Those who can, spar. Those who can't, do kata - Part II

In the late 80s and first half of the 90s, I was one of the national coaches and co-chair of the National Coaches Education Committee, all under the USA Karate Federation (USAKF), then the official national governing body for karate competition under the U. S. Olympic Committee. Other designated coaches included Head Coach Don Madden (Tokey Hill’s instructor), Senior Coach Takayuki Mikami, and Ridgely Abele (who we sadly lost last year).

I normally only worked with the national kumite (sparring) team. Another group of coaches worked with our kata competitors. Since the kumite and kata athletes would assemble for training at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Colorado Springs at different times of the year, I was disappointed that I had never had an opportunity to see how top kata competitors trained.

But, in preparation for a major international tournament, Hanshi George Anderson, USAKF President, required both teams attend a joint training session at The Springs, enabling me to watch the kata team’s training sessions. And it was a great learning experience.

Hanshi Nakazato leads his students in kata. Kyoshi Hargrove is to the right.

I had always believed that fighters had to be at the top of the conditioning ladder. After all, they had to be prepared to fight one match after another, against tougher and tougher opponents, and with less and less rest in between. (In the 60s, I had a student who tired after winning 13 matches in a row at Ed Parker’s International Karate Championships and lost his 14^th, keeping him out of the finals. I came back and made sure that never happened again, that my fighters were far better conditioned.) Plus, karate matches are made up of a series of explosive, extremely high intensity actions, where energy stores are taxed to the maximum both anaerobically (utilized oxygen stored in muscles and expended first) and aerobically (utilizing oxygen you breath during the activity).

But the amount of conditioning done by the U.S. Women’s Team Kata Team was a revelation.

Our women’s team kata team was one of the best in the world at the time. They had placed 2^nd in the world at the WUKO/WKF World Karate Championships two or three times in a row in an extremely demanding and precise event, synchronized kata. The team was made up of the Tang sisters (Mimi and Debbie) and Melanie Genung and coached by former top world kata competitor Kathy Jones.

While we worked with the kumite team on one side of the large Olympic Training Center (OTC) gym, the kata coaches worked with their people on the other.

Much of their activities didn’t surprise me – repetitive kata practice, going over and over difficult moves, with a coach correcting the most minute of inaccuracies – in wrist position, foot placement, timing, and so on. This was standard procedure for kata competitors at all levels.

Several years ago, one of my young students won the gold medal in kumite, gold in kobudo, and silver in kata at the USAKF National Karate Championships. He was upset with himself for not winning three golds. So his mother spoke with the mother of the youngster whose performance of Bassai Dai relegated her son to second place. She asked how often her son trained. Twenty reps each day of Bassai Dai, she answered. In addition, he took two hours of private lessons each week to improve it. And he trained at the dojo five days per week. That’s over 500 reps per month. Most karate students don’t do 500 a year… and this was a seven year old.

As I said, what amazed me about our women’s team training session was the amount of conditioning they performed.

With Coach Jones monitoring their every rep (and the male kata competitors looked on), the three young ladies got down into a perfect push-up position. And in perfect unison, they did 150 push-ups. Then, they rolled over onto their backs and knocked off 150 sit-ups – also perfect in execution and unison.

The entire U.S. team (kata and kumite) was doing three workouts per day over several days. When the kata women returned for their midday workout that day, they did another 150 perfect push-ups and sit-ups before working on improving their kata performance. And, they came back for the late afternoon workout session and did the same. That obviously means they did 450 push-ups and sit-ups that day. (Plus, after the late afternoon workout, they went to the OTC’s extensive weight gym and worked out there.)

I was busy with the sparring team and didn’t get a chance to count the number of reps they performed the next couple of days. But the fact that they could do such a large number in any single day testified to their superb level of conditioning.

But it all made perfect sense. If we look at other athletes who have to have comparable control over their bodies – gymnasts, ice skaters, ballet dancers – their approach is much the same. In fact, Kathy Jones, before getting involved in karate, was reportedly a professional ballerina. So what she did with the team was apply the same demanding approach used to train top ballet dancers.

Well, I’ll stop here for this installment but will discuss my thoughts on the value of competitive kata as well as what I’ve learned about bunkai, kyusho, and tuite next time.

Again, thank for reading my humble ramblings.