The Basics of Bunkai – Part 4
Welcome to the fourth part of the basics of bunkai series. "Bunkai" refers to the analysis and the practical application of the techniques of...
Tegumi – Old Style Karate’s Two Person Exercise
Tegumi or Okinawan grappling and wrestling
Just as a great dish needs a recipe or an extensive trip needs a map, so too does the...
Discovering Bunkai in Kata
By Bill Burgar ~ Today kata are practiced for a variety of reasons. Some people use them as good exercise, some to practice technique,...
A Brief History of Kata
If you are interested in the effective and realistic use of the combative methods recorded within kata, it is important that you have some...
10 Ways to Become a Kata Champion
There are many factors that officials look for when judging kata. Following are 10 tips from Christine Bannon-Rodrigues that should help you excel at...
The Basics of Bunkai – Part 1
Kata (formal forms) were regarded as the cornerstone of martial arts training by the past masters. However, many modern karate practitioners question the value...
The Function of Kata Training
History
An elaborate code of movements of the arms and hands, and a flowing posturing of the body, "kata", meaning form, model or structure, uses...
Tegumi – Karate’s Forgotten Range
It is believed that the native wrestling art of Tegumi, along with the Kempo systems brought to Okinawa by the Chinese, were forerunners of...
Kata and Pressure Points
By George Dillman ~ Kata can be compared to a song. The meaning of the song is stated in the lyrics and expressed in...
The Basics of Bunkai – Part 2
In this second article, we'll be looking at the basic application (bunkai) for the knife-hand block or "shuto-uke". As we established in The Basics...
The Pinan / Heian Kata Series as a Fighting System: Part 3
Welcome to part three of this series of articles. In the first part of this series we looked at the background of the Pinan...
Chuck Merriman on Kata and the Meaning of Bunkai
"The kata are the essence of karate; without them karate would be the mere learning of various fighting and self-defense techniques, expressing nothing and...
Willie Lim Kata Training is Outside the System
When I was training in TKD I was young and eager, an like so many others, interested only in the free sparring. In my...
KIAI – The Powerful Shout
KIAI - ( Exhale - the strong shout )
KI ( chi ) – inner energy
AI – uniting, joining
Kiai is the consequence of a special...
Bunkai: The Meaning Behind Kata
Okay! Bunkai (分解), literally meaning “analysis” or “disassembly,” is a term used in Japanese martial arts referring to process of analyzing kata and extracting...
KATA – An Important Part of Martial Arts
Kata is a form of unique obligatory exercises involving a series of hand and foot techniques, of punches and kicks, connected by certain movements,...