In the last episode of this series of articles, I'm going to take this exercise of extending kata practice to a different direction. These last few ideas are related to a somewhat higher-level concept, which is the fighting strategy suggested or exemplified by each kata in your martial arts style.
First of all, a word of warning. I've been practicing karate for less than a year and a half so far, and I've been exposed to 8 different kata during this time. I'm not even supposed to remember all these kata at this stage, and much less I can pretend to understand their strategic meaning. In fact, I still only have a very vague understanding of that and only for 5 of them, so please take these as largely tentative:
- Gekisai dai Ichi: defending aggressively and striking hard
- Gekisai dai Ni: evasion from the striking line of the opponent
- Saifa: positioning around the opponent, and force-moving the opponent as well
- Seiyunchin: unbalancing the opponent
- Sanseru: manipulating the opponent's limbs and takedown
Whether my current interpretation of these is accurate or not, they could be reasonable examples of strategies suggested by kata, that could be used for the following practice ideas. These ideas are not straightforward as those in the previous articles, and require a somewhat different kind of concentration because the changes to how the kata is done are much more subtle and applied all the time in the background.
#1 - Emphasizing the strategy
Once the strategy of a kata is revealed to you, one practice idea is to purposefully try to keep it in mind all the time while repeating the kata and visualizing the imaginary opponents in your mind, and emphasize such strategy in each and every technique, or at least those which are more clearly related to it.
This means, for example in the Gekisai dai Ichi case, to emphasize the aggressiveness of both the attacks and the blocks, so that the latter are turned into strikes, and perhaps generally push the performance of the kata towards a higher degree of power. In Gekisai dai Ni, you can emphasize evasion by visualizing the striking line of the opponent and subtly dodge it during defensive techniques, or increase the distance covered by evasive steps. In Saifa, you can slow down and alter the power dynamics of some of the strikes (keage) to turn them more into pushes (kekomi) which would reinforce the idea of force-moving the opponent (in this case, away from you).
All these will be subtle changes that probably only a few people will notice while watching you perform the kata, but you will have to strive to keep them "active" all the time during the kata. This idea of "overdoing" techniques a little bit is meant to increase your own awareness on how each of them can be connected to the kata's overall strategy.
#2 - Spreading the strategy
This is a very general idea to really get into the spirit of one kata at a time. It might have been even a better idea to try this out when still a total beginner learning the first kata, but I suppose it can still be done any time, and perhaps it might be especially useful for those who want to really dig into the kata required for their next belt test.
The idea is to take the strategy of your chosen kata and really try to keep it in mind at all time, applying it to as many different exercises as possible. All Kihon, Renraku Waza, prearranged forms of Kumite, sparring and anything else you do in a class, done with that strategy in mind. Once again, other people may not even notice your changes from the outside, except probably in free sparring where your chosen strategy should definitely become more visible! You can try this idea for a single training day or for an extended period of time, for example if you've decided to focus your studies on a single kata for the time being.
#3 - Cross-referencing the strategy
As a last and more advanced idea, you can try to bring up elements of one kata strategy into another kata.
Perhaps you can turn Saifa into a more aggressive version by bringing in the Gekisai dai Ichi strategy, or the other way around bring you can take the Saifa focus on positioning into Gekisai as well as its "sticky hands" and pushing strikes.
This should create interesting combinations that slightly change the rhythm and dynamics of each kata compared to its standard version. Of course not all of these combinations are going to be easy however: the Gekisai strategies are so simple that can be ported to any other kata easily, but how to reference for example Sanseru strategies in another kata that doesn't already feature open hand techniques or takedowns could prove to be a much trickier task.
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