Advice please!!!! three of us are planning to enter as a team in competition at a series of national events this year. individually we're pretty good, medals at national level competitions, good knowledge of the katas etc. But we have never trained as a team before and are struggling to devise ways of training effetively as a unit, getting timing together and techniques similar.

any adive would be greatly appreciated if you have any experience in team kata (training or competing)

thanks

gary
www.karateonline.org

First, I consider "team" kata to be an seriously horrible and grotesque pastime of the same wretched ilk as "music" kata.

Its not an activity suited for serious people, and it make the rest of us and martial arts in general look bad.

Its stuff like that that the general public see's and then starts laughing at, its stuff like that they point to as being "proof" that kata sucks and has no practical application, its stuff like that causes embaressment for us all.

Just my opinion--and worth exactly what you paid for it--which is 0.

That being said however, the best thing to do is PRACTICE--alot--then practice MORE.

The hardest thing to do is get several people all moving at the same speed and with the same timimg.

Break it down to just a few movements at at time--don't try and do the whole kata at once--just a few moves.
Get those "clocked" all at the same pace and same intensity--then do a few more-then get those "clocked" then add a few more--until thge whole kata is pretty much identical.

It will take quite a while to do--but the result is usually pretty solid.

I would also advise using ALOT of videotape--tape each practice--the camara will catch what your eyes miss.

If your going to do something--you should do you best.

Team Kata???? Isn't that done in the water with those silly nose plug thingys???

my serious advice is to ask this question in a more appropriate forum, such as:
http://www.dance-forums.com/

there is nothing synchronous about fighting, therefore your question is not about fighting arts. You need a dancing instructors advice for dancing/performing arts. They may even be able to suggest matching costumes for your routines.

BTW...your website: I had a look at some of the kata links. you had shotokan versions representing goju kata. I can't stress enough that if you 'shotokan-ize' goju kata...you can no longer call it goju and it probably shouldn't be categorized there.
Taking a goju kata, putting on long stances on changing the circular to linear removes 90% of what defines goju as a fighting system.
Your intentions are decent enough, I'm sure...but maybe you aren't really qualified yet to categorize stuff you find on the web...thereby making your resource a worse source than nothing at all. I'm not trying to be a jerk, just being truthful.

Team Kata or more accurately Group Kata is a very Okinawan concept that ought to be important in serious training groups.

Of course the idea isn’t to win trophies for looking good, per sea, but why is looking good a crime?

First all serious Okinawan karate-ka participated in public demonstrations of their art, that let their and their students skills be shown. This would reflect pride in ones art. Music wasn’t unknown either, as there were public demonstrations of the old Okinawan dances with martial intent. Time change as do the venue’s but any serious school that does not include serious group kata training is missing some very important opportunites in students development.

Among the reasons:
1. Group kata are a good tool for basic form technique, timing and power development. The group helps the students find their beginning performance, and as the group becomes more proficient the skills involve will increase.
2. Advanced group performance helps set the ‘standard’ energy release in the students kata. The group standard once met, perhaps in 8 to 10 years, can be the starting point towards developing the student’s individual kata standard. This involves long term training for the most serious students (say 10 to 15 years).
3. But more than energy development, group kata become a sense development tool. In order for the group to move to higher levels of performance, sight and hearing must increase exponentially. Group performance is not dance, the goal is controlled group performance, and it is each members responsibility to use their senses to stay in unison. Failure of one is failure of the entire group. Sense awareness development is one of the larger goals in team kata.
4. When group kata are done with the group facing different directions during the performance, even touch and body conditioning can be involved, where simultaneous strikes are arm conditioning tools.
5. At its highest levels group kata becomes a duel of senses. Senior students try to consciously take control of the group or trick each other out, while everyone else is trying to remain in harmony, and the role can keep changing. This involves more serious sense awareness ability.

Using group performance, IMO, is one of the highest level training tools available for an instructor, and it is not a short term tool.

I've swallowed my foot on these subjects every time they came up. music/dance/performance etc.

somehow, all of the images you invoked in your post Victor, are not the same images I imagined gary was talking about.

I could be wrong, but my impression was that gary is talking about a modern-day vender-sponsored plastic trophy-centric competition...but that could have been my cynical side impressing upon me...OMG...am...I...getting... bitter?

serious sidenote inquiry. I would love to see kata and/or martial arts presented in a culturaly historic sense such as traditional dance, music ...if anyone ever knows of a non-competitive event such as this in the new england area, I'd love to know about it.

Victor, as always your posts have drawn positive light on a subject that I'd otherwise considered to be a negative aspect of the art.

I've gotta say I do agree with Kin, I suspect very few train their group kata in the spirit you outlined.

Ed/Gavin,

I understand the initial reluctance to look at team kata but I suppose it depends on one's own experiences. I began team kata for a demonstration when I was a beginner, and all of the layers I've discussed, and more, have come into play at different times in my teaching.

But much texture of the arts has been ignored, often because classes get too big, and developing advanced layers of training get left behind.

Group kata is a beginner constant in my program, and the advanced uses move in and out of various students' studies, depending on where people are.

Dan Smith of the Seibukan has described how Senior Instructors on Okinawa use this as sort of an awareness challenge match too.

My opinion, serious team kata (for competition) requires first a very good instructor to evaluate and lead the team's development, to either the highest performer's level for the entire group, and/or push the entire group higher. Second a serious commitment to spend years of hard work to excell at the highest levels.

Just a few folks to try and get together will not get where this training could go. If you can't push youself to make the world's best look like dog-meat, it's not worth the time, and if you do, then something's cooking.

Victor

Good point.

When I think team kata--I always envision a group of folks in wild uniforms at the nearest open tournament.
Working acrobatics to the "Mortal Kombat" soundtrack.

And that may not be a fair "pigeon hole."

Your impression is fair, for those instances (and I prefer a tastefully metallic green gi for such demonstrations anyway, with matching paisley obi - always tastefull).

But just because something can be 'bent' doesn't mean it doesn't have great merit. But to my experience rarely are group and team kata training taken to its best values.