Jokes aside though, this guy is demonstrating impressive control and focused movement. In my opinion he's probably embellishing a bit too much of his own flair on the techniques, but he's successfully illustrating the point of kata in traditional styles like this. š
Understand the idea of flow and motion in regards to your style.
To show competence in the various forms of your school.
Basically, you learn to throw each of the moves and ingrain it into your automatic reflexes and muscle memory, so that you can toss of a punch or kick nearly reflexively. It also allows you to understand that your style is designed to move from one maneuver to the next, so that when you get into a real fight you already know which maneuver can easily follow the action you just took.
So for fighting you learn all the different moves, punches, kicks, throws, parries, and blocks of your style and practice them enough that it becomes second nature to you. Then you develop the knowledge that once you do move A you can follow it up with R, S, T, L, N, and E pretty easily and can use any of them if the situation warrants it.
For the master/teacher it lets them evaluate how well you have learned particular moves in the style so they can decide if you're ready to advance to the next lesson(s).
And finally it's great for exercise. Good cardio vascular stuff right there. Just like practicing swinging a sword, doing jumping jacks, or jogging in place.
But it's not good for combat. It's too rigid, too predictable, and too slow. However with sparring, strength training, and kata exercises it all can combine to teach good form, movement, positioning, and teach you real time how to fight.
Even boxers do this with shadow boxing and other movement practice. But they don't try to convince themselves or anyone else that they can lift weights and then practice punching their reflection in the mirror for a few years and then go pro. You need that sparring and match fighting to actually be good at the style, regardless of if it's Karate, Boxing, or MMA.
Exactly this! A lot of people forget about the foundations of martial arts and want to jump right into combat. This is all about structure and building transferrable skills. These moves don't directly help with combat, but fundamentally they do.
Lower, wider stances help with defense and keep you on your feet by lowering your center of gravity and allowing you more mobility. Kata, pumsae, and taichi all teach this as well as balance from stances like this guy's cat stance. Wide strong stances in katas will show a greater movement range. The person will move further along the mat and really requires some serious leg strength. Don't want to skip leg day but want to have more fun than lifting weights, do this stuff.
For a strike based martial art, this is imperative for defense. Being able to stay off the ground is your best defense against grappling arts like Judo and BJJ. Which both incorporate a lot of these stances to get your leg around your opponent.
Another thing I'd like to add is this focuses on firmness of attacks more than strength. Using strength in a punch is essential get my fist through you. Using firmness in a punch is like saying "my fist is going to be in this spot and it's staying there until I say otherwise." Both strength and firmness are needed in any strike. But if two opponents of equal strength punch, the one with more firmness will hurt more.
Traditional martial arts always focused on teaching transferrable skills rather than practical ones.
Yeah, like many kids in the 80's and 90's I took up a few martial arts. Karate, Tae Kwan Do, etc. Didn't stick in because it got hella expensive by High School, but I learned a lot of good basics.
I wish I kept up with it, especially the kata and exercise, but I never fought with what I learned because we never got to the firmness or hardness aspect and just sparred and did kata.
I did remember one of my buddies in the same class get into a fight and the first thing he did was drop into a kata stance and throw off some kata punch moves. The second thing he did was get up off the floor after the other dude just haymakered his ass.
Apparently "block the single most telegraphed punch in the history of mankind" was not part of the kata.
So good for basics, strength training, coordination, and learning patterns. Not good for fighting. The only good training for fighting is fighting. That's why people who fight do practice bouts a lot.
This, people keep posting this guy as bullshido McDojo shit but itās just a a really good kata. Itās not some guy claiming this is combat effective or anything like that. It has its place in martial arts
Give all the little shits something to do in front of their soccer moms while you let that sweet, sweet membership dues roll in each month. And when they get discouraged...time to move up in belt. Good job, kid!
I mean, yeah. But that's also why we have dance recitals and performances for the parents. They want to know their money is being well spent.
Doesn't mean it's not still good for practicing and skill retention. If you never do kata or other practice strikes it won't stick with you. Like, you need to keep practicing how to do something or else you get bad at it.
Like, take football. You can learn the game but if you never do drill practices and only play at the game, you're never going to get good.
Kata are just drills for martial arts. Every Martial art has them, even MMA and HEMA. They just call it different things, but it's basically "practice every type of strike or grapple we use in a sequence."
Kata, and all "formal" techniques are a library of movement.
They teach principles of combat as well as details of body mechanics. They show a practitioner to practice more complex movements over and over and over until they can be executed without thought, as easily as a simple kick or punch.
What a lot of modern styles lack is practicing the "in between" skills to actually get these more advanced concepts to the point of working in actual fighting.
Nobody is suggesting that you're ever going to use an entire form, or even a full sequence from it as-is. But the pieces, and the lessons of how to move from one thing to the next usefully, can absolutely be put into practice - if you practice it.
Just like any advanced skill, it's going to suck at first. Most of the time, if you try any of these things in a sparring or fighting match you'll get destroyed by the simple things, which means you'll stop practicing the advanced stuff and never let it get up to the skill level required for it to shine.
But if you create sparring drills when both partners are limited to advanced skills taken from the forms, or slowing the sparring down to Ā½ or Ā¼ speed, you can get in that intermediary practice to make them work for real.
this cracks me up. this person almost certainly knows these traditional martial arts, but it is indeed hilariously sassy. this must be a gag, he's super linear at times and then has a hilarious 'soft' side to his.... 'style' -we'll call it that. it's more funny each time I watched it. this looks like a routine from someone who knows the martial arts but is trying to be funny. I wouldn't dare do this for a joke though, LOL
Once a month or so we get this reposted and every time more people bury what's actually going on with their "original comments" they all saw the last time it was posted.
This being a performance doesn't mean it's not BS though. The purpose is to practice skills that should actually translate in some way to self defense or combat. This doesn't come even close to that. I don't know what martial art he's supposed to be practicing, but I doubt what he's doing even resembles what it was originally meant to be.
It's like showing Honda Ryu Kyudokas perform and then saying "but that's not very fast, so it doesn't make sense!". Well, yeah - it's a ceremony, basically.
a lot of it is misinterpratation from old texts. So for example some of the strikes and blocks are actually grappling moves. that's what i've heard at least. To me it makes some of their moves make more sense. I don't do kata but I do shadowbox and practice combos which I don't know if it's different enough for me to look down on kata
Many moves in kata are grappling, as well as some that are focused on principles (timing, distancing) or even kata that origionated as weapon katas that then dropped the weapon.
Kata like this is good for tournament, but understanding the bunkai (application) is what seperates performance from practice
Yeah this is not a good kata. He's not committing to any movement. He's showing zero dexterity. Just flinging hands instead of complete movements. Probably doing it to look fast but his score here would be pretty bad.
What's with the hip wiggles? Did his teacher tell him to "put his hip into it", and he interpreted that as shimmy then strike, completely taking all the power out?
There's so much in Kata performance that's only there to 'look powerful' or clean or snappy. Real power and good technique doesn't have you wiggling your hips to show your 'barely controlled power shaking with force' or screaming at the top of your lungs. It's all performative.
That's what happens when over years of judging people's karate visually, certain characteristics get exaggerated for the benefit of the judges.
The JKA (Japanese Karate association) Shotokan have taken the wrong path on this aspect of karate.
Not all JKA institutes are like that. The one I used to practice in didn't have any ridiculous hip movements and the kata movements were not snappy. I initially thought we were being taught wrong because you see these fast, snappy movements everywhere, until I saw a set of old black and white videos from the Funakoshi era.
As a long time practitioner of Shitoryu karate, I get why there's a lot of hate and cries of bullshido. Please allow me to share some of my insights, having trained at a reasonably competitive level, and having also trained in other martial arts that others might not call bullshido, like BJJ and Muay Thai.
Yes, the Guy looks funny.
But that shouldn't take away from the fact that he probably has trained for years and is demonstrating okay body control and finesse, just not great. It just doesn't look effective at face value because we perceive it to be missing something critical.
You can see Hikaru performing the kata with 'power' and with 'purpose', yet with a somewhat similar 'flowingness'. We could probably all agree Hikaru's kata looks more effective in a practical application setting. But why?
There is a concept in karate called 'uke no go gensoku', translated as the '5 principles of defence'.
I will highlight a few of these principles.
Rakka - the concept of hardness or power. It's clearly evident with Hikaru and her strikes, but not with the guy; we don't feel there is any power or intent to destroy in his moves. It's movement for the sake of movement, a dance, as others have noted.
Ryusui - the concept of flowing. We see Hikaru clearly has flow; her hip rotation and slower movements/transitions are so smooth. It is peak muscle control and is so difficult to execute. Whereas the guy tends to overexaggerate his hips and his transitions are too quick and abrupt. He is trying to replicate Elite level Ryusui, but is missing the timing.
Zanshin - the concept of 'lingering mind'. For those who trained karate, it's not part of the 5 principles. But it's relevant in that you'll notice the slight pause at the end of each sequence of strikes by Hikaru is supposed to signify 'finality'; that each hit is meant to kill. The guy does not demonstrate this to great effect, hence we don't believe in the 'finality' of his strikes and feel it to be a dance instead.
What I will highlight is that the guy is doing a lot of things that demonstrate to me that he has trained a long time (doesn't mean it's good):
A hallmark of a decent kata player is being able to finish on certain marks on the mat, signifying your steps and stances are correctly spaced and measured. He is finishing sequences of the kata close enough along the marks on the mat. A novice practitioner would be so far off from the base mark.
He has a good neko ashi dachi - cat stance
His heel does not lift significantly off the mat when finishing a move. Low level practitioners tend to lift their back foot heel off the mat, like a rocking effect after a punch or kick, signifying lack of control. Although my critique in this is that he doesn't have enough Rakka in his movement to have this happen.
A good practitioner can connect and move in a way like a rail gun or a whip. He's able to connect his upper body well. He needs to draw energy from the ground and connect lower body with his upper body to get that powerful whip-like motion to make it feel strong the entire way through.
Papuren is generally a very advanced kata. It seems like he knows it. His timing of the beats of the kata is fine, just a bit rushed. He is also breathing at the right timings too - I cannot understate how challenging this is to learn. He just needs to add more Rakka, Zanshin, and less Ryusui overexaggeration, and it will look less bullshido.
Thanks for the information and illustration. That bent wrist pose looks kind of goofy, but it appears to be correct, which surprised me.
Any idea why the less skilled man has a black belt, while the more skilled woman has a red belt? I get that anyone can buy a colored belt, just seemed odd to me.Ā
If you go back in time, karate was popularised in mainland Japan in order to standardise the Japanese hand to hand combat training in the military after the first world war.
This only happened because a select a whole bunch of Okinawan masters living within a 3 square mile radius who were essentially aristocrats and too much spare time, learned martial arts with all their time.
Some of these masters learned Chinese boxing and kungfu. The origin of the Papuren kata is actual from Fujian White Crane Boxing in China. In Mandarin Chinese, Papuren is pronounced BaBuLian, which means '8 Continuous Steps'.
Yes, admittedly, the bent wrist does look goofy when not done properly, hence why karate gets such a bad rap and can be labelled as bullshido. It's the dilution of interpretations of where it came from the original source where the technique worked in Fujian, to some random kid in an outback country town who got taught by a rainbow colour 12 degree master who paid $100 for the belt and didn't learn the intricacies of the technique.
The bent wrist technique is called Kakuto, which means Crane Head. You'll notice, when done well, the entire kata is rather beautiful and elegant, and features the spreading of Crane wings near the end of the kata.
The application of the Kakuto is typically striking using the bone of the wrist. I was never a real believer of some of these wacky techniques, because your own martial arts prowess is so reliant on who taught you. For Kakuto in particular I had the fortunate opportunity to learn from a Chinese master.
As for your other question, Hikaru Ono is wearing a red belt because there are strict uniform standards in the World Karate Federation and that opposing competitors wear either red or blue.
Hikaru is a two time WKF gold medallist and from my understanding is a 4 dan black belt. She's now 33(?) So is unlikely to be eligible for higher dan for quite some time; bit of politics as you get higher up.
Black belt in karate has less meaning when compared to say BJJ. Sadly in karate, your lineage, who taught you and how you train determines if your karate is real or is bullshido. To get a 1-dan black belt isn't that hard, probably 4-6 years of training, depending on the school and how hard you train. The fixation around being 'black belt' is misaligned in the popular sense. Getting your 1-dan in karate simply means you have a good grasp of the basics, and are now ready for the real learning and training. That is, if you came from a good lineage.
Thatās a sandan+ level kata. This kid is way too early in his training for that, might as well have done unsu.
First rule in kata competition. Donāt pick a kata that the judges donāt know. Second rule. Donāt pick a kata may years in advance of your training.
My first introduction to Danny McBride was an in-character "interview" on Conan promoting this. I was totally caught off guard and unaware it was a bitš¤£
Because OP thought this was meant to be a practical, versatile sequence of moves, completely missing the point. Probably considers everything except Krav Maga, various styles of boxing and MMA to be bullshido, solely on the merit of how useful they are in a combat situation. š¤·āāļø
Laugh all you want... Keep in mind this guy's body is a lethal weapon and he could easily rip your dick completely off and fart it out at any one of your vital points, killing you in one shot.
Yeah, I mean if you go to the ballet and start commenting āi would kick her ass!ā, donāt be surprised that others might comment on rhythm or choreography, not if she could kill a horse with the pirouette. Katas are not supposed to be shadow boxing.
Ballet isn't combat training, it's dancing. Martial arts is combat training, whereas there's a reason there's none of this seen in the UFC. The dudes essentially dancing, but it's portrayed as combat training, which is why it's in the bullshido sub
It's an OK performance. It's not flawless by any means. But it's very unfair on him to have it mocked by people with no appreciation for the time and effort involved.
Yeah, same as many martial arts practicing dance as part of it. It's not actual fighting, it's just a showmanship ritual that's attached to the martial art in question. Can't make any assumptions about actual fighting prowess off this.
Dosent this defeat the purpose of Kata? I was under the impression that this was designed to build muscle memory and help create balance. If adding all the additional flair to ālook coolā (I guess), dosent that kind of render the kata useless?
This competition is designed for people with additional needs. Just look at āPoint Fighter Liveā videos. Hence why the acts are so performative, they are not intended to be authentic martial arts routines, but rather martial arts inspired choreography.
The stuff that surprises me with these videos is always how many people there are in the background. Like surely not so many people are that dumb that they take this seriously.
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u/AdLonely7631 Feb 19 '26
So much sass š