Kata and the Alphabet

Some time ago, while explaining part of a kata, a little girl asked me, “But what if the bad guy doesn’t do that next.”

Good question … and there are two parts to my answer.

Part 1 is that it’s not about whether the bad guy does something “next.” It’s about whether he does something at all. That’s because kata isn’t teaching us to react to a given sequence of events. Rather, it teaches us to react to a group of possibilities, which may appear in any order.

See “Kata as ‘or’ not ‘and’” for more on this.

Part 2 is that, given Part 1, kata has to put things in some kind of order. That’s just how time works. But, just because things appear in a certain order in kata, that does not mean they need to be applied in that order.

Take, for example, the alphabet.

The “alphabet kata”

We learn the alphabet in a given order: “A”, then “B”, then “C”, and so on, all the way through “Z.” We are, in essence, learning “the alphabet kata.” And just like karate kata, we learn the “alphabet kata” so deeply that it’s difficult to perform in any other order. Think about it. Which is harder? Performing a kata backwards or reciting the alphabet backwards?

But even though we learn the alphabet in a given order, we have no problem throwing that order out the window when it comes time to use it. We instinctively know that it’s okay to write “pole”, even though all of the letters are in reverse alphabetical order. So why is kata any different?

Hint: It’s not. 😉