I have read many threads on here about so called tournament sparring. Many folks have stated that regardless of style or art, much of today's sparring is much the same thing, with some variation on the rules. Some people dispute this. There has been a lot of chat about point sparring too, and its good and bad points (no pun intended).

Regardless of that, this thread is about another event that is common in modern martial arts competition: Forms/patterns/tuls/kata/poomse et al....

A Taijiquan sifu once said to me "It isn't how the form looks that is important, it is how it feels". My Aikido told me likewise when talking about kata.

So my question is this: Is competitional display of forms/kata etc.... deterimental to those very same forms/kata etc...? Are they being performed for performance's sake, and as such, being taught for the way they look? Is it just a case of purely how judges think a form looks? How do you judge how it "feels" to someone else?

Any thoughts?

Prize

I'd say in general "yes"

The current trend in traditional karate--"traditinal" in terms of what is expected at tournaments is VERY low stances.

Think of a stance lower than Shiko-dachi--which I was taught was low enough that the legs are flat in line with the knees--then go LOWER-so low that ones rear end is actually BELOW the line of your knees and you have some idea of what I'm talking about.

Might be a decent training stance but it certainly NOT part of the kata--its done for "flash" to confrom to some perception the student thinks the judges are looking for in terms of how a "traditional" karate kata "should look."

Thinking goes like this 'traditianl karate uses low stances, so the lower the stance the more "traditinal" and legit the kata and student is."

If it was confined STRCTLY to how it was down in meets it would be ok--the problem is that people often turn around and use it as the "de-fault" means of training.

i would have to say that its all in what the judges think. it was already mentioned about speed being seen by the naked eye, but that is a very superficial thing. while i do compete in kata competetion, i don't think its a fair judge of kata in anyway. power has to be felt. and while you can, with expirence feel when someone is doing a really powerfull kata, it is often overlooked at tourniments for the flash of a high kick, and a blood curdeling scream. a real kiai is not so much loud, and a high kick is a show of athlettisism.

they get ooo's and awww's from the crowd tho.

competetion is a fun. thats it to me at least. i've won some medals on katas that felt [censored] poor to me. and seen some crazy scores given on head height kicks alone.

its to judgemental for a group of judges to score a kata on how it "feels", they would get as cought up on little things as we do on internet forums. kata feel is more important the how it looks. bar non.

I don't agree with kata/tul competition in open tounaments because there is no objective basis by which to judge one from another. In some of these comps/demos I've seen real Hollywood productions complete with music and pyrotechnics. It was visually impressive, but I couldn't really get into it.

As for the comment about traditional styles changing with trends with regard to length of stances etc. I think that comes from too many governing bodies for one "style." I'm sure ITF will go down that road eventually, but it is too young to have been detrimentally effected in that way (3 or 4 governing bodies currently claiming legitimacy notwithstanding.)

As many instructors on this forum I too judge many tournaments and have a great time being involed. Just a few weeks ago my friend Gojuwarrior was right in front of me doing his weapons kata, you never know who going to show up! Personally I could care less if the kata is changed for the sake of competition. Your being judged on technique, speed, balance, focus and so on. I personally would never judge a person on the exact historical movements. How could you anyway since most of them have been changed over time and each style is a bit different. Long as it is kept the same in the dojo and not altered to someone liking, that is where it can't change....kata's are not broken so don't try to fix them.

I tend to feel that including kata as a competitive event is responsible for a lot of what's wrong with "traditional" arts now.

Kata are a means to effective self defense techniques, but these must be painstakingly extracted from the kata and burned into "unconscious competence" through countless repetitive two-person contact drills.

Making the perfomance of kata competitive has evolved them into an end unto themselves... completely devoted to visible flashy solo performance.... athletic yet meaningless.

The way competitive kata relates to self defense (to me) is sort of like having how pretty the cartridges are as a shooting match event. Shiny is nice. But it's the load inside that matters... and what you do with it.

But that's not how I judge kata. I will actually SUBTRACT points for a super-low stance because it's just not mobile enough to be practical.

Last year I gave good scores to a TKD stylist because he did a hell of a kata, but when he stood on one leg and did rather weak little kicks for about 8 seconds I ignored them. As in "Nice balance, but those little flip kicks couldn't knock over my little sister. Let me know when you get back to Martial Arts".

I judge the steak, not the sizzle.

A person who is impressive in patterns is often usually good at sparring as well. I may not be able to tell how well the person understands what the techniques does, but I can tell how strong/fast they are, how good their balance is, how comfortable they are with the technique. Someone with an overall crisper performance will score better than someone less crisp but with higher kicks or lower stances.

I think there are probably a lot of people that wouldn't ever do a pattern if it wasn't required for competition. At my school, if you compete, you are required to at least compete in forms, but sparring is optional.

I don't know about everyone else, but solo patterns performance is more nerve wracking than sparring. I can't say if competition is good or bad, but I use it as a way to judge my overall improvement. I keep track of how I score from certain judges, especially my instructor, and see how they score me at each tournament. I don't care if I win the competition, I'm out to better my previous score.

In addition, a lot more people compete in forms than they do in sparring, so you get more people involved with forms competitions, and I believe that competition is very useful for improving your technique and confidence.

Laura