(Approx 2 minute 15 second read)

Kata was born in a time of real violence, not sport or rules. To think its creators couldn’t defend themselves is absurd. Context matters, and ignorance is not bliss.
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I recently received a comment that read: “No fighter ever trains kata to learn how to fight. Only old school teachers believe kata is for fighting. Fighting is punches, kicks, knees in combinations, with pads, conditioning, and so on. Kata is fine as a warm-up, for grading, or for competition, but fighting? No. Stop propagating the idea that kata is for fighting.”
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First, I want to be clear: I do not promote fighting. My focus is always on self-defense.
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But his view is common, it rests on misunderstanding and ignorance. Kata was never about preparing for the ring, nor was it designed for competitive “fighting”.
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Kata preserves the self-defense methods of karate’s pioneers: close-range striking, grappling, locks, chokes, and counters against the kinds of assaults people faced in civilian life. To dismiss kata as little more than warm-up routines is to ignore the context in which they were created.
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What frustrates me about comments like this is that they are often made without any understanding of karate’s history. If you don’t know the context, then you don’t understand why something has been practiced and preserved to this day. So, don’t comment until you do.
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Of course, we could throw away kata, but then karate would lose what makes it unique. It would be like dismissing books because we now have audiobooks and YouTube. That kind of thinking is, frankly, ridiculous.
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The problem lies in mixing up “fighting” with “self-defense”. Fighting, in the sense of sport or competition, has its own training methods, pads, sparring, combinations, conditioning, and tactical drills. Kata was never meant to replace those things.
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What kata does is preserve principles for civilian self-defense: how to deal with being grabbed, struck, restrained, or taken to the ground. These were the concerns of people facing habitual acts of violence in daily life. That’s a very different problem to solve.
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It’s also important to remember the time period. In the days of Itosu and his contemporaries, there were no video, and no training manuals. Kata was just one part of a complete training system.
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Two-person drills, hojo undo, makiwara training, and other methods supplemented kata, with kata acting as a mnemonic to record and recall principles and techniques. How else could you remind yourself of a method when training alone, away from the dojo?
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Boxers, for example, use shadow boxing to rehearse combinations, footwork, and spacing when they’re not sparring or using equipment. Kata served the same role: a solo record of combative lessons that could be studied, remembered, and passed on.
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When kata is reduced to nothing more than choreography for gradings or warm-ups, we miss its depth. The old masters weren’t creating exercises for the sake of repetition, they were encoding solutions to the problems of civilian conflict.
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So, no, kata is not for “fighting”. But it is very much for self-defense. And that distinction matters.
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Comments made without understanding are easy, but they tell us nothing about karate, and everything about the commentator.
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Written by Adam Carter – Shuri Dojo