to follow up nekoashi's point about learning the sequences, i've found a similar (and cumulative) effect happens once you have that same familiarity with individual techniques and stances, then you just need to see how to put them together from a kata, without having to worry about what and how you're doing, movement-wise. moral of the story: KIHON KIHON KIHON :evil:
Golly No. :Angel: The moral of the story is to practise small segments of the Kata again and again and again. :Angel:
I sort of taught myself Jitte. I was taken through the moves informally before class, so it was just a run through, then I kept looking at videos until I at least knew the techniques. Then it was a case of getting them in the right order! Which I did with the help of others. Basically, I still found it useful to have other people around me for various reasons, but was never actually taught the kata formally in class.
I agree with you here, it all comes down to kihon IMHO. Without mastery of the basics, you can do nothing effectively.
No. I really have a bee in my bonnet about this. Most training that I see is badly weighted towards Kihon. Kihon is quite a modern thing. By this I mean the emphasis on the drilling of random combinations of basic techniques. To improve the basic form of techniques you need lots of repetitive training, but I would recommend doing this through full or segmented Kata, not a completely separate training regime. People would understand Kata (and Karate) a lot better if they replaced the mass of Kihon training with solid Kata training.
I taught myself Tekki/Naihanchi (shodan I think) because we don't have it in the Karate style I do but went to an Iain Abernethy seminar where he showed some clinch drills taken from it. So I was interested in the kata and where the drills came from. It was mainly off youtube and a diagram I got from some website. I ain't gonna win any competitions with it but I can run through it and remind myself what the drills involved. I also regularly tweak or revisit my patterns and kata by watching them online. When I went back to TKD I pretty much revised my patterns by watching that Polish ITF fella on youtube. In conjunction with Stuart Anslow's pattern books. So not strcitly "learning" the patterns by myself but pretty near. As fishy said...once you have a degree of refined or educated movement down learning a new kata is pretty much applying that.
*does kihon in front of you and runs away* kihon is more than doing random combinations anyway, and doing lots of random combinations does not equal having ingrained good technique
Kihon to me is walking back and forth across the deck doing say ten punches in a row, or ten head blocks, etc. I would agree that doing a kata is much better than mixing random basic techniques together.
By the way, I love the Pinans, they are my favorite and I have done them many, many times. They are all you need really. I still prefer Pinan Shodan when I am on the spot demonstrating kata. There are a few theories about Itosu's creating them. The most popular ones are that he created them by taking moves from more advanced katas and the other is that he took a now forgotten kata known as "Chanan" and broke it down into five separate ones. We will probably never know the truth.
pinan shodan - oh. thats the one we call heian nidan. (i had to google it cause i'm not famillar with 'pinan') Yeah that a nice kata. Are you wado then, since you call yours 'pinan'?
Matsubayashi (Shosin Nagamine). It is Okinawan, that is why they are called "Pinan": [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNzcUfnGJyI"]Matsubayashi Ryu - Pinan Shodan - YouTube[/ame]
I have re-taught myself a kata on video (Seiunchin) after I hadn't practiced it for a while and remembered all of it but was having trouble piecing it back together. I really just use video as a reference and I really like seeing variations in different styles for bunkai purposes. I wouldn't be averse to learning kata by watching videos, but I know I wouldn't get the same level of technical precision or understanding of application that way. Regarding kihon--without all that kihon drilling I went through (and led in class, every now and then) I would not have nearly the same level of control and understanding of body mechanics that I have now. I learn by repetition, so learning the basic techniques and then learning the kata/bunkai worked quite well for me. YMMV.
I agree that with a good knowledge of the basics, it's possible to learn the outline of a Kata by yourself BUT it really does require a critical and knowledgable eye to look at what you are doing if your practice of the kata is going to go beyond the surface, especially as the katas become more complex and subtle! When i first learned Wanshu (which is not one of our required Kata on my syllabus and has since fallen by the wayside- i just don't have brainspace for it and all the other stuff i need for my Shodan coming up in 8 months or so), it was only at an unrelated Bagua class that the principles of the first move made sense to me! Thanks for another kind of Pinan, interesting.
You can most certainly learn the shape of the kata by using DVD and a camcorder to check your own movements but learning the deeper aspects is nigh on impossible unless the DVD has been put together by someone who really knows their craft,and more to the point,is willing to share it with Joe Public for the price of a DVD. Back in the seventies all I had was Kanazwa's book as a reference and had to practice straight after class to make sure I didn't forget what I had been taught on that class.
Even a camcorder doesnt help that much because if you don't really know what you're looking for, or have someone to tell you how the particular combination/turn/weight shift should feel... the difference between a good Gyakuzuki and a bad one can be caused by a very small error in foot position.
I taught myself the taikyouku's and sugoki taikyokus. then had my seniors and instructors correct me during class. now doing the same with the Pinans.
I was just thinking, without an instructor, learning a kata without a knowledgeable instructor might also make you learn the mistakes the practitioner (whomever is demonstrating the form). I suppose it would help if there are more than one person demonstrating the form. A couple of years ago, the Okinawan Seniors in our Karate Association put out a training DVD and on it they revealed a new kata. They only had 1 Okinawan Master demonstrate it. I'll try not to be too disrespectful, but I'll have to say trying to mimic an old man's version of the kata is completely unfruitful. They didn't even cover all the angles in the video so that you could see exactly what he's doing. They should have also had a competent practitioner 40 years younger demonstrating the form. I've learned the sequencing, but I'll probably have to wait awhile until anybody can correct me on what I may or may not have perceived correct.
