2022-11-09

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Last time we’d met, I’d said something about the dangers of “anchoring” kata to the room where you learn it. For example, turning “towards the door” is a bad habit to learn since you’ll eventually be asked to perform the kata somewhere else, or even just facing a different direction. One student took that to heart and actually asked if we could turn out the lights when we practiced kata next time. How could I say no to that?

So tonight we began class with kata in the dark, and it went pretty well. I mean, it wasn’t totally dark, so students who were anchored to landmarks could still get through the kata, but that was only the beginning. Next we did it facing another direction, and then another, and the point was made. Yes, this kind of “anchoring” only affects kata, but it speaks to a broader issue of making assumptions.

Just as you can’t assume that the door is always going to be on your left for kata, you can’t assume that the attacker is going to start by stepping back with his right foot, making a downward block, and yelling “oi-zuki, jodan!” We need to be able to adapt to changes in our environment and the situation at hand. Kata helps with this, in a sense, because it often presents different solutions to the same problem, or similar solutions to different problems, but like everything else in karate, you need to take it to the next level - test it “live” - to be sure you can apply what you’ve learned when it really counts.