At one time or another, most of us who have practiced Kempo (or any kata based art for that matter) have been tempted to create our own kata. Perhaps it was for fun, or to help remember some techniques that you don’t practice often enough, or maybe to have some flashy moves to impress the judges at the next open tournament. Cool.
Most of us have also dropped the kata, or even the idea of creating one. One might think based on my occasionally reactionary stance in regards to kempo material that I’d be against it, but no, more power to the kata creators, within reason.
David Krueger at 24fightingchickens.com wrote a fine article about creating a kata with very good advice for the creative process involved in kata creation, and he began the article with a selection of questions to ask yourself before you start. The first question was the most important: Why do I want to create this kata?
The time that most people get uneasy about the creation of a kata is when the kata is to become a codified part of the curriculum of a school or style. Many of the more modern kata are tagged with the ‘he just made it up’ derision, forgetting perhaps that at some point, every kata was ‘just made up’ by someone. The time I get uneasy about people creating a kata is when they are planning to add it to their curriculum, but not because it’s ‘just made up’, but rather, because it is adding to the curriculum. Our curriculum is a bit bloated to begin with. Do we really need another kata?
If you are going to go that route, do me a favor – ditch something you don’t need. If you are going as far as creating a kata, obviously the fifteen or forty or whatever of them that you do teach aren’t meeting your needs. Pick one, or five that you don’t feel offer much and ditch them. Heresy! Right? If we do enough of that it won’t be (brand x) kempo any more.
Once upon a time, I had the good fortune to learn the Small Plum Blossom Fist kata of Choy Lay Fut from Tat Mau Wong. It was very nice, and I thought it was a beautiful form. For a while I practiced it, and found that there were a couple of really nice concepts / techniques that I didn’t have elsewhere and that it gave me a better understanding of what Choy Lay Fut was like. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need to ‘keep’ an 80 move form for one or two ideas. I let it go, but I kept the ideas. I didn’t want to teach it to my students as I didn’t think it had enough new and important ‘stuff’ that wasn’t already covered in their existing materials. The content didn’t justify adding it to the curriculum.
I like beer. In my early ‘beer’ career, I was an easy to please customer. If it was beer, it was ok. As I broadened my experience, and paid attention to what I was consuming, I became more selective. Eventually, I began to brew my own. Through this process, I learned immense amounts about it, enjoyed it more, and had less patience for the poor imitations designed to be made in vast quantity for the average consumer. So if I was going to add it to my fridge, it had better be worth the space. Recently, I was re-introduced to fine single malt whisky. I had had some in my earlier ‘beer’ career, and hated it. I had given some as a gift, and to be sure I had chosen wisely I did my ‘due diligence’ and learned as much as I could about it. The more I learned, combined with my quest for character in beer made me a convert. I learned that essentially, whisky is beer. It is the essence of beer, barley malted and mashed which is distilled to a pure form, and then carefully aged. Beer does not age well, but the distilled version (whisky) ages marvelously, and is considered a treasure. Aged beer is stale.
This is a pained metaphor for the concept of density in a kata. If you are going to create a kata, don’t create it so you have something to teach your 7th dan students to keep them busy after you promote yourself to 10th dan in your own style. Create it with care, distilling the essence of your experience into a treasure that will age well. Perhaps consider distilling five forms that have a few good ideas into one. Make it worth learning and doing. Don’t make cheap beer.
Creating your own kata is a requirement in some arts to acheive black belt status (epak for example). Not that every form ever made up made it into the system, but a few did (kicking set 1 was a “thesis” form).
Personally, on more then one occasion, I have started, stopped, and started again formulating various new and exciting kata, mostly when I was bored or frustrated with the material I already had. Then I would go back and examine my masterpiece and say “oh well this part of my form is already taught in that kata and oops we learn that at yellow belt in this technique”. Then go back and reformulate to come up with something noone has done before only to realize that reinventing the weel is useless, but what it did give me was something much more useful.
Until I tried to logically organize and formulate a new kata I gave little thought to how well the kata I already had were organized and formulated. It also sparked a new interest in exploring my current material.
So to answer the question, yes I think every martial artist out there should create there own kata. Then take a good honest look at what you have come up with and ask the opinion of a martial artist you know who will give you their honest opinion. Don’t create a kata as Matt put it “to teach your 7th dan students to keep them busy after you promote yourself to 10th dan in your own style”, but do it to explore what you know or THINK you know.
Sometimes finding out you don’t know as much as you thought you did is a lot more useful then crowning yourself grand poobah.
JT
Thanks for that really thoughtful comment. You raise a good point in regard to your ‘reinventing the wheel’ comment, as I feel many ‘new’ forms are just ‘new’ and not ‘better’. However, if you do find a new way that is better, then by all means let the car replace the stagecoach.
Also – with your starting and discarding various attempts at forms creation, I think you show that the process is at least as important as ending up with a kata. You learned valuable things about your existing material.
Thanks Matt. I think that, in my attempts atleast, the process is more important then the kata. The process of formulating a new kata gave me insight on application as well as flow through my existing forms. It also made me question what I was doing and why, which I believe to be the most important questions on gaining higher understandings.
JT
I def. like this topic because it is true to my heart. I have created a Kata and plan to create more in the hope of helping my students. I also agree with Matt in the fact that we should not just keep piling things on top. Sometimes you have to weed the garden to make the crops grow better. I have eliminated 3,4,and 5 pinan for more reasons then I wish to write at this time.
Jesse
I believe that there are many very important movements in 3, 4, and, 5 pinan. Could you explain why you don’t like theses kata when you get the chance Jesse?
Thanks
I create new kata every time I fight. However mostly they suck so I never practice them again 🙂
IMHO SKK is already BLOATED. The pinan kata alone have hundreds of applications, should those be learned? if not then why are we doing these forms? I mean, applications beyond the basics “turn block punch”.
If I ran the SKK world I would scrap the pinans too and substitute a number of sets that focus on specific basics. We have the combos we don’t need more combos hidden inside the forms. the overt interpretation of the pinans movements is often lame. LOL
This is a great article. There are two great points in it.
Some time ago, I made it a requirement that brown belts must create a kata for their black belt test. I took it from various schools that do something similar. I hoped that they would be invested in the art to create something themselves. The art becomes are part of them. It also demonstrates their understanding of what they have learned. These little 20 move forms are not added to the curriculum. Rather they are like recitals with original songs. The creativity is astounding. So far I am pleased.
The second great point is trimming the fat from the SKK curriculum. I stopped teaching the pinans (and cat kata) a while ago. Nothing seemed to change quality wise. Yet, I wonder what I gave up in the process. I noticed students having a difficult time maintaining half-moon stances and turns or timing their blocks and steps.
It’s an important item to discuss. What makes you SKK? And if you change too much, do you stop being SKK?
SKK in the late 50s and 60s was a lot different than it is now. When GM Pesare learned the art, it was in a state of flux and modification. He continued that trend. Actually, the trend continues as we all peal back the onion skins of application and find new toys.
I’ve also dropped the Pinan from my curriculum. I still practice them, but don’t teach them unless a student asks. I’m trying to keep everything as close to the original Kajukenbo/Karazenpo material as I can from what I’ve researched.
I’m not creating any Kata, but I am changing techniques in the forms so they’ll work at a higher percentage rate when done at full speed. After going out to the The Pit and seeing Master Hackleman’s streamlined curriculum, I was a little bummed with our overloaded SKK one. I now teach: 8 & 10 Point Blocking Systems, 1-6 Kata & Hansuki, SKK Combos 1-26 (original and modified), 10 Pit Kickboxing Combos, and 36 Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Combatives techniques (I’ll be testing for my Blue Belt under Rener Gracie in July). I keep everyone on a rotating curriculum so we’re all doing the same thing and classes go way smoother now.
Who knows? Maybe I will make a new form; tell everyone I trained in a far away land with unverifiable masters; and then promote myself to 10th Dan. Yeah…that sounds like a plan! Oh wait…it’s already been done. : )
Good training to you all and thanks to Matt for such a cool site!!!
Andy in VA