Karate

Karate and Self Protection from John Titchen

longevity

Learning more Kata to live longer?

This year, like thousands of people, I’ve enjoyed watching National Geographic’s ‘Limitless’ with Chris Hemsworth. In this show Chris looks at his lifestyle and talks to a number of medical specialists about how he might be able to stay healthier for longer through a number of different approaches.

One of the elements the series touches upon is the importance of cognitive health. This is not simply the importance of reducing stress, or of endeavouring to have a happy outlook on life, but finding ways to increase and maintain neuro-plasticity to ensure that the brain continues to function at a high level throughout our lives and during aging.

(Note my PhD is not in any medical related discipline so please excuse any use of laymen’s terms.)

One activity that was mentioned as being studied as a potential route to maintaining good cognitive function was dancing, in particular the activity of learning and rehearsing new combinations of movements.

Dancing is not Kata, although the two have much in common. I would of course argue that if you do not know and cannot actively apply under pressure the movements of your kata against a resisting opponent then you might as well be dancing. That should not be a controversial view given its historical resonance. I also suspect (although I have no data to support this belief) that the understanding of kata movements and the ability to relate them to paired practice may enhance any cognitive benefits of their practice because of the greater connectivity between the movement and other memories of position combined with tactile and visual stimuli recall.

When I began Karate, with Shotokan as my foundation style, as part of my training process I learned as forms many as I could. I would normally learn a kata from a book and/or a Kanazawa video before doing it in class. In this manner I learned and was assessed on the majority of the 27 kata in the Shotokan canon.

Over time my training aims changed and as a Dan grade I have focused on training as few forms as possible. I can see the overlaps, variations, adaptations and redundancies between different forms and choose to maximise my training time and depth of understanding by working on a small number of kata. My emphasis is on drilling and rehearsing useful principles through minimal numbers of techniques rather than collecting more and more of ‘the same’ techniques and kata. I teach my Shotokan students what I consider to be a sensible slimmed down kata syllabus prior to their Dan gradings to ensure a depth of understanding and ability to apply in alive training. After their first Dan grade they are free to train as many kata as they want, I only ask them to undertake the discipline of learning and investigating one new kata per grading to ensure they understand the principles involved.

At present, in my DART Karate classes, I teach my own kata to condense further drills, lessons and technique coathangers on tight embusens that maximise the ability to rehearse a huge amount of material in as few movements as possible. DART students train my two kata, Initiative and Escape, and two widespread old and useful forms: Tekki Shodan and Seisan.

But am I going about this wrong? I’ve been focusing on condensing what we do in regular training for combative effectiveness. I have taught kata as a condensed way of rehearsing important principles and maintaining mobility rather than focusing on it as a longevity tool.

In my own personal practice, in my own dojo, I no longer use kata training as a visualisation tool. I neither focus on an intent for each plane of movement, nor do I shadow box with kata and swim freely through solo rehearsal jumping at ease from combination to combination depending on what I imagine. I can do these, but I don’t really need to as I am using my kata hands on (and watching my students do the same) for the majority of all my classes. When I move through a kata I feel as if I am gliding through a kaleidoscope of options. Without students or an audience, I simply use each kata to move and breathe, to maintain my mobility and balance while focusing on nothing more than the movement, my mind only focused on what I am doing.

But should I learn more kata to improve my neuro-plasticity?

Trawling through research published online it is possible to find studies such as ‘Effects of Dancing on Cognition in Healthy Older adults: a Systematic Review’ , ‘Dance for neuroplasticity: A descriptive systematic review’ , ‘Does dance counteract age-related cognitive and brain declines in middle-aged and older adults? A systematic review’ , and ‘Physical activity for cognitive health promotion: An overview of the underlying neurobiological mechanisms’  which suggest the activity probably will have benefits.

It increasingly seems the consensus that exercise (and in particular exercise that requires a range of movement, variability and cognitive engagement) is going to be beneficial for cognitive health. What is not so clear is whether the adaptation of continuously learning new routines is going to transfer greater benefits than the adaptation and variety of continuously applying existing routines on training partners or of recalling the stimuli of multiple applications while engaged in solo practice.

So the wheel turns once more to the question of how we train and how we use our kata. If your kata is a distinct entity from your kihon or kumite training then there is likely to be greater cognitive benefit in undertaking the challenge of learning and practicing greater numbers of kata, especially if the amount of time you spend responding to varied kumite stimuli decreases as you get older. If your kata already has the pliability and variability of being your primary kumite medium ‘built in’, then you are probably getting proportionally greater cognitive stimulation from rehearsing fewer forms. Regardless of how many kata you train, variability of stimuli and movement is good for neuro-plasticity so it would be good to have a kumite medium that you can engage in regardless of age (I have students aged 11 to 70 free sparring). In similar vein it makes sense that the more ‘open’ and variable the kumite is (striking plus grappling) the greater the cognitive benefits.

So, whichever route you want to take to better health, get out there and train!

 

Training Inflation

“I’ve been training ‘X’ years.”

I’ve seen it written with such assurance and finality. The writer seems to feel that the statement, be it three years, ten years, twenty years or forty years, validates and elevates their argument and opinion to an infallible status.

I tend not to frequent martial arts forums any more. I used to engage in long discussions on elements of training and the rationales behind different approaches, but over time I gradually switched to books and blog posts instead. This was largely a matter of prioritising my time; writing long answers with evidence in online debates could take up days and those could be wasted if the other person had no intention of ever changing their mind or was simply trolling. I do still however encounter debate and comments on social media on the posts of some of the groups or friends I follow.

“I’ve been training ‘X’ years.”

Have you though? Really? What do you mean by ‘training’? Was that an unbroken period of regular study and working with others? Are you including your time in martial arts creche training as a young child?

I’ve noticed people ignoring gaps in their training where they took time out due to a relocation or a different job or to raise children. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break when other life pressures rise, but if you weren’t training… you weren’t training. Subtract those five, ten or fifteen years from your training total and be honest with yourself and others about your experience.

Experience. Experience and longevity are not the same thing.

There are many people that train once a week. Others train two, three, four or as much as seven days a week. Some people only train in classes, others supplement their class training with kata, drills, bag work or other martial arts exercises. If you are only ever training on your own (bag work or forms or shadow boxing) and not meeting up regularly with others to get peer or instructor feedback, are you really ‘training’ or just ‘mucking about’?

(That’s a genuine question, I really don’t know. Does it depend on the experience of the person? Does it depend on the nature of the training?)

When I was eighteen years old, in school term time I would do 17 hours of Karate classes a week in addition to 7 hours of personal training time (kata, weights and running). That’s the same number of class hours in a single year as someone training once a week for 12 years and I’ve met a lot of people that can only train once a week. Your ‘ten years’ might not involve as many hours actually training as another person’s ‘three years’. It’s okay to only attend once a week if that’s how martial arts fits into your life, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s the same thing as training two or three times that amount in the same timeframe.

Experience and longevity are not the same thing.

Some people either push themselves or are pushed by their instructors or their training system’s ethos to continually refine their repertoire and to broaden and deepen their study. No two years are ever the same. They are always developing. Others sadly get stuck on a hamster’s wheel, repeating the same year of training again and again. Their training still has value, but they aren’t really learning anything or furthering their skillset. In many ways they are perpetually stuck in a Groundhog day, their training years never truly increasing.

I’ve been training for a fair number of years now. No two years have been the same. I am always tweaking what I do and what I teach and trying to improve both. I am always actively looking for alternative techniques or training methods that can supplement or replace what I do if they prove to be superior for the context I envision. Those years don’t magically make me more knowledgeable than someone that’s trained regularly for a year in an area that I don’t study (such as swordsmanship) or in a field that is peripheral to my own syllabus (such as grappling on the ground). I’m ready and happy to learn from people that have trained for fewer years than me because I may have less experience and knowledge than them in their particular fields. I read a lot, I watch a great deal, and when I can I train with others that I feel have something to offer.

I’ve been training for thirty-one years now. That number doesn’t mean anything on its own. It conveys no status. It indicates no fixed level of ability, knowledge or experience. I don’t feel I have anything to prove, I do feel that I have a lot more to learn and a lot more that I can achieve.