

The kata wasn't designed for a karate fight.

It was designed to preserve answers to human problems.

Seisan Changed Everything for Me

I've spent years with the Uechi-ryu version of Seisan. Variations of Seisan exist across a number of Okinawan and Japanese karate systems, with related versions appearing under names such as Seishan and, in Shotokan, Hangetsu.

I can perform that kata by myself, but that's probably the least interesting thing about it to me.

What fascinates me is how much is buried inside it.

Change the distance and the movement changes. Change the attack and another possibility appears.

Move into the clinch and suddenly something I thought was a block becomes a strike, a frame, or a control.

Change the angle and a movement I've performed hundreds of times suddenly makes sense in a completely different way.

That's why I no longer think learning kata means memorizing it.

Memorizing the sequence is the beginning.

Learning the kata means pulling it apart. Testing it. Putting somebody in front of you. Trying the bunkai. Exploring the oyo. Adding resistance and finding out what survives when your training partner stops cooperating.

Then go back and perform the kata again.

Hopefully, you're not just punching the air anymore.

You know who's standing there - the bad guy.

You know what their hands are doing. You know what you're grabbing. You know what you're striking. You know why you're turning or angling off.

You can almost feel the other person inside the movement.

That's kata!

And it took me three years of karate and a whole lot of questioning — and probably some complaining — before I finally started figuring it out.