Where is the Form in the Application?
This is not asking the question 'Where is the Application in the Form?'
The last post Nerding Out on Kata Bunkai, I stated "the application is not me teaching the form." In the attached video, you'll see a quick overview of the phrase from the kata which we're referring to, plus two combative variations from this pattern.
Personally, I feel little pressure to make an application look like the form. There are instructors on YouTube who are great at presenting kata or hyung down to the millimeter, and might even have a studio set up which makes their media look beautiful and amazing. That's not what we do.
My application reads a dynamic situation, considers human foibles, draws lessons and concepts from the form, and delivers comeuppance to the opponent. By the time I'm ready to stand in front of that camera, we have gone thorugh many other steps in our training, played around with fundamentals, other iterations, and varying tactical solutions.
Again, the video is not me teaching the form. It doesn't communicate all the other thinking and training we've gone through. It just shows what it shows in the few minutes it's running.
I'd like to share a related story from a training session I was at a few years ago. A self-proclaimed expert on kyusho or pressure points said to me that my form hadn't yet softened, intimating that I've not yet evolved my martial art.
The form is the form. I would say 7th dan me ought to perform it pretty much the same way 1st dan me performed it. Why would I think to change a form that has been central to my own development?
The experiences, insight, analysis methodology, and teaching pedagogy are appended to the original form in my mind space. This is then shared amongst all the other trainees who are part of the JDK environment.
Some of us who have spent the last two decades looking at areas where basic hard style training has not done such a great job filling-in-the-blanks. After two decades, the development of sensitivity, angles, movement, and awareness is the reason you struggle to see exactly how the application matches the form. And this is a good thing.
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- For seminar requests: Travel itinerary for our black belts in 2023/4 include but not limited to:
USA, Singapore, Japan, and Australia.
- For book orders see Moosul Publishing
To avoid embarrassment, please do not inquire about certification through JDK.
Please do not offer certification as a token of appreciation to any JDK member.
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