Comments on: GKR: Getting more complicated

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:08:53 +0000

ive just signed my son up in newcastle i think 1st kata is difficult due to the amount of turns.but im breaking it down into 4 blocks of 5 so he can learn them seperatly then combine them for the grading.the GKR website has some good downloads and theres a fair few 1st kata vids on youtube

i know the lower belt grades teaching is controversial but who better to teach the lower grades than hose who have it still fresh in there minds :-)

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:35:44 +0000

Great article, i joined GKR karate back in October 2007, i’m very happy and impressed with attitude and atmosphere of the club, everyone is very friendly, polite and helpfull despite your grade level.

I found that it took me longer to learn first kata then it did learning some of the higher ones.

Good luck with your training, regards Mike.

By: Victoria Lia

Victoria Lia — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:05:51 +0000

hey all, i just bumped into this page and found it interesting to read. how many of you are struggling with 1st kata? it dosnt matter. knacho himself still practices 1st kate everyday, it can never be perfect. the way i found that helped was to do it as slowly as possible, to the point your legs seize up with the effort. by going so slowly, you have planty of time to think exactly where each foot and hand and headturn and hip angle and knee vend should be.
i do this really often, usually as a warm up before class, it works with all other kata’s aswell, and helped me to learn kata Sepai. good luck with your learning x

By: Tim Maher-De Troyer

Tim Maher-De Troyer — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:41:30 +0000

Good site. I like the sound of your sensei using a ‘wibbly wobbly’ kata. I’ll suggest it to ours.

By: ste

ste — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:54:32 +0000

yes , its incredible when i’m doing 1st kata in dojo, i have 2 left feet,a terrible sence of direction and uncontrolable laughter, born out of frustration.(god help the person i run into down a dark alley)
but how satisfied i feel that one day it will all come together then onto next kata.hopefully by then i will of controlled my laughter.
enjoyment!!!

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:52:38 +0000

Heh, that’s a curious side effect of my Japanese translation plugin. When it sees words that it recognizes it inserts the translation, but it’s not very clever, so when it sees the “age” pronounced like “aggie” it assumes it’s Japanese so adds the “rising” translation. This is handy when describing things like “age uke”, but as illustrated above, without context the results are a little strange.

By: Lesley

Lesley — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:14:53 +0000

Hey! what’s this thing about Age = rising?
Some of us out here are 39 and holding!

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:51:27 +0000

Mandie, it’s probably got more to do with your method of learning, or your method of recalling than just “your age” Try other ways of breaking the kata down, find patterns that you remember. Tagyoku Shodan is “just two sequences that you repeat (i.e. “turn, block, punch” is used six times in total and “punch punch punch” happens twice), and you do use those two patterns whilst visiting every extremity of a big capital “I” shape just the once. Find a memory trick that works for you, then once you can practice it, it will become second nature and you’ll wonder why you found it so hard. Draw big numbers on A4 sheets and lay them out, then practice just using your legs to walk the pattern; then add just the punches - do it bit by bit and it will click into place.