Youtube is just an incredible resource for teaching yourself a kata, some kata, or many kata. If you have some video editing tools, you can create some terrific training tools. I take small segments of a kata, perhaps a direction or two, maybe three and play it on loop, and watch it over and over to get the nuance and timing. I want to be able to close my eyes and see the movement clearly. The great thing about video is that we have a whole range of really authentic sources doing the kata now. Some are old masters, some are newer. Many are tournament winners. And with video, we can better understand the differences between movements of kata of similar systems, for example those that descend from Kyan, or those those that descend from Miyagi, or those that descend from Itosu. I grew up in Hayashi-ha ****o Ryu. There were plenty of experiences of senior students who would be shown a long kata, like gojushiho, just a few times. The idea was that if they did not remember it, they were not ready to learn it. Now we have video, lots of video of lots of different gojushiho kata. We can watch it over and over, allowing us to focus on small details in ways that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. I believe we all stand to gain from this kind of training. -Cayuga Karate
