What is your take on forms?

[littlebadboy]

FMA has sayaw. well, most FMA anyway has sayaw.

At LSAI, we don't have any sayaw or anyo. But, the UP guys made up one for the sake of joining the SEA games and won. Bearing this in mind, I thought that a martial art doesn't need kata, sayaw, or anyo to have form. I have to even say that they are not necessary after all. I came from TKD and we had a lot of forms too. I have to say that it was a waste of time if I wanted to perfect my kicks instead. However, I have to also say that the poomsaes (kata in korean) are so beautiful to see.

[KudO]

Imho, Kata has its place in martial arts.

Of course it is useless if not trained with resisting partners.
It is a good teaching tool which can point out the basic outlines of techniques which is virtually imperceptible to the beginner who is taking up the art.

If a beginner is subjected to live drilling and sparring immediately without learning the basics, he will develop into a pure muscle memory dependent practitioner, as opposed to someone who's been exposed to forms which can demonstrate concepts and principles that cannot be learned by drilling alone.

To illustrate my point, I will give this example. I've had several instructors in Judo and I will describe two schools of learning that I was exposed to.

The first instructor is uber traditional with his teaching methods. He started by outlining the kata form of a technique and demonstrating it in its classical form. He lets the students try it for a few sets.
He then proceeds to show several modifications of the techniques by different olympians. He encourages the students to try each one and to continue practicing the particular style that they find the easiest to adapt to their body type, without neglecting the principles demonstrated by the classical form.

The next instructor starts with drills for a specific technique that is shown to be a high percentage move in live sparring and competition. He requires the students to choose a particular technique, chosen from several high percentage techniques that he would demonstrate at the start of the class and would ask them to drill them until it comes out of their ears.

As I have observed, they both produced topnotch competitors and practitioners of the art. The second instructor's students were adept at using the techniques that they rehearsed a million times in the dojo. They became effective athletes and won many tournaments. The students of the first instructor also performed well in tournaments and are consistent finalists if not the winner of the tournament.

The difference though, lies in their students' approach to a match or a sparring session. The students of the second instructor fought with a direct, no nonsense style as opposed to the more open and constantly shifting style of the first instructor's students. I have reached the conclusion that the students who were educated with kata had more potential to be more adaptable than those who were not taught kata as the kata folk actually understood the mechanics and concepts behind the techniques, compared to the non kata folk who rely on pure instinct alone which in my opinion, would translate to a decreased ability to adapt and formulate an alternative strategy once an opponent has discovered his strengths and weaknesses. I would also like to add that most of the kata educated judoka have a predisposition to become better and more well rounded teachers than the non kata judoka.

Of course, at the end of the day it all boils down to the art's and the teacher's goals. Was the art created as a form of education? Or a means to produce athletes or killing machines?

nice read, as what my sensei told me when I was a teen "a fighter who is best at Kata is best at Kumite".
Kata offers us everything from concepts, strategies and methodologies down to individual techniques and/ or combinations thereof.

but until now I always think Darn there are too many katas.