I think, in general, the answer would be no.
Sparring depends on skills associated with a polished wood floor, four referees, bowing, and points awarded after mostly bloodless confrontations against one actual opponent, when that opponent is trained in the same sport with the same rules.
Kata are designed as databases of information that can be passed down through generations of karate students, each kata containing answers to the question: what do I do when my opponent has grabbed my gi with both hands and has not yet butted me with his head, thrown me, or kneed me in the enchiladas? Or similar questions.
Many kata have answers to the question, what do I do when my opponent has hit me once, and I’m seeing little purple stars on a black background, and the percussion section is playing inside my head?
And that’s because those are the sorts of attacks that occur in the world.
Obviously, there are a lot of different attacks that happen in the outside world. The sort of attack you usually WON’T see is a flying double front kick, or a roundhouse kick to your head. Or, for that matter, a double punch combination starting at fifteen feet away after the bad guy says, “Okay, we’re in a fight now. Here are the rules. Put up your dukes!”
Normally, you don’t see a bunch of referees in a real fight, or a nicely polished and sprung hardwood floor, or people in white pajamas.
In fact, you don’t see anything, because the bad guy has moved around to your blind side and belted you with a beer mug, pool cue, chair, or, in a place that’s deficient in easy to grab weapons, his fist.
Or you’ll see a bad guy distract you, by asking for the time, or asking for directions, and then you’ll notice that you’ve been grabbed to control your targets, and you’ll get to go for a ride, or inspect his head at very close range, or wonder whether you’ll be able to father children in the future.
The kata provide answers to those sorts of questions, not “how do I get points when my opponent feints to my stomach and moves his foot skillfully around to touch my head with a skillful roundhouse kick?”
There is a very nice book called “Strictly Street Stuff”, in which the author, who is well experienced in getting hit and returning the favor, discusses how he assembled his own kata, or PDF (personal defense form). It’s just a shorthand version of defenses against the attacks that author expected to run into in the future, because he’d run into them in the past.
One mystery I had contemplated for years was this: why do the kata provide so many answers to wrist grabs? That didn’t seem practical to me, because nobody grabs wrists much in the beginning of fights.
Iain Abernethy answers that question in one of his brilliant bunkai series of dvds, in which he points out that real fights are nasty, messy, unpleasant things (check). And that in those unpleasant affairs, if your opponent can effectively gouge your eye, or grab and crush your throat, or grab and squash your tamales, the fight is going to be over quickly (check).
He goes on to point out that nobody at all is going to ignore any of those sorts of attacks, and that in each and every case in which a thumb is being ground into an eye, the grindee is going to grab the wrist of the grinder, really hard (check).
Hence all the reactions to wrist grabs in the kata (Aha!). The kata don’t waste time with the obvious (in a real fight, people do bad things to one another, specifically including gouging and grabbing and crushing and twisting the soft parts) and the normal and universal response to those attacks is to grab the wrist of the offending hand; so the kata just encode what happens after the wrist is grabbed! Which will happen in a real fight, because at some point in a real fight, somebody is going to take a grab at his opponent’s soft parts.
Note: kumite will make you better at dealing with “challenge fights”, the sort that show up when one guy says, Your mother dresses you funny! Or similar but more intense phrases. But while the skills you learn sparring are optimized for a one-on-one confrontation, bear in mind that those turn into two or three on one situations with remarkable speed.
So, whenever possible, just give him the mustard! Don’t make him fight you for it!
And no matter what you may believe about your skills, which may well be superhuman, when you get whacked on the back of the head while you’re facing the guy you think is your opponent, you may have a bad day.
Hence, THE ULTIMATE MARTIAL ART: not being there!
Although, I’m told, sometimes you’re just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (note: no, bad luck has nothing to do with it if you’re inside a rowdy cowboy bar dressed like a c.p.a. and whoopin’ it up, or inside a biker bar dressed like a cowboy and having waaaay too much fun. Just don’t do that!).
If you are unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll need to make difficult decisions for which you will later have to answer in Court, if you’re lucky.
So wear good running shoes, and be in the right place at the right time!
Although those Church Socials can turn nasty in a heartbeat, right?
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TSD_Stylist on; “Does Practicing Shotokan Karate Kata Make You Better at Shotokan Sparring?”
TSD_Stylist’s answer, contrary to the article’s author, is (in general) YES!
In other words, the author, is WRONG.
TSD_Stylist practices the Korean karate of Tang Soo Do (TSD). TSD shares many similarities with the Japanese ‘hard-style’ karates such as Shotokan. IMO, Shotokan and TSD could be considered ‘sister’ karates.
TSD_Stylist has gone to the author’s website, IMO a phenominal resource on Shotokan & traditional karate. The article’s author has written many insightful posts about kata; describing kata’s usefulness , its purpose, etc.
For any one interested in learning to fight, for self-defense or for sport, the author makes the critical distinctions on what karate is and how traditional martial art training can make you the superior fighter. These key points include the difference between karate-do and karate-jutsu. The former seeks to make you a stronger person; the later is for combat or self-defense.
Furthermore, the author stresses that traditional karate training has a varied & rounded curriculum of main training components, one of which is kata.
Although IMO the traditional karates as presented are full of faults and weak points, much of the criticism of karate stems from the ignorance or misunderstanding of what karate really is & consists of. The author, at his website, offers the willing a very good tutorial on traditional karate, and the Shotokan style, which IMO, is a very good art for many to seriously understand & train the principles of traditional marital arts, including any of the karates.
The point I differ with the author on is not what he has pointed out what kata doesn’t do or prepare you for, it is that the value of kata as training for fighting is huge. Briefly, kata is the comprehensive karate exercise, one that conditions the body & the mind producing a physically & mentally strong person (karate-do), and developing that mind-body link that enables the karate practitioner to move and perform techniques in a decisive and dynamic manner.
Furthermore, while a highly physically& aggressive style of karate like Shotokan starts physical, it is the mental training that distinquishes karate from all the sports-based, modern methods of fighting & combat arts. TSD_Stylist believes that karate training starts physical and goes mental, with the mental component setting karate apart from the non-traditional fighting styles.
Once the karate practitioner attains this level of underlying martial skill, even the most basic of techniques take on the attributes of very advanced karate. In other words, the training of karate-do (stronger person the martial way) lays a foundation of sophisticated & heightened mental & physical abilities melded together, that greatly raise the practitioner’s ability to perform karate-jutsu (fighting).
The real secret of karate’s effectiveness in fighting is the karate-do foundation, earned through traditional martial art training. No matter what the style of fighting, without a strong foundation, the fighting applications (jutsu) are meaningless. Kata is a sophisticated training tool, in reality a textbook of karate designed to give you that solid, high-level martial foundation. That’s why practicing kata can & does make you the better in sparring .
TSD_Stylist put the ‘can’ there because it is up to YOU to learn & perform kata the way the masters intended.