Hello everyone. I've been studying Shaolin for about 4 months already, and I hold the rank of a 9th Kyu(yellow belt) I find that learning Kata's is a good way to remember the use and position of each technique and movement. Well earlier this month(March) I went to my first tournament with the Dojo. I noticed that there were a wide variety of martial arts there. We were all part of the same organization though.

Well what brings me to starting this thread is my question: While competing in Kata at the tournament, I realized all my judges were in different forms of martial arts. I realize that every martial arts fourm has it's own rules, principals, etc, but can't that lead to miss-judging in a tournament? I mean, it's like trying to compare apples and oranges. Couldn't there be a big dispute and gap in scoring between judges of different arts? I was just wondering if anybody thinks the same way I do on this topic. I'm new in the Karate world, so I apologize if I contradict anybody elses point of view on this topic.

~Ashley~

Not really. Execution of the kata can be seen as good or bad easily. Most know what most stances are meant to look like.

It's not hard to see if they are doing it with focus either.

What's to worry about? Alot of Japanese kata come from Shoalin anyway...Ganaku...Chinto (Chen Tou) Nipaipo...Nepai...and so on.