Beatings translator

Movement is a language. People have told stories throughout history with dance. How people carry themselves can tell your things. Knowing how to read the language of movement his helpful and insightful. I have some knowledge of that language which is how I'm able to reverse engineer applications from Karate Kata. This is necessary because many applications have been lost throughout the years, so I examine the techniques and try to figure how to use them in a combat situation. I've also had some success in passing this skill on to some of my students.

So now I'm trying something knew with this: building my own Kata. I still have no clue what to name it. Its based on my favorite techniques and my personal fighting style.

This doesn't happen very often in traditional Karate. Sure, those XMA guys have created their own 'katas', but those are for performance and have little actual usable applications. If you type in "karate" into YouTube you'll be surprised how many videos appear that aren't actually Karate. That has changed a bit over the years as more people have put traditional Karate videos up.

I'm doing this for two reasons. First, our twentieth anniversary of our karate Club is this year and I wanted to create something to commemorate that, so I'll be teaching that Kata at the anniversary workout. Second, when I was testing for my 5th dan I was told that i was to perform a Kata that defined me as a martial artist. Then I was told that Kata was Kururufa. Dandy, except I didn't know that Kata and had to learn it right quick before getting tested.

Maybe that does define me as a martial artist: "he doesn't know what he's doing, but he learns right quick."

But no, I wanted there to be a Kata that did define me as a martial artist, so I'm creating one, which will probably get a wide variety of responses from people from "That's cool" to "No, you can't do that". Studying Karate is really a study of applicable history. I'm not trying to make history, or make my mark upon history.

Although that would be pretty cool. Future generations of students asking their Sensei, "Where did that Kata come from." And the Sensei answers, "It was created by a fierce Karate man, who killed many with his bare hands and ate Chik-Fil-A before his workouts for STRENGTH!"

Really I just want to build a Kata and share it. I doubt it will get passed along, but it'll get the itch out of my system.