MMA, Krav Maga, Traditional Martial Arts And My Philosophy Of Martial Arts

see parentheses, i was being facetious. and who says the textbook has to agree with the old one?

 

But what do they tell you?

Do they tell you how to fight?

There are plenty of successful fighters who don't practice kata.

Coming at this from a teaching perspective, I do not teach people things unless I can explain the utility of it a succinct manner - like in under a minute.

So, let's say I am a hypothetical student, and I ask:

"Why do I have to learn these forms? Why can't I just drill the techniques, shadowbox and create my own solo sequences on an ad-hoc basis, as and when they suit my needs?"

What would your under-a-minute answer be? [EDIT: this is an open question to everyone]

 

Ah, I thought there was a serious point amongst the facetiousness

Well, after all those years of learning, it would take a lot of unlearning and reprogramming to come to different conclusions, no?

 

eh, depends how you approached the initial learning, i guess.

 

re: under a minute answer: in a class run by me you'd be bashing each other with bits of kata within minutes of learning them (i do the same thing with kihon), and with full knowledge you'd be doing so. if the question arose anyway: because they're part of the system, and they provide examples of fun ways yo bash people to bits. from that, branch out into whatever you want. hard to go make your own stuff without any prior experience though, wherever that experience may come from, but who said anything about not letting you do your own stuff? that'd be like telling you how to dress; in a dojo it's typical to use a gi, because formal TMA is usually very much a cultural continuum to one degree or another, but outside of that, who gives a damn what you do?

 

re: what kata tell you: they tell you how to move your body, and correspond to ways of affecting another person's body, in an abstract manner because said body isn't there. as i mentioned in post 161, you drill those things with a partner, which tells you how the body mechanics actually do stuff, and the you feed that back into formal technique training (NOT performance), for when you have no one to punch in the face. sadly much of modern karate for example carries (as cultural baggage, incidentally) the mindset of "everyone line up and do the kata 30000 times and that's it, which is a holdover from the original mass spread of karate (see black and white photos of early mass krotty training with dozens of people training at the same time), rather than training with each other with relevant corections (which is kind of the point of training in groups, but inpossible past a certain students to instructors ratio, hence the aforementioned mass kata/linework smorgasbords) along with corrections relation how to not derp while training without a partner.

 

also, i'm taking ages to write all this so i may be lagging behind in the conversation

*f5*

 

I emphasised the parts that have nothing to do with fighting.

On the preservation thing - if people are honest about that, then it's not a problem. The problem seems to manifest when preservation becomes confused with badassery - "We've all been told that our teacher's teacher was king of the badasses, which we must believe because we've invested so much of our time and energy into this thing. He did this kata, ergo perorming this kata will make me a badass."

This is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but in the same vein as my "homework for the unimaginative" comment - your list of reasons reads like a teaching aid for the unimaginative.

From my perspective, a lot of the importance of kata is standardisation of style - a particular way of moving. This, as far as I can work out, benefits the art (as a cultural organism, with a need to survive), rather than the individual practitioner. In this (rather thinly-stretched) genetic analogy, mutation does not serve the continued survival of the art, as a recognisable and distinct cultural artifact.

 

Now was that purely due to the training methodology or was the material being taught also a problem?

I've applied waza I have studied via kata in sparring and in real life, I've even taken sword waza and applied it in stick fighting, now while you get some differences due to blunt vs edged weapons what I did was take stuff I had only ever trained via kata-geiko and apply it not only in a different environment but also against a more skilled opponent.

I think perhaps you need to look at your understanding of the methodology and your understanding of the material you were being taught.

Does kata have problems? Yep sure it does.

Is something like BJJ or Boxing more efficient in its methodology? I'd say so.

However none of that detracts from pattern practice being a workable tool and one that covers far more than technical ability.

 

@david: very much so. which is why somewhere around post 158 i lamented the fact that kata change over time, because modern karate is often an absolute mindscrew (look up the kata jitte for example, or the end of the shotokan version of chinte*; you'll either laugh or cry)

*the only sane explanation for that one is that it's because of the fixation on starting and finishing in the same spot, yet people continue to try to hypothesize applications for it. even god can get tired of killing kittens, you know?

 

David,

It depends on the mutation, when and where it occurs and why it occurs.

 

Sure, but essentially doesn't it come down to the fact that the "elders" of a style have nothing left if their progeny come up with their own ways of moving? In a "traditional" setting, that is, as more modern teaching methods do not have the same emotional attachment to ways of moving, and prioritise utility and efficacy, and a more individual focus.

 

Also, Dean: when it comes to trying to crack a bokken over an unprotected skull, I certainly can see the utility in kata.

I'm just yet to be convinced that it has the same demonstrable advantages for empty hand training.

 

What is this empty hand you speak of?

 

judo?

 

I had a look at Chinte:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou14EWbogB0"]Chinte - Shotokan Karate - YouTube[/ame]

That guy is obviously a great dancer, but does that translate into being a good fighter? I can see some benefit in terms of training attributes, but could you not think of more efficient ways to train those attributes?

I also found an application of the hopping:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkT8bP6_874"]Practical Kata Bunkai: Chinte Hops - YouTube[/ame]

Which is interesting, but it looks like reaching to me. Teasing these applications out of kata looks to be a very fun intellectual exercise, but what it doesn't look like is an efficient way to learn to fight.

 

That's the one that scratches your bum in between cutting things

 

OK, now your starting to communicate like an adult that came to a forum to exchange ideas and learn. Body boxing as your calling it, isnt your only option per say. There is some equipment out there that will allow you to take full on strikes to the head but that stuff is really expensive and I'm not really sure how realistic it is to fight with body armor like that in the first place, idk.
Here's a point dude, if your just looking to build some self defense skills and not to be a pro fighter then what's so bad about no head contact sparring, you have to admit it has some usefulness. There are plenty of skills and good habits that come from it. You will learn the principles of range,timeing, rythym and how to control the contact point and dude that about sums it all up.
I'm going to suggest that you just stick with Krav,if you don't like it try something else with some sparring. From your op I think that you fell victim to some bad mma instruction, what ever you do just remember learning all this martial arts stuff takes a lot of time.

 

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"jumping over your defeated opponent"