Before I get into this article, here’s a question. As a child, who taught you to walk?

Many of us want to understand the movements in kata, and there is an assumption that someone will show us what they mean.

The reality is that being shown is not necessarily a requirement, and in many cases, it may not even be the best way.

Our strongest understanding tends to come from our own discoveries. When something is revealed through your own effort, through your own thinking and testing, it carries a different weight. It stays with you in a way that something simply shown often does not.

Over the years I have been shown numerous applications for various movements, and at the time it all seemed impressive. Afterwards, I tried to remember everything I had been shown, but most of it faded. That experience is probably familiar to a lot of people.

What I have learned is that when I discover an application for myself and spend some time working with it, I remember it. If I continue to practice it, it becomes part of me. It’s no longer something I’m trying to recall – it is something that is simply there when needed.

When we use our own thinking to solve a problem, the solution tends to embed itself. There’s a kind of permanence to it that does not come from repetition alone, but from involvement in the process of finding it.

To understand a kata, we have to consider its overall context and interpret the movements within that. Similar movements appearing in different kata will not necessarily have the same application, because the surrounding intent is different.

This is where people often go wrong. A movement is recognized, and an application learned elsewhere is immediately applied without question. Instead of discovering what is actually there, it’s replaced with something already known.

That is not study – that is substitution.

A useful way to think about it is through a ‘whodunnit’ book. At the beginning, you don’t know who is responsible. You read, you take in the details, and gradually the pieces come together. Only at the end does the full picture make sense.

Kata can be approached in the same way. First, it needs to be observed as a whole so that its overall shape becomes clearer. Only then does it make sense to go back and examine the individual movements in detail, almost like reading a textbook. And just as with any textbook, understanding comes from engaging with it, not from someone else reading it for you.

Karate has been set up in such a way that its truths are revealed to those who study it, not those who simply practice it.

This is an important distinction. Practice alone can become repetition without understanding, whereas study requires questioning, testing, and a willingness to look beyond what is presented at face value.

Many of you will have been shown applications that simply don’t work. The explanation is always the same – that with more practice they eventually will – but the people demonstrating them cannot make them work either. That is the point where things begin to shift. It becomes clear that what is being passed on has not been tested in any meaningful way. It is simply accepted and repeated.

That pattern still exists. Applications are sometimes taught and continued not because they hold up, but because they have been inherited. The issue is not a lack of effort, but a reluctance to question what has been received.

Personally, I have learned from those whose insights did resonate. In those cases, it felt less like being told and more like something being uncovered. There’s a moment where it clicks, where it feels as though you have discovered it yourself, even if someone else helped point you in that direction. That’s understanding, not just learning, and those moments tend to stay.

In many areas of life, we place unnecessary limits on ourselves by assuming that understanding must come from someone else. Karate is no different. If we treat it as something that has to be explained to us, we miss the opportunity to explore it for ourselves.

So study your kata. Approach it with the intention of understanding what it’s trying to show you, not just repeating what you have been told. Watch it as a whole, then examine it in detail. Question what you see, and test what you think you understand.

The applications are there, but they are not handed out. They have to be found.

And if you think back to that first question, it’s worth remembering that you taught yourself how to walk. That is why you never forgot.

Photo Credit: Nobuko Oshiro, Urasoe, Okinawa.