Retrospectives and resolutions

The year at our karate club traditionally ended with the belt tests, followed by just a few extra training before the winter holidays break, which provide the best relief for yearly retrospectives and, more importantly, new plans!

I have to admit that I am a sucker for planning. Since I was a child I've been very good at making plans about everything, and even better at not living up to those plans ever! So, I just have to make some plans for karate training too, of course.

But first, I'll take a look at the closing year as a whole, and the main events.

The main theme of the year has been for me simply to prepare for the green belt test in December. That's right, I started to think about it and train for it practically the next day after the previous belt test. As customary to probably the vast majority of karate clubs around the world, we have reference lists of techniques, exercises, kata etc. that we are very likely to be requested to do at each belt test. Therefore, training for a belt test usually means to pay special attention when that target material is done during classes, have some training on our own practicing the list, and in the meantime bomb the teachers with questions and requests of clarifications, giving anything that is not on the list a lower priority. However, I see that it is quite usual for people to start following this pattern in the last month or two before the test, while I wanted to be more prudent and started straight away, i.e. a whole year before! On the other hand, this hasn't prevented me to still find out during the test that I've been doing a couple of things in the wrong way all the time... but at least I had no regrets, and when I stepped on the tatami for being tested, I felt confident and proud to know that whatever the outcome of my test, it would have been right.

The year also proved useful to learn something about fitness. I trained at my usual moderate pace (two classes a week plus a solo training once or twice a month) from January to the end of summer, but in September I got a combination of bad luck with an unusually long flu followed by a broken toe, resulting in a 6-7 weeks without training, just when I had planned to increase solo training to a weekly basis for the last two months before the test. When I came back, I really felt my legs have lost all their power built in the previous months... I was almost tempted to postpone the test, but now I've learned that enduring for just a week or two is enough to regain your full strength, even after almost a month of no sports.

But then how about that planning I've been talking about? Well, one year ago about this time, I was laying down on a piece of paper my first yearly karate plan (before that I really didn't have a plan of my own, I was just following the others). It was not much more than a bulleted list added by pencil on top of the real reference list for the test, printed on a piece of paper. That piece of paper followed me to every training for the whole year, so that after each class I could spend half an hour at least with my own tasks. At the end of the year, the piece of paper is literally falling apart... a good sign that it didn't just sit in my bag all the time!

It's not really much of a plan, but I thought it's interesting now to take a look at it in retrospective, and see how much I've been living up to it, and how much I have fallen short!

Homework, sweet homework! (part II - Do's and don'ts)

So you are at home, and you feel like you could do some karate homework tonight. You put on your karate gi, push some chairs and tables away to make room, and re-enact a full-length dojo training session start-to-finish, or until you accidentally break some bone against the furniture, some furniture against your bones, or your cat. Next time you do some martial arts homework, it will involve watching kung-fu movies or YouTube clips.

My idea is that there is no need to try hard fitting normal training into your living room. If you have a whole good room available for that at home, then good for you, but otherwise it doesn't really matter. Instead, homework time can be a great opportunity for doing things that you can't do during lessons. Wait, do I mean there is something you cannot do at the dojo but you can do at home? Not really, but there are certainly things you cannot do when training with the whole class, simply because the teacher and other students cannot wait for you. So unless you are allowed to freely use the dojo space for your own solo training, take advantage of homework time for making detailed investigations and exercises tailored to your personal needs.

#1 - Review lesson material

One idea is to write down notes (or keep in mind) right after each class, about the 2-3 things from today's lesson that left you feeling you need to understand better, or that you simply don't want to forget. Your homework is to go over those few things at your own pace, doing as many repetitions you think you need, without having to adhere to a schedule or switch to the next exercise until you choose so.

Oriental martial arts typically have a very extensive material to learn (techniques, kumite drills, kata etc.), and this unfortunately means there is a good chance that many months can pass before you see a specific technique again in a class, unless it's one of the basics. Reviewing in a short time (same evening or next day) what you've just done at the dojo, and then reviewing it again a few days later, can really help to keep it in mind. Personally I have realized that I have always reviewed kata at home, while I have rarely reviewed self-defense techniques, and the results are nowadays very clear: I have an easy time remembering all kata we've seen in classes, even if some of them we haven't done for a year, while on the other hand I still have troubles remembering the self-defense stuff!

#2 - Slow down everything

Whatever our level and experience, I am pretty sure we are all aware there is room for improving every single technique we can think about. Perhaps when people talk about improvements, they mostly think about becoming faster and more powerful, but it's also quite clear that precision is the enabler of both speed and power. If your technique is sloppy, speed and power will be wasted, and the final result inefficient.

In musical instruments studies, a lot of people will tell you that if you want to get fast, you need to practice slow (not exclusively slow, but still). I think the same applies to karate. Unfortunately, slowing yourself down for your needs is the least likely thing you can do during a class training: the teacher sets the pace, and everyone just follows. If the pace is too fast, there is not so much chance to fix subtle mistakes. Take advantage of being able to set your own pace freely at home, so that you can focus on the details of your techniques, listen to your body feedback, and figure out what you need to adjust.

#3 - Select/adapt exercises for limited space

No reason to worry about not being able to practice a whole kata in your bedroom, when there are so many other things you can do: single techniques or combinations in fixed stance, kihon ido limited to one or two steps in any direction, and even close-quarter self-defense and kumite drills.

But as a matter of fact, even exercises that require more space can be adapted to a smaller area. How about kata for instance? It might seem impossible to practice kata at home, but what if you break down the kata into shorter sequences and practice only one of them at a time? What if you modify the enbusen (steps pattern), changing directions differently so that you never need to move too far? It won't be the same kata, but this doesn't mean it will be less useful to practice. And no, it will definitely not mess up with how you do the full kata in the regular way.

#4 - Physical supplementary exercises

In addition to technique, you can of course also do some straight physical exercises. There are many which don't require to move around at all, such as push-ups, sit-ups and squats. If you don't want to sweat even a bit, stretching is always good.

Also look for physical exercises that still have a lot of karate-feel. For instance, choose a demanding stance such as shikodachi or nekoashidachi, and try to stay there for a few minutes in a row (pausing when necessary). This is actually a good alternative for strengthening the leg muscles, and it doesn't even require more space than the one for standing up!

Homework, sweet homework! (part I - Motivational traps)

What can turn an average student into a very good student? My answer is simple: homework!

It might sounds impractical, but you really should continue practicing karate at home. Classes with the teachers are paramount, but practice on your own is just as necessary. It is when you're on your own, that you can really think about what you're doing, evaluate yourself, and focus on what you personally need to practice to "fix" your weaknesses. However, not everyone is lucky to be allowed training at the dojo on their own, and even in that case the opportunities are limited. Therefore, I want to write about how someone can bring some karate practice at home. Certainly your living quarters aren't the best place for a full, well-round karate training session. You just can't expect to be able to do the same things you can do at the dojo. But luckily there are still many useful things to do.

Before that however, the biggest obstacle is probably the lack of motivation. What are possibly the most typical motivational traps to avoid?

#1 The "I have no time" trap

This is the most common thought that puts anybody (me first) off from starting doing things. Yes, we all have to work or study, possibly a family with children to care after, and other unavoidable duties. But if we did manage to find time in our life for karate classes, probably we have some extra time for homework too. The key is not to think that it has to be a whole training to be worth it. Perhaps there's 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there for some exercise that doesn't require a full warm-up. You can even find some non-technical exercises that need so little concentration, that you can do them while watching TV. Your best friend here, is keeping in mind that a 5-minutes exercise is better than no exercise.

#2 The "I have no space" trap

Of course, nothing beats our beloved giant dojo wooden floor. But if at home you have at least one area wide enough for you to stand up and extend your arms and legs, then you have in fact enough room for a lot of exercises (just think of all the Kihon techniques that are practiced from a fixed stance). If you can even take a step or two in one direction, the number of options skyrockets.

#3 The "I am too tired" trap

Nobody says that homework should be physically demanding. Karate is not entirely physical, but even the physical aspects of it are not all about power and speed. There is a lot to practice that doesn't require sweating or burning calories: coordination, fine-motor skills, and balance for example. As long as you aren't having troubles staying awake, you are not too tired yet.

#4 The "I can't keep up" trap

This has always been a typical mistake of mine: making a plan too extensive and ambitious, and then failing at keeping up with it. If you're the type that love routines and has no problem sticking to them, then writing down a small plan or list of exercises to do each day can be a great help. But if you're like me, going easily overboard in the planning phase, you may set yourself up for failure later. It might be best, to make no plan or schedule at all. Instead, keep only a wish list of ideas you'd like to review or drills you want to go over again, and use it as you see fit. Or even just improvise on the fly.

Once we recognize the traps we setup for ourselves for not practicing, and know a trick or two to wiggle free, we're ready to think about how to use the limitations of the home environment to our own advantage.

Kata training schemas

In my previous musings I wrote about a lot of ideas I have tried out on an occasional basis when practicing kata. I might have gone too far, and that must have been indeed because I didn't know to properly practice kata, except going back and forth with the whole thing. But as lucky as I am, someone decided to organize extra classes in our club exactly for learning better kata training, under the guidance of our most active kata tournament veterans. Note that this relates only to the practice of kata performance, not the study of its applications such as bunkai.

Now that I've been in many of those kata trainings already, I'm getting a much clearer idea about how to arrange my own kata practice. First let me highlight a few principles which I believe I have noticed during those lessons, and make for good kata practice, although not strictly mandatory:

1) Dedicate a good block of time to focus only on kata: I'd say about 30min minimum for each chosen kata. The extent is important to allow room for a progression in the repetitions. Performing a kata a couple of times only in the middle of a longer training is still beneficial at least for refreshing your memory on the sequence, and get a good feeling on stances and techniques, but probably to really improve one kata a step further it is required to dedicate a focused training now and then.

2) Choose a theme, i.e. an aspect of kata performance to focus on in today's practice, such as posture and stances, techniques, speed, breathing, power generation and so on. Or alternatively, encompass multiple themes on a single kata.

3) Plan a short progression of repetitions, where in each of them you either focus on a different aspect, increase the difficulty, or both.

4) Loop a few times over your planned progression, so that you do each different repetition more than once. Optionally also slightly increase the difficulty at every loop.

The following examples are taken directly from those classes, but they are just that: examples. Making up your own is the way to go!


Example A: This sample progression requires to first divide the chosen kata into 3 section. It then focuses on increasing speed.

"No speed" here means to do each kata movement as slow as needed, and then stop to check the posture, take as long as it takes to make necessary arrangements to the stance, then continue with next movement.

- each section of the kata

#1 - Stances and legs techniques only, no speed
#2 - Stances and legs techniques only, half speed and power
#3 - Normal, no speed
#4 - Normal, half speed and power

- the whole kata start-to-finish

#1 - Half speed and power
#2 - Full speed and power (normal)

- total 14 rounds per kata


Example B: This sample progression shifts focus on different aspects, each time trying to push yourself beyond the level at which you would normally do, and finally go back to the normal best-effort version of the kata.

- the whole kata, loop over the following sequence 3 times

#1 - Stances and legs techniques only, half speed and power
#2 - Stances and legs techniques only, half speed but over-emphasize the hips movements
#3 - Normal, quarter speed keeping maximum possible tension as in the Sanchin kata
#4 - Normal, as fast as possible (but with rhythm) even if stances and power are sacrificed
#5 - Full speed and power (normal)

- total 15 rounds per kata

More than one way to skin a kata (part IV - Developing Strategies)

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.

More than one way to skin a kata (part III - Rhythmic Variations)

After trying to warp space, why not trying to warp time too?

In kata a very important concept is rhythm. Since they are the representation of a battle, each kata has its own rhythm: the sequence of moves does not flow at constant speed like a metronome, but each technique is given a proper timing depending on what it actually represents in terms of application to such imaginary battle. Hence there are both fast and slow techniques, and the pause between any two of them can be sometimes as short as possible and sometimes longer. Furthermore, the kata can be typically broken down in smaller subsequences, each of which could be done as a "burst" followed by a pause of a few seconds, standing firm in the last position.

While there is usually an "official" way to do each kata, and that also includes an official rhythm to use as reference, I've see experienced people (especially of black belt rank) choose different rhythms, probably because each person may have a slightly different interpretation of the battle in his imagination. Being still very much a beginner, interpreting things in my personal way is not really my concern yet... but once again, the purpose of these ideas is only to vary the challenges of training, so that while on one hand I focus on learning each kata in the correct way and through repetition iron the kinks and get used to do it without thinking, on the other hand I can occasionally break away from the repetition routine to force my concentration to work in a different way, as if "resetting" the whole learning process. Here are my first few ideas for doing that by changing the rhythm.

#1 - Kiai repositioning

Almost every kata, with few exceptions, features one or more "kiai"-shout at some point. These mark the most decisive and potentially encounter-ending strikes of the sequence, usually the ones done with the greatest power and possibly also speed.

However some of our teachers have already hinted at the idea of making our own decisions on which strikes we mean to be decisive. This does not normally allow to place the "kiai" somewhere else, at least in front of the class... but of course it can be tried when no one's watching.

So here is my first and simplest rhythmic variation idea: to experiment repositioning a kata's "kiai" shouts to a different technique than normally. This actually has effects on the rhythm of the techniques both before and after, such as anticipating or delaying a pause, or creating one when normally there isn't any.

You can find a confirmation that this idea is not completely off from the two basic Gekisai kata in Goju-Ryu style, which are very similar to each other: these two kata have in common a sequence of five techniques on a fixed Zenkutsudachi stance, but while the first kata (Gekisai dai Ichi) has the "kiai" on the 5th technique, the second kata (Gekisai dai Ni) has it on the 3rd technique instead.

#2 - Forced rhythm

Once we have understood the correct rhythm for a kata, a possible challenge is to force the kata into a different rhythm, even if this might be potentially incorrect in the sense that it may fail to represent a reasonable application of its techniques.

It can be as simple as choosing the same forced rhythm for each subsequence, for example "one technique slow, pause, two techniques quick, pause", and stick to this pattern even when the correct way would imply the pauses in different places.

If something more challenging is wanted, the forced rhythm can be applied to the whole sequence rather than "resetting" it at each new subsequence, even if this means that those subsequences cease to be separate. Does this idea sound wrong? If it does, it's because it is... but this is kind of the whole point: doing it with a wrong rhythm is what challenges our ability to take a step back from the "automatic" performance of a kata, and exercise more control over each technique.

#3 - Zeroed rhythm

As a special case of the previous idea, we can try to perform the kata with a completely "flat" rhythm, meaning that every move in the sequence is done with equal speed and timing, with pauses of the same length.

Clearly, this removes a lot of meaning from the kata, and should definitely be done really only once in a while in our practice. But if you try to do this on a kata you know well and have been doing for such a long time that it has become automatic for you, you'll see for yourself how challenging it can actually be when you arrive at a pause point and instead you have to go straight into the next move without delay, even if you're doing all of this slowly!

#4 - Speed dialling

The last idea is about a more "soft forcing" approach: rather than changing the time relationship between techniques each of which is still done at correct speed, we now keep those relationships intact but we increase or decrease the speed of each technique individually.

Personally I've noticed that this actually requires me even a greater concentration effort than all the previous ideas. Perhaps the best approach to make this work, is first of all to recall clearly which techniques are normally slow and which ones are fast. Second, perform the kata start-to-end (at reduced speed overall, using longer pauses) and purposefully slow down all the fast techniques, as slow or even slower than the normally slow ones. Finally, try to speed up (as gradually as necessary) the normally slow techniques while keeping the rest slow. Ideally the final result would be an odd version of the kata where all that was normally slow is now fast and all that was normally fast is now slow. Enjoy!

More than one way to skin a kata (part II - Extracts)

This second part of the series on supplementary kata exercises is grounded in the idea of seeing each kata as if it was a book full of information. Why not taking small elements out of it and making them individual exercises?

I'm going to make some examples here taken directly from our style's kata, even tho I am aware that they won't make sense to anyone who doesn't know to what I am referring to exactly.

#1 - Stance transitions

In many ways, stances are the true foundations of good karate technique. While in sparring or fighting you are not moving around in formal stances, they are definitely going to be used as part of both attack and defense techniques. Perhaps without being fully aware of it, you often enter a stance as a reaction to the opponent's attack, and you also normally end your counterattack in a stance as well.

But it is already a very hard work to learn one single stance properly, and particularly frustrating when you notice that you have stopped thinking about proper stance for a while and you have now moved backwards instead of improving. With each stance being difficult to "nail", it clearly gets even harder to move from one to the other making sure that they are both correct, and that the transition between the two does not leave you dangerously without balance.

Every kata goes through many stance transitions, thus it provides a lot of excellent suggestions for practicing these: just choose one stance you feel particularly weak at, find it inside a kata you are familiar with, then take either the technique which leads to that chosen stance from a previous stance, or the technique that from that chosen stance leads to the next. You now have extracted a very short and simple exercise to repeat over an over with total focus on that stance transition.

A special case of this can be a "pivoting" exercise, where you take two or more stances that follow each other while one foot of yours remains in the same spot on the ground all the time. An example can be found in the three beginning moves of the Gekisai kata, where the left foot never lifts or shifts, only rotates in its spot, while the body goes through three different stances as it turns left, move forward and then backward.

Another interesting extract I've been practicing myself, is the fast consecutive forward-backward steps in shikodachi stance from the kata Seiyunchin. It is very difficult to walk on a straight line in this stance (in fact it is even pretty hard just standing still, it's the stance most demanding to your legs muscles!). This two-moves sequence from the kata seems to be truly useful if repeated on both sides while following a straight line painted on the floor to keep your direction of movement under check all the time.

#2 - Stance verification

A somewhat different idea compared to the previous, in this case I want to focus on a more specific challenge common to all stances, which is that of getting the right distance and angle between your feet.

There are some occurrences in kata where you have to turn a certain angle starting from a certain stance and ending into a mirror image of the same stance (i.e. same stance but done on the other side), without lifting or shifting your feet. An example with the sanchindachi stance is found in the kata Sepai which contains a swift turn 90 degrees in this stance, followed by a slow turn back. Another example is found in Shisochin kata, where there is a 135 degrees turn between two mirrored zenkutsudachi.

The point here is that when you are turning like that on the balls of your feet (i.e. without lifting nor shifting them) and both the starting and the ending stances should be correct, then if you didn't have just the right distance and angle between your feet in the starting stance, either the direction you're facing after the transition will be incorrect, or your ending stance will be very visibly wrong: the distance between the feet will still be right, but the ending stance will be too wide sideways and too short frontally, or otherwise too narrow sideways and too long frontally. By repeating the transition right and left, you can each time adjust your feet slightly until the ending stance looks and feels the same as the starting stance.

#3 - Kihon Ido and Kihon Kumite samples

As a continuation to the previous points, in a kata you can find slightly longer sequences of moving techniques that can be extracted and practiced individually as Kihon Ido or together with a training buddy as Kihon Kumite, with the latter taking inspiration from the bunkai or coming up with original ideas.

In particular, it might be useful to look for sequences containing unusual and rarely used techniques, that you normally never practice as such, and by extracting that sequence you can have a small exercise to dedicate some training time to that technique. This especially includes those which are so much based on subtle movements and footwork that cannot be practiced alone but only in the context of a sequence.