What are the most important techniques in karate according to the kata?

Hey dudes,

So taking the idea of kata as a moving dictionary of karate technique, can we gauge the importance of techniques by how much overlap there is in the various kata, thereby judging how widely emphasised these techniques were by the people building the dictionaries?

This train of thought leads me to wonder why some of the techniques found in kata are so heavily prioritised.

e.g. manji kamae - it appears in loads of kata (jion, jitte, bassai sho, gankaku - to name just the ones I know) suggesting it's a pretty important technique. But when you're pairing up to drill attacking and counter-attacking, how often do you respond or have been taught to respond with manji kamae? I don't just mean having learned the bunkai, I mean having it as a staple technique in your fighting arsenal.

e.g.2. simultaneous uraken and yoko keage (heian nidan, kanku dai, heian yondan, bassai sho(ish)) - not one that I can imagine pulling out of the bag if someone's really going for me with malice.

So, karate folk of various styles: do you find that the most valuable techniques you find in your style equate to the ones that the originators of your kata find to be most worthy of repetition?

Bunkai specialists - do you place more focus on techniques that would, through virtue of appearing frequently throughout many kata, seem to be important?

I guess, for many of us, the most common techniques in kata are gedan barai and punch. But after those, some suprisingly esoteric techniques seem to show up fairly often.

 

note that shotokan is fairly heavily modified from the old forms. then again, shorin and goju aren't any easier to decypher most of the time.

keage+uraken comes from shorin's hammerfist and maegeri. it's just covering high and throwing a kick. manji gamae... is just weird. i see uses for it the way it's done in ****o ryu (with the upper hand coming from the outside as in an uchi/yoko uke), but the shoto version has always stumped me.

regarding focus on techniques, although i'm not a bunkai specialist, i tend to focus more on techniques for which i actually have a bunkai . the rest i simply do for the motor patterns.

also you just reminded me of a thread i wanted to post. cheers!

 

I'm gonna be greedy and go for two.

Junzuki and Shuto-uke.

Purely because of the principles of movement contained within both.

Gary

 

what gary said. i think the four basic ude-uke-waza, the shuto-uchi and the tsuki are what i consider THE most important isolated techniques, independently of their amount of instances in kata. within kata, i have no idea as i know far too many kata to keep notice.

 

Osu,


To me shuto mawashi uke = the fence


Osu!

 

A lot of it depends on the kata of your system, but breaking down the techniques in your kata will give you a pretty good overview of which kihon is the most important to your particular system.

Take something like Taikyoku I.
**Gedan Barai 8
**Seiken Chudan Tsuki 12
**Zenkutsu Dachi 20

Obviously nothing too crazy, but you kind of get the idea. Phillip Starr has a pretty good book out right now called "Hidden Hands", which is along the same lines as this thread. Worth a read.

 

For me it's all about Shuto Uke.

If I had to pick some back ups then Age Uke, Gedan Barai and Morote Uchi Uke would be up there too.

 

With Shoto anyway, I still think that a lot of the techniques and combinations are there to develop things other than deadly fighting skills. As for manji gamae/kamae, I guess that's training simultaneous attack/defence, or giving your chest a good stretch...

 

in goju, I would think that mawashi uke would be right up there

 

What's struck me about looking at the more modern bunkai interpretations is how often forearm smashes/strikes feature.
And yet how little forearm smashes and strikes feature in kumite.

 

That's because they're very strong and can knock the snot out of you.

 

Hello all. My answer would either be the one you are doing at that moment, or the one you can use at that moment in a fight. Not trying to be a wise ass, its just the only way I see to answer the question. The moves in a kata that seem to be the most repeated in Matsubayashi are the ones that require the entire body to move in sync and are the best ones to develop speed and dexterity in the body. I don't think they are prioritized by importance.

 

Welcome aboard nekoashi.

Good to have you here.

Gary

 

Domo

 

If you had to suggest one or two though - based on where you are now, what would they be?

Gary

 

I think the basic front snap kick and basic punch. The problem is, is that you won't always be in a position to use these. You may be too close in, have your opponents arms wrapped around you trapping you, etc. It is kind of a moot and silly discussion from my perspective. Its like arguing over which country is more European or more important to Europe.

 

I wonder if you're missing my point then.

It is often argued that kata are the dictionaries of either certain styles of karate or of karate as a whole. If you don't agree with this or don't believe that this assertion has ever been made, then the discussion is indeed moot for you.

For everyone else then, surely by looking at which moves appear frequently in kata we can see which moves were considered so important to the founders of karate as we know it that they appeared in many different styles (the "each kata is a style" argument) or that are so important that they are emphasised as worth training throughout your karate career ("the karate is a synthesis of all kata argument").

It seems to me that this is an argument that naturally progresses out of treating kata as the source of karate.

 

then again moosey, if we go by a viewpoint like, say, mabuni's, specifically that while one should have a good repertoire, one's base should only be a handful of kata, the statistics for repeated techniques would go right out the window. it doesn't invalidate the question you asked, but i think a more relevant one would be what kinds of applications are the most repeated/important/whatever. given which i'd say it's quite prevalent in kata to cover the weak spot you leave with an initial reaction, either before you attack or during your attack. see the kata seipai and pachu for concrete examples of those two things, respectively.

 

Without a doubt.

Gary