Rec and Sports

What is Kata Really Worth?

[I:http://www.uniquearticlewizard.com/extras/pics/bowzerimage20.jpg]Bruce Lee did his best to kill the kata. “Why should anybody do forms,” he queried. And, the one that most people remember, “Boards don’t fight back!”

It is too bad that Bruce was wrong. Forms can be totally amazing training tools. If they do have problems in them these shortcomings can easily be corrected.

When doing a form, first and foremost, one gets a work out. Do a form a dozen times, maybe ten minutes for an average karate form, and you will be sweating like the proverbial pig. They don’t only advocate body calisthetics, but they are a darn good cardio.

When doing a form one learns countless techniques. Some of these techniques, of course, are not for everyone. People have different bodies, after all, and different preferences, and so on.

But with so many techniques to choose from, the wealth of knowledge in a form is truly amazing. And every move has deviations and permutations and variations. It is a very easy thing, to sort through these techniques, find the ones you like, and adapt them to the imperfect playground of a battlefield.

The real blessing of kata doesn’t lie with the vast array of potential techniques or conditioning. The real blessing lies in another direction entirely. The real blessing is to be found in a simple word called ‘control.’

A fight is, at heart, the defining example of out of control. A person who has gotten in a fight has lost control. Thus, to win in a fight is to have control.

People, you see, practice controlling themselves by practicing kata. A person is is controlling himself if he is practicing kata. Really, it doesn’t matter if they win a fight if they have lost the battle for themselves.