Who would win on a fight, Chuck Norris or Euclid? Let's find out, but no worries, you don't need to undust your old calculus books for this.
As explained in the previous post, this article will be the first of a series on possible ways to study a kata beyond its basic, traditional form and its bunkai and other applications. The general purpose of these additional exercises is to shift our focus to different specific aspects or details of the kata we are currently studying, so that when we go back to performing the kata in the regular and correct way, we might have more confidence thanks to some extra insight gained.
The first group of ideas collected here is all about modifying the "geometry" of the chosen kata as a whole, start to finish. The techniques (stances, attacks, defenses) stay the same as in the normal form. Presumably you can practice all the following variations with your chosen degree of speed and power, but some of these variations might prove puzzling especially if you are actually already good at the regular performance of your current kata to the point of normally doing it almost automatically: hence you might want to always start as slow as possible.
#1 - Embusen
From my current understanding of the term, the "Embusen" of a kata is the imaginary shape that you trace on the ground as you move and turn around to perform the kata from start to finish. If you had a pocket full of flour sewn to your karate gi, with a hole in it so that the flour would slowly spill to the ground, at the end of the kata you might literally see the shape of the embusen written in flour on the floor.
The first idea is to completely ignore or "remove" all the upper-body techniques of the kata, and just perform the stances, the steps and the kicks. Basically your legs should be doing everything in the kata normally, while your arms should be doing nothing except relaxing in whatever comfortable position you prefer and perhaps help a bit with balance if needed.
The purpose of this variation is to allow you to check your stances more carefully and to improve your embusen in terms of correct distances and angles.
#2 - No embusen
The second idea is the opposite of the previous.
This time we stand in a relaxed practice position with parallel feet at shoulder width (heikodachi) and perform only upper-body techniques of the kata, always remaining in the same spot with feet neither turning nor lifting.
There are a couple of non-obvious things to keep in mind while doing so:
- While your feet stand still on the ground all the time, your torso also remains forward-facing but your head should instead turn around to follow the direction of each technique properly: for example, if there is a block or attack towards your left side but with your body facing forward (as in the first shikodachi technique of Gekisai dai Ichi kata) you should really look left and perform the technique towards the same side, but if the whole body would turn to the left before the technique (as in the first sanchindachi technique of the same kata) then you should still face forward. In other words, your body in this exercise always faces forward, and it is your head and arms which adapt to the direction required to maintain the same relative angle with the body.
- Even tho you are ignoring the leg techniques, you may still "hint" at them with hips movements. This way you can mentally follow the complete sequence of the kata almost as if you weren't skipping any move. (Alternatively, I suppose you can also perform the kicks if you want, but from the heikodachi stance it might not always be possible).
I am not sure what could be the purpose of this variation, but it does challenge you especially on the not so basic kata. The difficulty of this exercise lies exactly in the points above, particularly the first i.e. redirecting your upper-body techniques to keep their proper relative angle with the lower body which the latter is "blocked" facing forward and not allowed to change the stance.
This variation is based on a simple idea: folding the entire embusen of the kata into a straight line, so that you perform all the techniques of the sequence moving only either forward or backward, but without ever turning around (unless when a technique requires a 360 degrees turn).
Let me tell you this straight: it is not as easy as it sounds. You might need your teacher's help to figure out how to linearize certain moves. Generally speaking tho, the linearization should not require to change the stance or the attack/defense technique itself, but it will certainly require to change how to transition between different stances.
This idea can actually be seen as a preparatory or complementary exercise to learning the bunkai of the kata, at least the one-on-one version of it where you need to direct all the techniques towards an opponent in front of you.
#4 - Mirror image
I have to thank sensei Paul Walker (www.shotokansensei.com) for this idea, since I have learned about it from his instructional videos.
The idea is very simple: to perform an exact mirror image of the kata, where right becomes left and left becomes right.
Performing a mirrored kata is generally very disorienting, probably more if you are already pretty trained in doing it correctly at full speed. It forces you to think carefully about next move every time, hence you will very likely discover that you cannot do it at your best dynamics (power, rhythm, breathing) but that you have to go back to home base and do it very slowly, one step at a time, just like you did when you were completely new to the kata. You might also find that your embusen ends up a little "skewed" as a result, forcing you to be more careful on distancing and angles.
Quite clearly the main purpose of this exercise is in the concentration effort. Another possible benefit is that for an asymmetrical kata it allows to practice all techniques to the other side as well.
#5 - Reverse execution
Another idea from sensei Walker's instructional videos is to try and perform the entire sequence backward, from the last technique to the first.
This is possibly even more difficult than a mirror image, because in many cases the sequences of techniques don't even work or make sense anymore, but you should still strive to perform them in reverse order and remember that with all these complementary exercises the purpose is simply in the effort required, not in their usability or applicability to a real fight scenario.
Just to make it clear, when I say "backward" I mean the following:
- start the kata from the last technique, then the second-last and so on, and end the kata with what is normally the first technique
- do all footwork backward, so that a normally forward-moving attack becomes a backward-moving attack and a backward-moving defense becomes a forward-moving defense
- ideally at the end of the kata you should have traced the same embusen as usual on the ground, but from the end point back to the starting point
- on the other hand the techniques themselves are not backwards, you are not "rewinding" your movements like on a VCR! a strike is still a strike, not a punch or kick pulling back
Once again an obvious purpose of this variation is to practice your ability to concentrate, but this time there will be a lot of extra work needed to adapt all the techniques to a reversed footwork, so that they more or less look like a strike could still hit and a defense could still block or deflect. There will be a lot of thinking required, and this will certainly make for a different kind of exercise!
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