That was the point I was trying to make. Being able to do pretty katas does not necessarily make one a good fighter, and a good fighter does not necessarily need to know pretty katas.

While I only "fought' in competition, I too have had my "timepiece serviced" by students who could not do a kata to pass a test. :)

Ahhh, and I was beginning to think you haven't met Mrs. Right yet.:haha:
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One of my own instructors worked for many years as a bartender, and one of his regular customers on that job was a guy who ran a different local martial arts studio. They became friends with MA as a shared interest and this guy would demonstrate all the various kata and techniques from his particular discipline to my friend. And he was AWESOME. Perfect technique, could do unbelievable things with such precision and grace and power... and yet every weekend he'd come into the bar where my friend worked and get in a fight and proceed to get his butt kicked HARD.

He was great on display, but not so much in a real fight. :haha:

Kata are designed to help the body remember certain movements and series of movements and how to do them with a maximum of precision and power without thinking about it. That's it. "Techniques" are the same thing. It's all muscle memory - you repeat a particular movement over and over and over again until your body remembers it and can perform it without interference or conscious direction from the mind. In the split second needed to respond to a physical attack, the mind - thinking about what is happening and how you are going to counter it - only gets in the way. "Too much mind" is a problem. "No mind" is the goal.

It's just like playing a musical instrument... if you have to think about where each finger is going at each particular moment to produce each particular note, you are going to have problems. It should be like walking or breathing... once your body learns to do it, it should do it when it needs to be done without any conscious thought on your part.

So kata are important - to a degree, for the purposes noted above. But you can't win a real fight with one, because the person you are fighting is not going to style his attack so that your kata or favorite technique is the perfect counter to it. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, lol. If you can't improvise to meet whatever comes, you will lose.

That was one of Bruce Lee's major complaints about the various disciplines and techniques. Too many fixed positions and not enough fluidity. This caused the mind and body to be out of sync during a fight. Alcohol will only exacerbate this.

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"Be water, my friend!"

(Love this guy, too sad he died so early...)

I have every movie he ever made in a special edition DVD boxed set.:smug:

Wow... where to get it?

I actually found it inadvertently at a local shopping center in NE NJ about a year or two ago. I'm still not completely unpacked from a recent change of residence, so I don't even have the set handy. I think it contains 6 DVD, one of which includes commentaries from the likes of Chuck Norris and others who knew Bruce personally (wife, daughter, producers, opponents, etc.).
I sat a whole day after purchasing it to watch the entire set, even though I had seen them before in theatres or on TV.

Don't forget to back-up your new computer ...

I heard that Windows 8 is coming out with a sp1 next month too

plus a rumor that if your car won't start just poor some coke cola
on it and it will start :yep:

I remember learning TaeKwondo. When we practiced counter moves it was like: so you're hitting me this way with this fist, so I need to stop it with this arm/leg. It most certainly was not spontaneous. Of course it does become more natural and yes "Too many minds" ('The Last Samurai') does get in the way.

It's always amusing watching recruits learning how to march. It's only walking in step together, but how many find it difficult and end up 'tick-tocking' :-?