Do you want to learn karate or kung fu? You like uniforms, ancient lore, folklore romance, and of course great movies that are produced showcasing some of the coolest moves imaginable. How do they get so good? Well, you will discover that one of the precepts to teach traditional martial arts is to practice choreographed forms or what is called kata that is supposed to teach you to really fight in the streets. Yeah right! In this article, I will show why teaching kata or forms as a basis for being ready to fight in the real world is a disaster.
A kata is a set of preset and choreographed fighting movements, in the real world of fighting, nothing is preset
You cannot prepare for the unexpected training as if what you are doing is what you are doing. Fighting in the real world is explosive, chaotic, and unpredictable. You never know what will happen next. Katas and forms do not prepare you for the unexpected.
Each fight has its own personality that requires you to have practiced responding to surprise attacks.
A predetermined form of fighting cannot be justified when an actual fight has its own volatile personality, so to speak, and can and will change at any time depending on the circumstances. In other words, every real world fight is a living, moving, and breathing entity with its own life and life cycle. The only way to prepare for confrontational fights in the real world is to practice unpredictable and unrehearsed attacks and counterattacks, just like in real life.