Practice a Kata

In martial arts, a kata combines individual moves into a sequenced pattern. Practicing a kata will help you to not only learn its steps, but how your body and muscles transition from one movement to the next. The more you practice, the more effective and efficient your movements will become, leading to a more powerful finish.

Steps

Focusing on Your Kata

  1. Get into the mindset. Focus on yourself in the moment. Turn your attention inward. Tune out all distractions, whether they’re external or internal. Quiet your mind until the kata itself is the only thing you’re thinking about. [1]
  2. Breathe efficiently. Resist holding your breath. [1] Inhale fully for maximum lung capacity. Avoid full exhales since these will leave the body limp and vulnerable. Adjust your rate of breathing as the situation demands, timing it to match your movements. Avoid breathing at a uniform rate throughout the kata. [2]
  3. Maintain form. Concentrate on your posture, balance, and stability. Pay close attention to your hips, since they will help ground your center of gravity. Prioritize form over speed in the beginning and practice your kata slowly to ensure mastering the form before speeding up your movements.[2]
  4. Focus on how your muscles work in tandem. Pay attention to how the muscles in each part of your body work together in each movement; for example, when delivering a punch with your fist, pay attention to how your legs and torso lead into the punch. Maximize the force of impact by using all interrelated muscles efficiently.[2]
  5. Visualize your opponent. Imagine an opponent of equal height and build to yourself. [3] Use your imaginary opponent as a point of focus for both impact and penetration.[4] Pretend that this is a real fight that may prove lethal.
  6. Project confidence. Maintain an even speed from start to finish.[3] When learning a new kata, start slowly to master its pattern, but as you improve and quicken your speed, achieve that speed from your first step forward to intimidate your opponent.

Practicing a Simple Kata

  1. Start with a simple kata. If you’re a beginner, try the Taigyoku Shodan, or “First Kata,” which incorporates only three basic moves: the long forward stance, the groin block, and the stomach-level punch. [5]
  2. Assume the long forward stance. Bring one foot forward with your knee bent directly above your foot to maintain stability. Extend your back leg straight behind you as step forward. As you move from stance to stance, move your body in a lateral line without bouncing up and down, as you would when walking or running. Keep your center of gravity constant to minimize being knocked off balance by your opponent. [3]
  3. Block your groin. Using the arm on the same side of your body as your forward foot, raise your fist over your opposite shoulder, then sweep it downward, protecting your groin and striking your opponent’s attacking limb. Finish with your blocking arm held straight and pointed downward over your forward leg, with your fist about a fist’s distance directly above your knee.[3]
    • As you prepare to block, pull your other arm back as you prepare to block, until it’s even with your floating ribs and ready to strike if needed. Also pull your hips back at a 45º angle, facing away from your forward foot and drawing your vitals farther out of reach from your opponent.[3]
  4. Deliver a stomach-level punch. Advance toward your opponent with the long forward stance, keeping your upper body absolutely still until your forward foot is about to touch down. Square your hips and shoulders to fully face your opponent. Strike from the same side as your forward foot, aiming for the solar plexus. Pull your other arm back until your fist is even with your floating ribs, ready to deliver a second strike if needed. [3]
  5. Practice 20 counts in each kata. [5] Perform a 360º sweep of the immediate area. Turn your head 90º to face a new direction along your shoulder. Rotate your body from the hips to maintain stability.[2]

Expanding Your Practice with Challenges

  1. Learn new kata patterns. Explore different styles of martial arts, each of which includes multiple kata. Once you’ve mastered one, learn another. Widen your skill-set with more techniques and combinations.
  2. Be ambidextrous. Practice both sides of your body an even number of times. Perform the kata with your favored side and then your weaker side (the left side for right-handed people; the right side for left-handed people).[6]
  3. Visualize yourself. Picture your own movements within each kata as well as your imaginary opponent’s. Imagine yourself from your own first-person point-of-view, as opposed to an external, third-person POV. Project a mental image for your body to fulfill in action. Practice this while physically practicing katas or while doing something else entirely.[6]
    • It may also be helpful to practice in front of a full length mirror.
  4. Practice with external distractions. Once you’ve mastered a kata while alone in a controlled environment, seek out or create a less controlled environment. Sharpen your ability to focus on your kata while other elements try to call attention to themselves. Perform your kata in front of other people, in noisy areas, and/or in less than ideal weather, such as heavy rain, snow, heat, etc.[6]
  5. Mess yourself up beforehand. Practice rebounding from internal distractions. Stub your toe, spin around until you’re dizzy, or work yourself up into a rage over something that’s been bothering you lately. Then perform your kata in this less than ideal mindset, which will resemble your mental state in an actual fight much more closely than always practicing with a calm mind will.[6]



Tips

  • Some karate schools kiai (yell) throughout the kata; some kiai only at the end; some kiai only while performing the strongest techniques of the kata, called in English "finishing techniques" or "killing techniques"; some do not kiai at all during certain kata. As karate was originally practiced in Okinawa at night or early morning, in someone’s yard or a room of their house, and this sort of training was banned by the mainland Japanese government, there were some systems that didn't have any yells until the modern era. Other styles use kiai to focus all energy (ki) of the body and mind in one single blow, so kiai is not just a scream, but a breathing technique that comes out not from the lungs, but from the tanden. That's why most traditional Okinawan styles do have two or three throughout a kata: they don't yell in every technique, and the focus in the strongest blows.
  • When you kiai, do it loudly. It shows confidence and strength.
  • When practicing a kata, keep remember not to go up and down. Some kata only has 1 stance, make sure if you start low in your stance, keep doing your kata low, if you start high in your stance, go high.
  • A technique popular with many high-ranking martial arts practitioners is to imagine that they are confronting a many-headed dragon, attacking from several directions. While it may sound silly, the point is to force you to strive for absolute perfection in every element of the form.
  • While it is possible to kill someone with one hit, of course this does not always happen. The point of imagining a single, lethal blow is so that you will focus all your energy in that one strike; that way your techniques will reach their full potential.
  • Most Kata techniques are practiced against the middle-zone of the target (the torso) because this is the core of the target – it’s easy to bob your head or move a leg, but it’s harder to fake a move with your whole body. Practicing against the middle-zone is most important.
  • While kata training is the emphasis of most traditional karate, kobudo (traditional weapons, e.g. the staff), and iaido (swordsmanship) schools, it is a supplementary practice in sport karate, kendo (fencing), aikido, and judo. Regardless, you can distinguish your kata performance by following these guidelines.
  • Kata training helps you develop technique, but it does not help you develop power. To do that, you need to strike something that offers resistance, such as a punching bag or makiwara (striking post) for empty hands, or similar device designed for weapons. This should be done in a slow, careful, progressive manner to build the strength of the wrists and ankles, and a sense of your own striking range. It will also improve your kata performance by making your moves more powerful and realistic. People who only do kata without striking against a bag or post have a light, whip-like style that exaggerates their true striking range. This is easy to see with a little training; it works in no- or light-contact tournaments, but not in fights, because it doesn’t strike through the target.
  • Regardless of whether you kiai or not, try to use the same level of focus in all the kata, but focus all your energy (ki) in the strongest techniques. They usually are at the end of a series of movements in one direction; don’t just save it for the last technique, or your kata will look soft, and you will be practicing ineffectively. Also, do not overemphasize kiai screaming at every technique, like they do in open tournaments. Some martial art schools, far from their sources, have added a kiai that sounds like a loud whisper made by blowing air through the mouth, lifting the point of the tongue to the alveoles in the upper side of the mouth . It is a waste of energy. Other schools do their kiai from the throat, which may damage the vocal cords; it is also wrong. The only traditional kiai in Okinawan karate is done from the tanden. Imagine each technique against an imaginary opponent is decisive, and this will help your technique against a real opponent be decisive, too. If you add a traditional kiai from the tanden to the strongest to those techniques, your kata will be right (although you will not win open tournaments).
  • There are two characters used for "kata" in Japanese; the first is a fixed form, like a sewing pattern; the second is a form that can be adapted to suit a given situation. Martial arts kata are the second kind; you are supposed to adapt the techniques to suit your own body and personality (though not necessarily to perform the kata differently).
  • There is no plural in Japanese; it's one kata, two kata, not two "katas."

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://www.gkrkarate.com/index27.php?x=about-gkr~Yellow-Belt-8th-Kyu%7CIntroduction-to-Kata^`
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/jka/training.html
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 http://www.gkrkarate.com/index27.php?x=about-gkr~Yellow-Belt-8th-Kyu%7CFirst-Kata-Technical-Checklists^`
  4. ↑ http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=496
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 http://www.gkrkarate.com/index27.php?x=about-gkr~Yellow-Belt-8th-Kyu%7CFirst-and-Second-Kata^`
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 http://www.karatebyjesse.com/51-awesome-ways-to-practice-kata/
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