As mentioned in my lovely wife
I had the good fortune to get to read Sensei Hartman’s notes for his go-dan thesis and I know it’s going to be phenominal. Sensei Hassell’s speech that he gave during the instructor training seminar also poked my brain in a few special places and I’m starting to see the utter simplicity in what he’s saying.
I always secretly questioned the ideas that we’d want to take the time to fondle our opponents to death as some of the bunkai/oyo activists state, but at the same time there HAD to be more to it than just a block, right?
Sensei Brewer always used to dilute the idea of kata down to “do X so hard that they don’t want to attack you anymore” so children can grasp what’s going on. Mostly, it seems that this idea is complex in it’s elegance. Most techniques in our katas are blocks, strikes, or a slight combination of the two.
Granted, in some katas there are “unconventional” techniques that warrant some extra attention, but usually they devolve down into some form of block/strike combination. Therefore, if you keep to simplicity, it is inherently easy to visualize breaking a leg then pounding the offending person into a very fine paste.
I do contend that Sensei Hassell’s assertion that EVERYTHING in katas should act like offensive strikes is a little unrealistic. I think he intends to visualize every block like it is striking the leg or arm that it was “blocking” before. That makes for a more offensive feel to defensive techniques, fundamentally changing some of the tactics that we’ve had in our brain since day one.
Also, on the topic of flowery tournament style kata… anyone that does a kata with intent to strike with every block and maim/kill with every strike will look just as good if not better than the bastardized interpretations that have grown up out of the tournament circuit. The fact that Hartman and Jennings won so many kata divisions doing it this way is a testament that on some subconscious level we (black belts of any rank) know what the katas should be doing and should look like, regardless of what is held to be visually pretty.
Kata done in this way has been describe as “glowing with Sensei Power” in years past. I have more to say on this topic, but I need to get some work done now.
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