Friday, March 2, 2012

towards a better karate

I am writing for a small audience of karate practitioners who believe their karate could be improved. If you see the rise of Mixed Martial Arts and begin to doubt your karate training, this blog is for you. If you have heard of hidden applications in kata, this blog is for you. If you are a practitioner of other martial arts like Judo, Aikido, or Tai Chi, and still hanker for more, this blog is for you. If you think kata sucks, this blog is for you. I fit the above profile and these are my thoughts on making a better karate.

The three K's
Traditional Karate may be said to be incomplete without it's three main components:kumite (sparring); kihon (basics); kata (forms). Kata is the DNA of karate. Like genes, kata give evidence of karate's origins, and also its potential. A better understanding of kata will help us determine where our karate may have gone wrong and how we might fix it. Naturally, any change in our understanding of kata will dramatically change our practice of kihon and kumite.

In the posts to follow I will explain how I interpret kata and make it integral to my karate training. For now, I will leave you with the thought that drives my obsession: Kata reveal that Karate is the original Mixed Martial Art.

5 comments:

  1. Looks like a winner of a resource here!!! Looking forward to contributing to the discussion!!!

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  2. Hot damn! You got my attention! Looking forward to following this Meguro!

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  3. Let's get this party started, sandman!

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  4. Sweet!

    Karatebyjesse agrees with ya and it makes sense. I mean really Karate was built upon Siam Boxing, Chinese forms and Greek/Indian wrestling...

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