Just to add some insight to your topic, at risk of injecting "ninja/samurai crap" while the Wiki definition is correct it misses several points.
Anyone doing any solo drill is essentially doing kata. But in the martial arts kata in the modern sense really isn't kata.
Kata of the past were nothing more than the most important key movements of a given system organized in a logical pattern so that the essence of a given system could be more effectively transmitted from one generation to the next with understandable context. That's it, nothing more.
You could go to Thunder Ranch, Gunsite, etc. and take all of that valuable handling and moving skill and organize it into a logical pattern that is easily remembered and you now have kata.
The problem with the notion of kata, is in the martial arts world kata has been reduced to gymnastic dancing full of ridiculously absurd movements done more for entertainment than for practicing core concepts of attack and defense.
There was a thread here a couple years back showing a California shooting outfit doing some serious John Woo gun kata and it was of course completely absurd.
So the problem isn't the idea of kata, the problem is good vs. bad kata. Any of your top instructors could give you a list of "10 most important things to practice on your own" and could just as easily organize them into a logical, easy to remember drill with an emphasis on correct transition from one concept to the next and suddenly you would have the Vickers or Lamb kata.
This would of course be especially useful for any non shooting practice of positions, presentations and the like. Range time is generally for shooting just as ring time is generally for sparring. Practice done off the range or out of the ring tends to focus on things more suited to kata.
Also it is a futile effort to try and separate combat from combat.
While the application of sword, spear and AR15 obviously are very different, just as they differ greatly from unarmed defense applications, all the supporting and related areas of combat such as combative mindset, situational awareness, strategy and all the other stuff that Cooper and other guys who have actually been in combat think is relevant and important typically have a lot more in common than not.
This is why Sun Tzu is still read at military academies even though the weapons from that time are hardly relevant.
Now does one need a gun kata? No they do not. Quite honestly martial artists have no need for new kata either. The transmission of information problems, and the secretive nature of martial arts from a few centuries ago are hardly a concern and ancient kata (the real ones, not dancing) are mostly done for cultural preservation.
Certainly Kyle Derfoor could probably string together a very useful 90 second drill that covered key points and stressed proper position. And a lot of people would probably find that practiced pattern easy to remember and something they could always incorporate in their personal training.
The problem arises when the pattern become complex enough that it becomes an additional exercise to learn in addition to the key concepts within it. Such a pattern would probably be not nearly as useful.
And the last problem usually associated with kata comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of them. Some see these 80-100 step routines as one long self defense technique where imaginary attackers wait their turn at the proper place and then attack you with the predesignated attack. It should be obvious to anyone that this would never work in the real world and as such genuine kata are not organized according to this notion.
But if a firearm expert develops excessively complex or lengthy patterns of "practiced movements" he can develop conditioned responses that may end up being counter productive. Especially if he is doing things like "cover to cover" movements with imaginary cover and attackers. He is training his body and mind to move "after X amount of time" rather than letting the situation itself dictate the best time and place to move.
While practiced patterns can be extremely useful for learning and practice, and I see many people doing their "draw, stance and presentation" kata, you don't want to become trapped by the pattern itself.
The pattern or skill needs to be learned to the point that it is properly understood and correctly executed. But at some point proficiency allows one to abandon such practiced patterns so that correct technique is done as a conditioned response but the person is free to adapt, modify or improvise new skills based upon his established skill set as the situation demands.
Or in simpler terms, as a wise man once said "practice is practice and shooting is shooting, they only look the same."
Last edited by SteyrAUG; 07-24-12 at 13:03.
It's hard to be a ACLU hating, philosophically Libertarian, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, scientifically grounded, agnostic, porn admiring gun owner who believes in self determination.
Chuck, we miss ya man.
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