Back to Basics: It’s Not What You Think. Forget the Technique, Understand the Concept (Found in Kata).

 

Posted by ADAM CARTER on APR 08, 2025

Back to Basics: It’s Not What You Think. Forget the Technique, Understand the Concept (Found in Kata).

(Approx 2 minute 50 second read)

Ever looked at a kata and thought, “There’s a theme here”? Well you’re probably right.

But to see it, you need to look beyond the block, punch, and kick. You have to go deeper than the surface-level mechanics most people focus on when working through bunkai.

Let’s ask a familiar question: which came first – the chicken or the egg? Or in our case, which came first – basics or kata?

Most people would say that the basics came first, then after the two-person drills, the kata were created as a mnemonic, a solo practice template.

I suggest the basics come from kata. The kata were there already (after the drills remember), and what we now call the basics were extracted from them later.

Here’s an example. If I were creating a drill to strip a hand away from my clothing, I’d start by having someone actually grab me. I’d need to test it.

Otherwise, how would I know if it worked? I could call anything a grab-stripping technique – but if it doesn’t work under pressure, what’s the point?

So what about before the kata were assembled?

At the time of their creation, kata were an expression of a person’s fighting method – the two-person drills. A way of capturing the core ideas of their system. Kata weren’t about collecting random techniques – they were about preserving a method of fighting.

Of course, today it’s all about techniques. We have hundreds of them, each with their own name (here I go repeating myself).

When someone starts karate today, we begin with techniques like punches, ‘blocks’, and kicks – what we call the basics. But I believe, those techniques were drawn from kata. So while they’re basic in form, they aren’t the real basics of the art. The real basics – the ones kata were created to preserve – are the concepts behind the techniques.

The real ‘basics’ of a kata are the key ideas or concepts it teaches. The techniques themselves are just expressions of those concepts – examples, not definitions.

Let’s go back to when a kata was created. A person with a particular method of fighting – developed from experience – decided to capture the essence of that system in a form that could be passed on. That form was the kata.

They didn’t think in terms of “a rising block” or “a stepping punch” – they thought in terms of tactics, concepts, and responses. They created kata as concept-specific, not technique-specific. If you understand the concept, the techniques become fluid. Limitless.

Yes, kata contain techniques – but those techniques demonstrate a theme. The kata teaches a principle; the technique is one way of showing it.

I believe the basics of a kata are the concepts it teaches – not the techniques it uses.

This may seem completely at odds with how most people view ‘basics’. For many, basics are punches, kicks, and ‘blocks’ (let’s call it properly – receiving). But that’s only part of the story.

A handful of people will understand what I mean. They’ll see that the difficulty in grasping the different fighting styles and concepts within kata often comes down to how we were taught – through a rigid lens called ‘traditional karate-do’.

But tradition doesn’t always mean understanding. Sometimes, it just means repetition.

So why don’t we teach karate that way anymore? Why don’t we follow the same process the originators of kata used?

Because over time, karate shifted from a combative system to a system of instruction. What was once personal and principle-based became public and standardized. Teaching had to be simplified – made more digestible, especially for children and larger groups. So instead of starting with concepts and pressure-tested drills, we broke things down into manageable chunks: ‘blocks’, punches, and kicks – what we now call the basics.

It’s not wrong. It’s just different. But if we stop there, we never get to the depth – the why behind the movement.

If we want to truly understand our art, we must go back – not to how we were taught, but to why kata were created in the first place.

Written by Adam Carter